Mikau: Hi all! So on Friday while I was at lunch, my brother (who went to a con without me :P) texted me, asking if I wanted to do a prompt exchange with him. The prompt he sent me was essentially to write about the weather outside my window or the weather somewhere I would like to be. It was a lovely, temperate day in my part of the country, and I didn't particularly wish to be trapped out in the elements with a typhoon raging, so I'm not sure where the storm in this story came from, but…I hope you enjoy the fun little Kaito and Sera fic that resulted from my brother's prompt. Also, I hope I had Sera explain the rules of the games she teaches Kaito adequately. ^.^; Have fun!

Disclaimer: If I owned it, Kaito would get to interact with the detectives as Kaito more.

…

To Pass the Time

The flash thunderstorm currently battering the country bus stop enclosure where Kaito was now taking shelter was the perfect ending to his spectacularly horrendous day. What had started off as a fun daytrip to Mount Mitake with a small group of friends and his girlfriend quickly nosedived into mosquito bites and a cataclysmic fight culminating in the termination of his relationship.

In no uncertain terms.

Because apparently he had always been deficient, it had just taken a hike up a mountain with him and their friends for her to realize that she was finally fed up. And now he was here, sitting alone at a bus stop at night, out in the boonies, in the middle of a freaking inundation.

With the way Lady Luck was forsaking him today, he was expecting a landslide to take out the mountain road, delaying the bus and leaving him stranded until morning…or until the rain stopped…whichever came last.

Kaito sighed, pulling his legs into his chest and resting his chin on his knees, settling in for what promised to be a long, miserable wait.

At least the wind was blowing at his back, the enclosure shielding him. At least the night was warm and he needn't fear freezing to death. And he was dry. He'd made it to the bus stop just as the first droplets started to fall, saving himself a whole lot of damp agony and prune-y feet. Plus, there was something to be said for a storm out in the mountains at night. His sullen mood was beginning to dissolve into peace with the steady pounding of the rain against the glass. At least he'd have plenty of time to sort things out—his thoughts and feelings about the breakup, his shortcomings, his inability to have healthy, normal relationships with others because of his necessary lack of honesty.

With another sigh that got swallowed up by the howl of the wind, Kaito let his head fall forward, his forehead against his thighs.

At least no one would hear him when he cried or screamed or cursed through the alphabet or laughed like a lunatic because it was so damn funny, wasn't it? He had a feeling he'd be doing all four in turns throughout the night.

At least no one would see him like this.

Kaito was just making peace with his sucky surroundings when the sanctity of his shrine of misery was violated.

"Geez!" a bright, tenor voice laughed heartily. "That came out of nowhere!"

And so did you! Kaito thought, looking up at his unexpected guest in befuddlement. The heck?!

It was a young woman decked out in a brown leather jacket, black leather pants, and a blue fedora…of indeterminate fabric, but it might have been leather too judging by the way it seemed to resist the storm's saturating influence.

And Kaito could only tell it was actually a woman and not an effeminate young man by the barest hint of the curve of her chest, visible when she whipped off the jacket like a fifties stud, shaking off the raindrops that had managed to cling despite the water resistant nature of the waxy surface. Really, Kaito could only be one hundred percent sure about her gender because he recognized the girl, had made the mistake before of taking her for a man, much to his personal detriment and that of his face.

His bus stop companion was none other than Sera Masumi, (former) teenage detective and owner of one powerful flying dragon kick. No, Kaito would not soon forget the night he had mistaken her for a man—Though, it was her partially her fault, dressing like that and using the men's restroom and all—and disguised himself as her during a heist…only to taste her fiery retribution afterwards. God, he hoped she didn't have some crazy psychic powers that allowed her to deduce that her old friend the Kaitou Kid was sitting right there in front of her. Kaito did not feel like being pummeled and presented to the police today, but that was just the kind of day he was having.

Sera turned to look at him, and Kaito stiffened. She squinted at him, studying his face.

Kaito contemplated running for it now. He couldn't decide what would be worse, braving the run in the storm towards the guesthouses up on the mountain or staying the night here at the bus stop with her.

"Have we met before? You look familiar." She took a step closer to get a better look in the dim lighting the little country stall provided.

Inwardly, Kaito was getting rather creative with the breadth and scope of his cursing. Outwardly he tried to sound unsure and yet pretty certain. "I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe you're mistaking me for someone else."

