Work Text:
Rantaro is quiet as Kokichi and Saihara slip out of the gathering they themselves started to… probably make out in the bathroom. Looking at the hell group they've assembled, between Kaede, Momota and his frankly terrifying maladjusted girlfriend (though he talks to Miu and Kokichi on the regular, so he guesses he only has so much room to talk where maladjusted is concerned), and Miu and Kiibo's sudden defensiveness of their friend… Rantaro really can't blame them for running off. Especially not after the bombshell the two of them just dropped.
What does surprise him is his phone buzzing, not even audible through the sound of Momota yelling something and Miu yelling back louder, like it was a challenge. He decides to chance picking it up; not like he's busy. This lot will burn themselves out eventually.
Rantaro smiles to himself as he sees the sender is Kokichi.
fool me once: hey there you bastard son of a whore just wanted you to know your days are fucking numbered. you better watch your back like a goddamn hawk.
Oh, getting out the periods, now, are we? Rantaro takes another sip of his tea, smiling softly, which is for him what a wild, maniacal grin might be for Kokichi. After the bombshell of his own Rantaro left them, though, this was a bit inevitable. He reminded himself that he'd intended to change Kokichi's name in his phone to "fool me twice," after Kokichi revealed his double life to… either them or Saihara. One of the two.
you: i love you too, Thief of Cards, but maybe focus on kissing your detective boyfriend instead of yelling at me.
Rantaro's smile only grows. No sense in being subtle where no one else can see.
fool me twice: i have two hands
fool me twice: also shuichi wants to know when you figured it out anyways
you: so you're both bottoms, is what i'm getting from this.
fool me twice: shut
...When Rantaro knew, huh…
you: to answer your question… probably after the first heist you pulled.
fool me twice: bullshit
you: no, really! you're not as subtle as you think you are sometimes. especially not when you're banking on no one expecting you to rob a government building.
---
"Guys! Hey!" Kokichi had burst into the coffee shop, late as usual with a pomp that wasn't unlike him, but the energy today felt different in a way Rantaro couldn't describe. He smiled fuller, flowed over to the table, looked a little more like he believed himself when he propped a foot up on the table and spread his arms behind his head like he was king of the world.
If Rantaro didn't know better, he'd say the little gremlin had finally gotten laid.
"What's up, shrimp dick? Finally get laid?" Miu asked almost conversationally, which is the primary reason Rantaro cannot bring himself to dislike Miu. Sometimes she just says what people are thinking.
Sometimes.
Kokichi smiled, but it was the toothy one that didn't hit his eyes. "Perhaps if Miu wasn't a stupid wannabe whore who couldn't land anyone more romantic than her vibrator, she wouldn't ask questions like that. Too bad!"
"W-wannabe?" Miu's color drained from her face as she groaned, and Rantaro quietly wished, not for the first time today, he wasn't here for this. Still, though, that was pretty brutal for an opener from Kokichi. Unusually so.
Kiibo loudly cleared his throat, doing his best to save this situation, which is why he's Rantaro's favorite. "So is something going on, Kokichi?"
Kokichi's face reset immediately, Miu totally forgotten. "Man, I'm so glad you asked!" He reached into one of his many pockets and pulled out a sleeve of newspaper, unfolding it seven times or so until the very crinkled object was (barely) legible. "Did you guys hear about this?"
Kiibo stood up and leaned in a little more than is socially acceptable to try and read the paper. After a few seconds, finally he said "I can't read this."
"Wooooow," Kokichi crooned in his child voice, "I thought as a robot you'd have state of the art visual processors, but you're kind of a hunk of junk, huh?"
" Hey! " Kiibo snapped. "I am not a hunk of junk! Or a robot!"
"Oh, that's right," Kokichi leaned back further, somehow, "you call them androids when they resemble people, don't you?"
"It's not Kiibs' fault you folded that paper into oblivion, Kokichi," Rantaro leapt to Kiibo's defense. He slotted into the role of big brother most naturally, in this friend group just as much as in most situations he found himself in. Which was probably something for his therapist, later, but not super relevant right now.
Kokichi rolled his eyes as dramatically as possible, eventually taking to staring at his nails. Rantaro did a pretty good job on those, he thought - purple with just a hint of black. "Fiiiiine. Have any of you heard about that new phantom thief? They're calling him the Thief of Cards."
Why yes, Rantaro did have a working phone and television set. The news had been plastered everywhere.
"The what?" Miu asked. "You're making that shit up. No way there's a real phantom thief."
Rantaro expected Kokichi to launch into a chain of insults, but he didn't. He just smiled a little bit, in a way that Rantaro thought might be more genuine than Kokichi intended. "Yeah, that's what I thought! But then I did some digging. Turns out, they graffitied 'tonight' on the police precinct in bright purple spray paint, then they hit that new government building, the ugly one, and stole all the paintings inside."
