if you haven't already, please read Curiosity Made the Cat first, as nothing will make sense.

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Shinichi and Heiji talk often; some matters are important, some are… significantly less so.

It's one call when Heiji says, out of the blue, "I wonder what makes ya black."

Kudo stares blankly out at his library and instantly gives an automatic deadpan response in a duh tone: "I'm Japanese."

There's a silent beat of processing time before Hattori explodes into raucous laughter, and Shinichi realizes his mistake. The cat gave a long sigh under the wheezing of his friend, adding, "and an idiot, apparently."

It takes Hattori several minutes to regain control of his breathing enough to speak, and Shinichi spends the whole time emanating an aura of are you done yet that Heiji can surely feel through the phone.

"I'm never lettin' that go," is the first things Hattori gasps.

Shinichi almost protests, fangs bared and tail lashing, but pauses in consideration. Upon revaluation, he simply admits: "you know, neither would I."

"True friendship," Heiji croons in a half mocking tone— Shinichi just rolls his eyes, and Hattori can probably feel that through the phone too. He must, for he calms again— "I was talkin' about your fur color— what made you black? Or that specific cat? Or a cat at all?"

"It does seem equally likely that I would become a brown or yellow cat, or something," Shinichi agrees. His fur and hair match, yes, but obviously that has no determining factors when one's entire genes are overtaken by feline ones. "I don't even know why I'm a cat instead of dead; they knew enough about the poison to move onto external tests, so why would I be the obvious exception to death…?"

Heiji skirts around the suddenly-heavy topic in favor of more joking to steer the conversation away— "seriously, what were they trying to accomplish with it?"

Death is the obvious answer considering the term poison, but that's not where the cardinal detectives' minds go because that isn't puzzling or interesting. Instead, they hop away from the heavy and dark possibilities and instead to cold clinicism fueled by simple curiosity.

"First— why a cat?" Heiji caws

"Maybe they were testing it on mice and cat genes were just available? I don't know!"

"Fair," Heiji muses. "But second: what was even the goal? Even if it didn't work as intended, something in it made this… extreme misbehavior a thing."

"It's all just theories, obviously— but Agasa says he thinks they introduce a strong, replicating foreign agent for the body to fight against."

"Kill the internal organs or let the body succumb to fever, eh?"

"Right."

"Seems improbable that would go to transformation," Heiji hummed to himself consideringly.

"I'm just lucky," Shinichi drew out sarcastically, thought-speech from the bowtie accompanying a low mrowl.

"Says the black cat," Heiji laughs, barely able to force it out. "Sorry, Asian."

Kudo gives a long hard glare, and Heiji shudders in Osaka. For a moment, all is still before Shinichi seems to desm that jab unworthy of response, ignoring it in order to address a wrong: "I'm only mostly black."

Heiji just laughed harder and waved him off. It took another span for the teen to get the laughter under control, and then there was comfortable, thoughtful silence.

Another question out of the blue— and talking to Heiji, that very much was a trend with him, Shinichi had discovered— "when do ya think you'll be… back? Your knowledge of the poison seem…" he trailed off, but the lacking was left hanging in the air.

Shinichi tipped his head to the side with a little uncomfortable frown, the picture of discomfort and avoidance. Of course Heiji would simultaneously steer away from and headfirst into heavier discussion. "Don't know," he softly settled on, speaking in a low, mumbling voice. He raised it a bit to say: "I mean, at the beginning I thought it was just a temporary thing, and then I thought that the professor would find an easy cure, but now…" he trailed off, considering the passage of time and the lack of closeness to any leads revolving the terrifying men in black suits and hats. He didn't need to finish; Heiji could pick up the shrug in his voice well enough.

"That sucks," was his simple whuff.

Silence once again; Shinichi stewed a bit at the conversation being pushed into areas he clearly didn't want to think about and would rather deny, and boiled even more at his own responses. He wasn't angry at Heiji in particular; more stressed with the world as a whole.

Heiji broke into his thoughts with a laugh: "stop stressin' Kudo."

Shinichi blinked, eliciting a soft huh? out loud that came out as an embarrassingly cute little mrrp?

Heiji gave a soft laugh at that again, but thankfully picked up on it well enough to not need the flustered Shinichi to translate. "You were making kind of a—" he paused, cleared his throat, then made a sort of throaty, low "mmmr" growl. Shinichi flushed even further beneath his coat, and became absolutely puffed when Heiji added: "you make some pretty cute noises."

And then the Osakan broke into laughter, and Shinichi realized he was making the exact same growl once again.

Finally vocal, the Eastern Detective barked an embarrassed, "stop it!"

Heiji just cackled on how much blackmail material he had gained from this call, and gave a quick goodnight under Shinichi's barking voice, hanging up. The last thing he heard was Shinichi's "I know how to hide a body, Hattori."

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welcome to my new series. i take prompts, even just one word prompts (tho please specify it's a prompt rather than just leaving a random word)!