She shook her head, reminiscent of a sheepdog after a bath. Shaggy black locks sloshed rainwater everywhere. "No. You do look like a friend of mine, but I swear I've seen you around before." Out of the blue, it hit her. "Oh! I remember!"

Some nice Germanic curses flew through Kaito's head. Seriously? Seriously?! This was the day that he was having?!

"You sit, like, ten rows in front of me in Shimizu's lecture," she laughed warmly.

Kaito blinked, mind still trying to catch up. German curses, like German in general, were long and took a while to get through. They were classmates? How had he missed that?

Aoko was in that class. He'd been distracted.

She held out her hand to shake. (Kaito wondered where she had picked up that foreign custom.) "I'm Sera Masumi! Nice to officially meet you."

Kaito offered his own hand, allowing her to wring it like a wet towel. "Kuroba Kaito. Likewise."

And without further ado, Sera flopped down on the bench beside him, making herself at home.

"Looks like it's gonna be a long night," she observed, tapping her feet just to give herself something kinetic to do.

Kaito nodded, seriously missing the solitude that this little haven out in the storm had offered him. Now he wouldn't be able to sort out anything…but maybe it was too soon to even try. Maybe things were better this way with him distracted from his tragedy.

"You waiting for the bus?" Sera tried to make conversation, oblivious to Kaito's desire for silence.

"If it ever comes," Kaito sighed, looking out into the downpour, trying to discern the road from the wilderness. "I'm not really holding my breath, since the likelihood of there not being a landslide that washes out the road is slim to none given how hard it's coming down."

Sera nodded, looking for the path but not having any more luck than Kaito. "I'm just waiting out the storm," she volunteered without having been asked. "I'm staying with some friends at one of the little guesthouse villas here, and I got caught out in the rain, it started coming down so fast. I just happened to see this little shelter and ran for it. Lucky for me."

Unlucky for Kaito. Was she going to yammer at him all night? This was going to be a looong, tortuous evening.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to be more patient. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. He was only annoyed because he felt like some scrap of clothing that had blown out a car window and, left to perish out on the street, had been run over repetitively by uncaring traffic. Okay, perhaps that was a little melodramatic, but he was feeling emotionally raw at the moment. After all, the love of his life had just given up and walked out on him. He was in a sucky mood.

"Wanna play a game?" Masumi broke into his thoughts once more, holding out her two index fingers towards him like dowsing rods. "Otherwise it's gonna be a long night of sitting around in silence, bored to death."

Kaito was actually okay with silence. Silence was good. He was tempted to suggest that they play The Quiet Game—first one to make a sound loses. But that would be rude and probably make her angry. It would be bad if he ticked her off at him, so best to play nice.

"What game did you have in mind?" He tried to sound interested.

"No idea what it's called." She shrugged, still holding her fingers funny. "But it's a simple math game that I learned while I was living in the States." And just like an American with little respect for personal space, she reached out and grabbed his hands, positioning them so that they mirrored her own. "I'll go first just as an example." She tapped his left index finger with her right one. "One plus one equals two, so now you have two on that hand," she explained. "So put up another finger."

"Okay?" Kaito did as instructed.

"If this were a real game, you'd strategize and make your own moves, but for now, go ahead and tap one of my fingers with the hand that has two."

He did so, not quite understanding where they were going with this.

"Your two plus the one finger that I had makes three." And so she put up two more fingers on her left hand accordingly. Next she tapped Kaito's two fingers with her three.

Kaito, recognizing the pattern, added her three to his two and got five.

She nodded, pleased that he was picking up on the gameplay. "Except, it's not five, it's zero."

He tilted his head to the side and raised an eyebrow at her. "Excuse me?"

"The object of the game is to get your opponent to five. Then that hand becomes a fist and is out of play. Whoever gets both of their opponent's hands to run out of fingers first is the winner," she informed with a too bright smile.

Kaito tried not to glare, feeling like he had been tricked. "So…on my next move, if I tap your three with my one, it'll become four, and on your next turn you can tap my one with your four, and I'll be out, yeah?"

Sera nodded vigorously. "Yep. But do it anyway. I want to show you something."

He did as asked, and on Sera's turn, she tapped his one with her one, giving him two.

"Now you can 'split'."

"Split?" His eyebrow arched a little higher.

She smiled and nodded. "If you have two or four on one hand and your other hand is out, you can split to bring the hand that's out back into the game." She held up two on her left hand, her right in a fist, and then she tucked her two fingers back down, knocking her fists together. When they separated once more, she raised one finger on each hand. "Got it?"