Kiibo narrowed his eyes. " All of them? Weren't there about ten pieces on the bottom floor as part of their 'cultured city' movement?"
"Hey, good processors on you, Kiibo!" Kokichi smiled bigger, in control of the conversation in a way he only can be when talking about one of his personal interests. Rantaro raised an eyebrow. "There were exactly ten. And now there are exactly 0. I wonder why they hit it."
"Hey, maybe it was some kind of political statement," Miu shrugged, "didn't those things, like… something."
Rantaro paid close attention to Kokichi. His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, smiling just a little bit bigger. "I've heard that a lot, because they basically requisitioned those for cheap, which you would remember if you weren't an oversized, glorified cow."
Miu let out a moan, and for not the first time today, Rantaro thought about how much damage control he'd have to do with the cafe staff. Again.
But more importantly than that…
Purple spray paint? That could have been a coincidence, but it was a very specific color. The way Kokichi directed the conversation, like he wanted to know what his friends thought, but didn't have an opinion… Rantaro's imagination might have been running away with him, but-
"I heard from an inside source that he moonwalked past the cameras and I think I'm in love." Kokichi sighed dreamily.
...No, it was definitely him.
"How did you even find that out?" Kiibo asked.
Kokichi raised an eyebrow. "Ever heard of the internet?"
Rantaro cleared his throat, bringing everyone's attention to him. He hadn't spoken in a while, he realized. "You know, Kokichi, you sound awfully personally invested in this."
Kokichi smiled in response, another toothy grin. "Am I not allowed to have interests, Rantaro? Is it not okay for me to think someone is neat? Do I need your permission to get a gay crush on someone?"
Rantaro snorted at that, choking back his knee-jerk response, which was it's not what I had in mind when I said practice self-love. "I just think you could have healthier interests," he finally said, after a pause that was just a little bit too long.
Kokichi let out a hmph and looked away, Rantaro shrugged, and that was that for now.
For now.
Rantaro couldn't help wondering to himself when, if ever, Kokichi might end up getting less incredibly dangerous hobbies.
---
you: and i realized saihara had a crush on you the first time we met.
fool me twice: oh my god he just went really red what is that about
you: he's probably embarrassed, since it was before he ever met kokichi ouma.
fool me twice: holy shit
That would have been… several months after Kokichi's first heist. Only a month or two before they moved in together, actually. Rantaro had stopped by Kaede's to pick something up, only to accidentally stumble in on Kaede and Saihara doing something. Kaede, naturally, was all too happy to introduce them to each other, talking eagerly about Saihara's detective work - which Rantaro didn't need to hear about - and Rantaro - which Rantaro really didn't need to hear about.
"So, you've been chasing down the Thief of Cards, right?" Rantaro asked. He knew this - how could he not, for all of the conversations Kokichi forced about it - but it just seemed polite to ask.
And he couldn't deny a certain amount of curiosity. For all the discussion they'd had about the Thief of Cards, Kokichi's disposition was… different when it came to the detective, and not in a way that gave Rantaro what he wanted to know. Because, admittedly, there was a lot of fun in puzzling out Kokichi's interests and motivations, what he hid behind his masks. But when it came to Saihara? Rantaro really couldn't tell.
When it came to other things, Kokichi would lead the discussion. He'd try and see what his friends thought of the latest happenings, he'd boast in a way that wasn't quite boasting, barely hidden behind a veneer of I'm so proud of my idol you guys, a way that had almost led Rantaro to call him on it more than once. But then, Saihara.
Kokichi almost never directed the conversation to Saihara. It was just something that naturally came up when you discussed the Thief of Cards, the plucky detective bent on capturing him, the one who'd been made a household name by this point as much as his counterpart. And when he came up… Kokichi would get quieter. Not in a way that seemed like he was collecting his friends' opinions and evaluating them, because he would occasionally add insight of his own - comments that sounded suspiciously like the Thief of Cards' opinion and not Kokichi Ouma's. But more often, he would just think to himself while Saihara was discussed. If he didn't like Saihara, he would just complain and/or change the subject, so it wasn't that. If he really didn't like Saihara, he would be more subtle about redirecting the conversation, so it wasn't that either.
So what about this man had the Thief of Cards so flummoxed? Rantaro had to know.
Of course, the reaction Rantaro had expected from mentioning the phantom thief had not been anything in the realm of turning bright pink and stuttering, but that's what he got. "Y-yes, that's me, yeah," Saihara had said, reaching for his hat on the counter, which Kaede pulled back like a snake striking.
"You've got to be more assertive about it!" Kaede chided like she was a teacher scolding a student. "Just say 'yes, I'm chasing the thief,' like it's not a big deal, because you're doing a good job!" Saihara's gaze just fell intently to the floor.
