A Shinigami, that’s how he was known in Japan. Elsewhere he was named differently, his name varied from culture to culture, from country to country, from religion to religion. But what he did, what he was remained constant throughout the centuries.
The God of Death.
When he was created and promptly assigned his role, he had been excited. To be assigned such an important role, the opportunity to help humans’ souls to safely pass on to the other realm was a humbling job. And at first, it was. He would stay by their side when they were dying, listen to their stories and little anecdotes about their life and make their ending moments a little bit more bearable. He would sob along with the family members when their soul would depart, feeling as if he had lost someone dear to him as well.
It soon became his noose. It crushed him whenever he had to take a child soul. Their stories would be so innocent and filled with hope. To take these young souls, it ripped his heart out. And slowly, over the centuries, his heart hardened. Because he did such an amazing job of helping humans in their end moments, he was assigned helpers to make his job less burdensome. The world’s population was increasing after all. A single God of Death couldn’t possibly keep up with the genocide, the murders, the accidental deaths, the suicides, so he was given help. And slowly, he started to withdraw himself from the human world.
Yes, they were lovely and yes, they were ugly, too. But that’s what made humans, humans. A person could be the best version of themselves in front of a set of people but a literal nightmare to another set of people. Humans backstabbed, cheated, lied their way through life. But they also created bonds and loved with their whole heart. They were a conundrum, a plethora of emotions swirled in them, none of them remaining constant.
To the God of Death, humans were precious and that was the reason why he couldn’t do his job properly. If he treated them as someone dear to him, once they were gone, they would leave their mark on him and for a God to be impressionable, that was most unheard of. And a God without a job couldn’t exist, so for his survival, he hardened his heart.
The long stories he would patiently listen to were cut off by curt words, the smile that would grace their face when they would see him were now replaced with grimaces. The completeness now replaced with fear. And he thought to himself, yes, this is good, as his chest caved in with pain.
His current location was Japan and for the first time in his existence, it wasn’t due to somebody’s death but due to his job being in peril.
Two humans had somehow found the key to immortality. He wanted to roll his eyes. Humans and their fascination with staying alive. Well, they couldn’t possibly be aware what damage a long life caused to their souls, so he supposed their attempts to conquering nature were… appreciable. As an entity which couldn’t be extinguished, he wouldn’t recommend it though. But to each their own.
And so, he walked across the doors of Miyano Pharmacy. He knew that the humans wouldn’t be able to recognize if he came in as a celestial being, so he was confident in his stealth. He ruffled through the papers kept on the desk, surveying the lab and he was impressed. These humans had worked hard to defeat him. Seeing a photo frame beside the computer, he picked it up, curious to see who these humans were when the door knob turned.
He didn’t pay it any attention, no alive human could see him. There was no way he would be found but when a gasp resonated, he turned around, only to meet the eyes of one of the humans who was in the photo.
“Who- who are you?” The woman asked, taking on a defensive stance.
He was stunned. He could hear the woman breathe. He could hear her heart beat but then how could she see him?
The woman’s tone grew angry as she asked again, “I asked- who are you? Hurry up or I’ll call the police.”
He cleared his throat, caught off guard and said, “I’m Shini- Shinichi,” and he struggled to smile as he had seen humans do when they wanted to appear non-threatening.
The woman looked confused though, probably trying to place if she knew someone named Shinichi. Too bad she would come up empty. Before she could say anything, he hurried to spin a lie, “I’m here because your father wanted me to look at your recent… invention.”
The woman searched his eyes and he tried to make himself look as innocent as possible. He wasn’t lying completely though, he was there to look at the invention. He just didn’t intend for the said invention to exist once he was done being there in the lab.
He was curious about the woman who could see him though and he asked before he could stop himself, “I’m sorry but I can’t seem to remember your name. I’m not good with them.”
The woman still looked cautious but his act must have been convincing because she said, “I’m Ran,” but then didn’t offer up any more information.
He smiled at her, a genuine one, trying his best to put her on ease. He hadn’t tried to accommodate a human for centuries but he remembered that humans valued sincerity and so he tried his best to unarm his arch nemesis.
“Hello, Ran, it’s nice to see you. I am-” and he was abruptly cut off.
“Raaaan, have you see my coffee cup. I can’t find it,” a girl’s voice came as she entered the room.
Ran turned slightly to answer, “Sorry, Shiho, haven’t seen it,” and then turned back to face him. The brown haired woman, Shiho, walked in, trying to find her cup and this was when Shinichi knew his cover was blown. Because this woman, this Shiho couldn’t see him.
“Hey, Shiho, aren’t you gonna greet our guest?” Ran asked, slightly confused at Shiho’s impoliteness. The man was standing in the middle of the room. Why was Shiho pretending not to see him?
Shiho tried to peer behind the row of books as she answered, “What guest, Ran?”
And Shinichi grew nervous.
Ran’s brows furrowed as she stared at Shiho’s back, had the two of them really slept so little that they had started to get hallucinations? “The one who’s wearing all black. Looks like he’s in his early thirties. He says his name is Shinichi.”
A book fell down on the floor as Shiho tried to locate her coffee cup but started to face the room so she could see what Ran was talking about. Shinichi knew he had to escape while Ran’s attention was on Shiho. This Shiho couldn’t see him but that Ran could. She could mess up his plans and so he opened a little portal he could escape through before Shiho fully turned around.
Finding no one, she said, “Ran, there’s no one,” and then started her quest again, mumbling about how things could get misplaced and god, they needed to buy more coffee cups.
Ran faced the room again and was stunned into silence. The man had disappeared.
“What, why?” Ran was confused why she had to kiss him. The situation didn’t warrant for a make out at all.