Kaito tried out the theatrical movement himself while Sera Masumi nodded approvingly.

"And that counts as a turn," she informed. "What do you think? Wanna play?

Kaito shrugged. Why the hell not? "Sure. I have time to kill."

"Awesome!" she crowed. "Winner gets five points."

He looked at her inquisitively. "Points? What are the points for?"

"To make life more fun," she replied automatically. Like everyone just gave out arbitrary points for the heck of it. "I don't know," she chuckled. "I guess whoever has the least points at the end of the night has to buy the winner…oh, an ice cream or something once we get back to civilization. Sound good?"

"Ice cream always sounds good," Kaito snickered, getting into position to start a new game now that the tutorial was over. "Get ready to lose."

"I'm not gonna lose," she snorted. "I'm the one that taught you how to play."

"It's simple math," he countered. "And I'm killer at strategy games."

"Just don't cry when you lose," Masumi cautioned.

"Right back at ya."

Despite Kaito's bravado, he lost the first game, drawn out as it was. He redeemed himself in match number two and three but lost badly in game four.

When Kaito took the tiebreaking game fairly easily, Sera decided that it was time to play a new game.

"You've got a deck of cards on ya, right?" she asked, still pursing her lips and frowning at her loss. "You're always doing tricks, flipping cards around, and shuffling during class, so…"

"Hm? Oh. Yeah." Kaito produced two decks seemingly out of nowhere, fanning them out for her to see. "Pick a deck, either deck."

She smiled and tapped the one in his left hand. "Let's play Go Fish or something."

Kaito fought a cringe. "Wouldn't you rather play Slap Jack or Crazy Eights or Egyptian Rat Screw or…or…Rummy?"

Sera eyed her companion suspiciously. "You got a problem with Go Fish?"

He smiled sheepishly. "…Yes? Just…the name of the game, mostly."

The detective blinked. "O…kay? If it's just the name, I guess we can call it Fuzzy Bunnies instead."

Now it was Kaito's turn to be confused. Thankfully, she didn't leave him in the dark for long: "That's actually the alternate name my friends and I used in the US when we were playing a game called Bullshit. Maybe you've heard of it. Say I lay down two cards and say 'Two Kings', but you're holding three Kings, so I'm obviously lying. You would call bull…only my friend's mom would usually walk in at that part, so we used to say Fuzzy Bunnies instead of Bull."

Despite himself, Kaito found himself cracking up, bad mood long forgotten. "Works for me," he chortled and began to shuffle the deck. "Sounds like you had a fun group of friends back in America. How long were you there?"

She nodded enthusiastically, a fond smile spreading across her face. "All of Junior High. My oldest brother is FBI, and he was working a really dangerous case at the time, so my mom and me moved to the US for, like, three years so we'd be safer."

Kaito's eyes widened slightly. "Oh. Wow. That's…pretty crazy."

She raised her left shoulder and dropped it with an air of detached nonchalance. "Yeah. My family's kind of crazy, so…that's life. And I liked it there. I actually fit in better there than here, but…" She picked up the hand she had been dealt and studied it, making one pair right off the bat. "What's your family like?"

Kaito's throat tightened up. What could he say about his family? His dad was dead…or at least he was supposed to be, and his mother had been MIA most of the last decade of his life. And they were all thieves. Family wasn't really an easy topic for Kaito.

He cobbled together a passable answer filled with just enough truth to be plausible. "Oh. You know. They…love me, but they're pretty laissez faire. My mom travels a lot, so it was just me at home pretty much all of high school. Now I live in the dorms and…I see my family about the same amount as before, but now there's actually someone to say 'I'm home' to since I have my roommate…. Got any threes?" he tacked on at the end.

She bit her lip, handing over the requested card. "I don't see much of my family either," she confessed, voice soft. "My brothers are both, like, a decade older than me, so they were practically out of the house by the time I was five. Shuu-nii was always off doing some secret agent work, and my other brother's…kind of like an athlete, so he was always off at matches, traveling all over Japan, so… And my dad died when I was two, so I barely remember him, but… Do you have any fives?" she finished, smiling sheepishly. "Sorry for rambling at you."

"No." He smiled in earnest, grateful for her attempt to make him feel better about his less than ideal family situation by sharing her own. "I appreciate it…. By the way, Fuzzy Bunnies."

Masumi laughed as she drew a card from the pile…and then set down another pair because she had just drawn an Ace.