"Sorry, I don't mean to pry," Rantaro smiled disarmingly, one of his best features was his smile, "I was just asking because I have a friend who's a big fan of the thief, and I'm sure he wouldn't let me get away with it if I didn't ask you a thing or two while I had the chance."
At that, Saihara's gaze flitted back up to… not Rantaro's eyes, but closer, at least. He let out a little chuckle, a bit forced, but less so than Rantaro had expected. "I don't blame them," he said, and that didn't sound forced at all, "I think I'm a fan, too, on some days."
Kaede rolled her eyes, and Rantaro took it as a given that she'd seen this conversation play out more than once before. "Really," Rantaro said, sounding a bit perplexed. Mostly because he was.
Saihara laughed again, more awkwardly. "Don't tell my boss," he forced a smile. "But… well, he's a criminal, obviously, he's reckless and he's cost the city millions of dollars by now."
"But," Rantaro adds.
"But," Saihara echoes, "there's an undeniable sort of… charm to him."
"I think I get it," Rantaro helped Saihara out, because he did get it, it's what keeps him hanging around Kokichi in the first place. "He gives off the energy of someone who's loving every second of what he does, even when he's doing something incredibly stupid. It can be infectious, and there's a certain fun to be found in puzzling out what he's doing and why."
Saihara nodded emphatically along with what he was saying, more so than Rantaro had expected. "That's exactly it," he said, "and he's so in control all the time! Most of the criminals I've tracked down before have been nervous or unstable or angry. But not him. He has quite the sense of humor about it, even. It's… very unusual."
"Don't forget he's still a criminal, Shuichi," Kaede reminded him.
"Of course he is," Saihara shook his head, "but he's not a harmful criminal, not really. He just… wants a spectacle, I think."
Most people wouldn't notice the almost imperceptible twitch of Kaede's face, but Rantaro wasn't most people, especially after all the time spent with Kokichi. She probably was just worried about Saihara, which wasn't unfair. He sounded almost like he liked the thief, which…
...which…
...Would explain why Kokichi had no idea how to deal with him. Kokichi could take a lot of things, but he wasn't exactly equipped to handle someone liking him. It took all of Rantaro's self-restraint not to grin like a fool on the spot. This was a downright heady amount of power, and generally speaking, Rantaro felt as though he should not be trusted with power.
"You talk about him almost like you know him," Rantaro said, immediately setting about abusing what he had been given.
"Well," Saihara looked away, awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck, "after all this time… I sort of feel like I do, more than most people, anyways."
"So how do you feel about him, really?" Rantaro asked. It was an open-ended enough question that he didn't feel too bad about it, not until he saw Saihara's response.
Red flashed across his face, Saihara reaching for his cap and actually getting it from Kaede this time, placing it on his head in an extremely practiced gesture. His eyes burrowed anywhere they could except staring at Rantaro.
It was about then that the most unfortunate thought of Rantaro's life hit him, or at least one of the top five most unfortunate. Namely, oh my god, these two are three steps away from fucking, they've dragged the entire city into their stupidly elaborate gay courtship ritual, and, somehow, everyone is eating it up.
"So," the ghost of a smile appeared on Rantaro's face, "you like him, then?"
"Rantaro!" Kaede shouted, and Rantaro knew he was going to get an earful about this later, but it was for a good cause. Or at least a good enough cause.
"H-he's a criminal," Saihara weakly protested, his cheeks somehow even brighter and redder than they were before.
But that wasn't a no.
After that, Rantaro made a big show of apologizing for being forward (even if he wasn't sorry) and got his things and left Kaede and Saihara to their devices, all the while wondering what was to be done about the most hopeless case of gay feelings Rantaro had ever seen in his life.
---
fool me twice: so wait
fool me twice: if you knew about shuichis feelings and that i was the thief
you: getting you an apartment here was a setup in absolutely every sense, yeah.
fool me twice: im going to kill you. Then im going to bring you back to life. Then im going to kill you AGAIN.
you: someone had to get you gay morons talking to each other.
For all Rantaro's talk now, he hadn't been quite so optimistic about it at the time. He had spoken on impulse, when he offered Kokichi Kaede's number and the tip about Saihara's place, and was starting to regret it just a little bit - just a little bit - when Kokichi's text came in about Saihara being famous. He wasn't quite sure how it would turn out. All he knew was that something had to give, or these two would be dancing around each other possibly for years, until Kokichi slipped up and did something stupid that he couldn't take back. Something giving in a domestic setting seemed infinitely more likely than it did for that to happen from behind his stupid clown mask.
He didn't dare get optimistic until Kokichi invited them over to see his place a couple of weeks later.