“It’s the only way.” Shinichi answered gravely. And for a minute, Ran was on alert. Had she missed something? Had the people they were tailing somehow spotted them out?
And so she stepped closer in front of him, just in caution and asked under her breath, “The only way for what?”
“It’s the only way,” he answered back with a serious glint in his eye, his jaw clenched. And for a second, Ran’s head was full of thoughts about how hot her boyfriend looked. She shook her distracting thoughts off, surreptitiously glanced around and stepped further closer to him.
“The only way for what, Shinichi?” She asked again when they were almost chest to chest and Shinichi still had that grave look on his face.
Slowly, his arm circled her waist and he bent down to reach Ran’s eyes. She instinctively looped her arms behind his neck, waiting for an answer while looking around the street in order to find out who had found them.
She got distracted when she felt warm breath on her lips and she turned her head to see Shinichi looking at her dead in the eye. She gulped. Something must have seriously gone wrong for him to look like that.
“Just kiss me, Ran.”
And so she did. The instant Ran’s lips touched his, Shinichi spurred into action, pushing her against the brick wall in the alley and Ran let her hands curl in his hair. His tongue brushed against her bottom lip and Ran groaned at the unexpected action but opened her mouth. Once his tongue came in contact with hers, she lost all thought of someone finding them out and just gave in fully. She titled her head for better access, all the while Shinichi’s hand snaked up along the nape of her neck. He held the back of her neck with a single hand while Ran tugged on his hair.
Shinichi let out a guttural moan and pushed Ran even further into the wall, their lips breaking off to catch some much needed breath. She let her head fall back and Shinichi took this opportunity to glide his lips along the side of her neck.
The much needed oxygen helped to clear her head a little and she asked breathlessly, “That kiss was the only way for what?”
Shinichi hummed a little, his lips a little too busy with the skin on her collarbone.
“Shinichi?”
Somehow he managed to pull himself a little before giving her a wide, unapologetic, satisfied grin, “Ordering you while we are working was the only way I could get you to kiss me in public.”
I would like to thank @detectivegeekshin for the wonderful, wonderful dialogue and headcanoning with me
Ran nodded eagerly, her eyes twinkling with mischief, “Yes, a fake husband.”
Shinichi slowly sipped his coffee, reminding him that no, he wasn’t drunk and what he was hearing was in fact, correct. “A fake husband?”
Ran’s enthusiasm didn’t wane as she exclaimed, “Yes, a fake husband.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was well aware that they had been repeating themselves for the past minute but for the love of god, he couldn’t compute the information he was being provided with and in a courageous attempt, tried to actually process what Ran was saying.
It took him some time, if he was being honest. He didn’t like that fact. But then again, who else other than Ran was capable of reducing his brain to mush?
“You want me to be your fake husband?”
“Yes.”
“… Why?”
“You know how my parents have been overseas this whole time?”
“Yeah, ten years.”
“Recently, they’ve been on my case about ohh, nooo, Ran, you’re twenty-five. You’re still not married. Your medical career is not going to keep you away from loneliness when you grow old. Why don’t you find a good man for marriage? Maybe I should help you out.” Ran rolled her eyes as she recalled what her mother had said to her on their video call, “Soooo, I thought, hey, what if I told them I was already married?”
“So you wanted to send them early to their grave. What a good daughter you are.” Shinichi said as he stabbed the omelette.
Ran pouted at him and Shinichi rolled his eyes, very well aware that Ran and her parents had what he liked to call a give-them-a-heart-attack-love relationship.
“Oh, please. If changing my career choice in my last semester didn’t make them keel over, nothing ever will.” She said nonchalantly as she poured herself a glass of black coffee. Shinichi made a disgusted face at the quantity and Ran gleefully smiled at him, aware that he found her drinking habits appalling.
“Sooo, be my fake husband, please?” she pleaded.
“No.”
“Awwww, you’re such a bad sport.”
“Thank you.”
“Wasn’t a compliment.”
“I don’t want a compliment from you. It’s the scariest thing ever.”
Ran sniffed, “Waaaow, so rude.”
Shinichi smirked, “I aim to please.”
“You being my fake husband would be most pleasing to me,” she said as she sipped her coffee, her eyes over the rim of the glass.
Shinichi sighed, “Why me? You know you have an endless line of admirers who would jump on this proposal.”
Ran put away her coffee and answered, “Because I love you.”
Shinichi could have sworn his heart leapt out of his chest when he heard her. He chuckled nervously at the serious look on Ran’s face, trying very hard not to let her words swarm into his brain and heart. She didn’t meant it that way. She was never supposed to mean it that way. They had been childhood friends since they were four. There was no way he would see Ran in a romantic light. She meant much more to him than a fickle love. She was like a sister he never had. His number one supporter in everything, his go-to person. There was no way she would blur the lines knowing how he felt about romances. How much he loathed them and the horrible relationship his parents had. And how much he was turned off from the prospect of romantic love, in general. There was no way Ran would force him into a corner like that, knowing how much he despised romantic love, so he deflected.
“Ha ha, you know I love ya, too, but c’mon Ran, a fake husband, isn’t that too much?” he swallowed at the serious look on her face.
And as Ran gave him a sad smile, he knew she got the message. Shinichi had never felt this horrible, seeing that sad and accepting look on her face and blurted out before he could stop himself, “For how long will I have to be your fake husband?”
Ran tried to put up an excited front now that he had agreed but Shinichi could see it through. She meant it when she said that she loved him but Shinichi also meant it when he said that he loved her.
He loved her too much for her to end up like his mother.
@rachello344 (along with a few others in the KaiShin discord server) tried to solve this old heist note I wrote, and so here’s some art based on her fic, Gentlemen Thieves
Coming through with a new AU which is the exact opposite of my other one, where shinichi is the only one without wings and he relies on his gfs to survive