In the end, Sera won, but they decided that each pair they had made would be worth one point since Kaito had only lost by four pairs. The following game also went to Masumi and was a lot less close.

Next they took to playing Old Maid and exchanging opinions on the professors and classes at their university. This, in turn, led to Kaito learning that he should under no circumstances take Mizuno's Astronomy class because it wasn't fun in the least. It was math, math, and more math! Sera received some pointers about the Ethics class she was signed up to take next semester, and they both decided that it would behoove them to take Statistics with that foreigner professor Green rather than with any of the Japanese teachers because they had both heard that Green was more lenient.

At the end of the card games two and a half hours later, Kaito was winning by seven points.

"So what's next?" He prompted. "You look tired, but if we stop now, you'll lose and have to treat me to ice cream."

"That wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have a feeling you'd lord it over me for the rest of our friendship, Kuroba-kun," she sighed. "I don't know. We could play that game where you take the last syllable of the word I say and use it to start a new word."

"Shiritori?" Kaito hummed in thought. "Maybe later if we can't think of anything else. You have any more American games? Those are interesting. I'm going to have to teach my group once I get back to civilization."

"There's one," Sera remarked, fishing around in her small daypack and pulling out a box of pocky that looked a little worse for wear. "It's kind of a hand clap game." She set down the pocky on the bench between them and lightly slapped her thighs. "You gotta do that in between each move." Next she made two finger pistols and pointed them up at the sky. "This is loading." She slapped her thighs and then crossed her arms over her chest. "This is guarding." She hit her thighs once more and then pointed the finger pistols at Kaito. "This is shooting. Try to shoot while the other guy's loading. You have to load before you shoot, and if you shoot at the same time, you're both dead. Wanna play?"

Kaito grimaced. "I'm really not one for shooting games, regardless of the level of graphicness. Sorry." He'd been shot too many times in real life.

She shrugged, picking up the pocky and holding it out to him. "Want one? They may be a little smashed, but they're still good. I've only eaten one or two out of the pack."

"Sure." Kaito smiled, reaching out and taking two. "Thanks."

She pulled one out for herself and placed it between her lips like a cigarette, pretending to smoke it. "Shuu-nii smokes. He always looks so cool doing it too," she chuckled in the familiar tones of idol worship that Kaito recognized from when he talked about his father.

Her smile faltered a little. "I could never smoke. It reeks so bad you can't breathe, and I don't imagine I'd look even half as cool as Shuu-nii does." Her tone turned conspiratorial, and she leaned in. "He caught me trying to get into his cigarettes when I was little, and he really let me have it. He told me it was a dirty habit and it would give me cancer and rot my teeth and stain my hands. It was actually really funny to see him go off the handle like that. He's usually so cool and collected. And then after that, he stopped openly smoking around me."

Kaito couldn't hold back a smile, watching the dopily happy expression on her face as she nibbled down her pocky stick, thinking fondly of her brother. "That's cool that you two have such a great relationship, even if you don't see a lot of each other."

"Un!" Masumi agreed with an enthusiastic nod and then spoke around her pocky. "Shuu-nii's always been like a dad to me. What's your dad like, Kuroba-kun?"

Kaito smiled sadly but gently replied, "He was my hero. I wanted to be just like him when I was little, and he always patiently explained things, showing me the ropes. I respected him a lot, and I knew I meant a lot to him. He's gone now, but I have good memories I can fall back on."

Masumi nodded slowly. "I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "It's all right. It happened a long time ago, and…I'm okay. It still hurts sometimes, but I think I'm dealing with it all right now that I'm a little older."

"Good to hear it," she whispered and then tactfully changed the subject. "So how did you come to be stranded out here in the middle of the mountains?"

Kaito grimaced once more. The girl just had a habit of falling into pits, didn't she? "I was supposed to be on an outing with friends to celebrate the end of the semester, but…I sort of got into a massive fight with one of the girls, and things got a little too awkward for me to stay with the rest of the group. I told them I'd just catch a different bus and go back to Tokyo myself after walking around to clear my head, but…I just made it to the bus stop before the heavens opened up and tried to wipe out all life as we know it."

Sera winced. "Geez. Rough day. I hope you can patch things up with your friend once the rain lets up and you can get back to Tokyo."

"Thanks," Kaito replied in earnest, not bothering to inform her that Aoko would not be speaking to him any time in the near future. She'd meant well. She didn't need to know his love life was deteriorated beyond repair. "What about you? You'd said you were staying at one of the guesthouses with friends; did you just wander off and get caught out in the storm?"