They had been over to his place back when he had a place of his own a few times, of course - it was an ugly, dingy, run-down apartment, but Kokichi had been as proud of it as anything. His disposition about this home was a bit different - not pride, not in the same sense, but he moved about it with ease, in a way that suggested he was relaxed around Saihara, and it made Rantaro relax, too. Time would tell, of course, but for now, Rantaro was hopeful.
He covered for Kokichi when he had to duck out for phantom thief business or related injuries (by insinuating to Miu and Kiibo that he was busy being a gay idiot with Saihara).
He pretended it wasn't relevant when Kokichi asked for blue in his nail art for the first time ever, like there wasn't someone else he wanted to impress.
That hope burned brighter than ever the time Saihara showed back up while they were over. It was like a switch flicked, and Ouma was a completely different person. He was kind, considerate. He knew what Saihara wanted, and more than that, he got it for him. He was sympathetic. He was still Ouma, but not the kind of Ouma Rantaro had ever seen. It was… baffling.
And it made Rantaro smile.
---
the horse races
you: now taking bets once again.
yellow submarine: on whether theyre fucking right
you: i was going to go with "on when they're going to start dating," but if your bet is "they're already dating," then sure.
yellow submarine: im gonna go with 50 on theyre already dating and or fucking because HOLY SHIT that was gay
you: it, undeniably, was very gay.
son boy allowed: I mean, obviously Kokichi is fond of Saihara, but I don't know if I would go that far.
yellow submarine: you afraid of the gay, Kiibabe?
son boy allowed: NO
son boy allowed: I just mean that Kokichi is obviously slow to trust and warm up to people, and I don't think he'll ever find a partner he's happy with, not without some serious soul searching on his part.
you: okay, but
you: that was extremely gay.
For all of Rantaro's teasing, he thought Kiibo honestly had a better bet than Miu. Things were certainly looking better for Kokichi and Saihara, but… well… Kokichi had a tendency to crash and burn.
son boy allowed: Still. My bet is that Kokichi will not confess his feelings to Saihara, and that they will not date.
you: dark horse out here i see
you: sure. we'll write that one down as 50 for "if it takes longer than six months or if kokichi moves out at any point."
yellow submarine: hold on now thats REALLY fucking generous
you: it's the dark horse. i feel obligated to be a little generous.
yellow submarine: ugh. FINE.
you: and the house will bet 100 on "one to three months from now," because the unresolved sexual tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
yellow submarine: you're upping the ante!?
you: i'm very confident.
It was more forced confidence, but Rantaro wasn't gonna let anyone know that.
son boy allowed: I'll take it.
yellow submarine: kiibo what
son boy allowed: I am ALSO very confident.
yellow submarine: ffffINE. guess ill have to keep cash on me then
Rantaro was a little sorry for the frequency with which he and Kiibo tended to fleece Miu out of her pocket change, but only a little sorry.
And Rantaro was only a little more sorry when he spotted Kokichi with Saihara at a party a few weeks later, and decided to make his own efforts in helping them along. And if Rantaro, a bit tipsy, got to effusively praise his good friend Kaede while he did it, Kaede who doesn't deserve the shit he puts her through, then that would just be the cherry on top.
It worked, and the two of them headed out to the balcony together. Rantaro pretended not to pay attention when they came back in together, when they started drinking more together, when they danced and laughed longer, louder, harder than anyone else at the party, when they forgot there was anyone else in the room. When they fell asleep together.
When Rantaro, sobering up, left for the night, one of the last ones still awake, he figured he might make good on that bet after all, and he was still, blissfully, drunk enough to think that was his primary concern.
---
Rantaro had almost thrown up, the day he saw blurry surveillance footage of something hitting the Thief of Cards, of him falling off the fence he had been climbing. It had taken everything in him, then, not to call Kokichi, not to go over to his house his own damn self to make sure he was okay. Not to step in, not to be the older brother.
If he went over, if he caught Kokichi in the act, he knew what Kokichi would do. He would panic, he would lie, he would run away, he would do something even stupider. He would self-destruct.
And as much as it hurt Rantaro to sit and do nothing, his heart would break if he was the one to push Kokichi over the edge.
But his heart still almost broke, watching the confrontation on the roof, Kokichi still in a bloody outfit he'd never bothered repairing. Watching him almost slip off, watching Shuichi save him. Watching them slip into the night in a blaze of glory, in something Rantaro dared to hope was final.
And then, weeks later, that fear gone, he sits in their flat, wondering how long he should let his friends (plus Momota and Harukawa) pitch a fit about their collective companions before pointing out that the two of them had slipped out to kiss. And, apparently, text Rantaro about his admittedly bizarre wingman behavior.
For now, though, Rantaro just drinks his tea, quietly relieved he has one less thing in his life to worry about.