She nodded, chuckling nervously. "Yep. I really like secluded places like this. Just walking around in nature where everything is as it should be really helps me clear my head, so I'd gone off to meander and think. I was just spacing out, and it never occurred to me to bring an umbrella, so…here I am."

"And we might be here for a while," Kaito sighed, looking out at the ever-pounding deluge. "The storm sure came on quick, but it's not showing any sign of letting up or moving out."

"We might have to start rationing the pocky," Masumi whispered in a fear that was only half joking.

There was a beat of uneasy silence, but suddenly an idea for a new form of amusement came to Kaito: "Twenty-five points if you can summarize your day in the form of a haiku," Kaito offered with a foxlike grin, never thinking that the challenge might come back at him.

"You are so on!" Sera cheered, practically vibrating with excitement. She took a moment to clear her throat and sit up straight before reciting, "Wandering is joy / In getting lost, I am found… Uh… Hmm…" She bit her lip, fishing in her mind for a suitable conclusion. Suddenly her eyes lit up. "Oh! Mizu no oto!" she finished triumphantly.

Kaito raised an eyebrow in incredulity. "You can't just rip off Basho. That's cheating."

Masumi sheepishly grinned. "It was either that or 'Refrigerator'."

When he realized she was serious, Kaito let his jaw drop open slightly to properly convey the level of his amazement. "I'm not giving you twenty-five points for 'refrigerator'. You can have twelve since the first two lines were good."

"Shouldn't I get sixteen since I got the first two thirds?" Masumi argued. "Technically I got twelve out of the seventeen syllables, so—"

"—You can have twelve and a half because 'refrigerator' so offends my sense of aesthetics," Kaito snorted.

"Fine," Sera huffed right back. "Well, let's see you come up with a haiku about why you're here off the top of your head, Mister Aesthetics."

Kaito sighed, closing his eyes. It only took a few seconds for the words to come to him. Truthfully, he had the advantage what with being so used to wordsmithing for his heist notes.

"A haiku to explain how I came to be stranded at this bus stop:" he announced. "A daytrip with friends / Came with my true love, Aoko / Going home single."

Masumi's lips rounded into a silent "Ooooh", her eyes widening.

Kaito nodded. "Yeah. Rough day."

She bit her lip and tentatively offered, "I'm sorry, Man. That seriously sucks. Would five pity points help?"

Kaito couldn't help but chuckle. "The second worst day of my life ever isn't even worth ten pity points?"

"You're already beating me," Sera grumbled. "I hate to ask, but what happened on the worst day of your life? I mean, today seems pretty awful."

"My dad was murdered on my eighth birthday. He burned to death right in front of me," Kaito informed calmly. He was too miserable to let old trauma bother him right now.

Masumi winced. "Crap, Dude! Geez! Take all the pity points you want!"

Kaito shrugged it off. "I'd rather beat you fair and square, so I'll just take the twenty-five for the haiku. I decided a few years ago that I didn't want to be 'the kid with the murdered father'; I don't want what happened to me to define me. It's shaped me, but I don't want the trauma to be who I am. I want people to see me when they look at me, not all the crap that's gone wrong in my life."

Sera nodded slowly. "That's pretty sage right there. Have you considered writing a book?"

Kaito laughed, shaking his head. "Nah. I learned that from an obnoxious, British git that I'm lucky enough to be friends with." His smile faded slightly. "I wish he would have come with us today. Maybe then I wouldn't be here." But then a thought occurred to him. "Only then I wouldn't have had the pleasure of officially meeting you."

"Glad to know my acquaintance is worth the trouble." Masumi beamed. "Though, I'd like to meet your friend. He sounds like good people."

Kaito nodded. "Oh, he is once you get past his snarky, know-it-all attitude. Honestly, he'll probably come out looking for me as soon as the others turn up without me and he learns about the freak storm and can't get ahold of me by phone…. He's kind of a mother hen like that, so you might get to meet him once he's done inspecting me for damage and going on about how worried he was and what an idiot I am for wandering off on my own and getting stuck out in a typhoon."

Sera snickered as she imagined it. "I'll look forward to it then. But, hey, as soon as the rain lets up and we can see to get outta here, would you want to come back with me to the guesthouse me and my friends are staying at? I don't know how long it's gonna take for the roads to be passable, but we've got the room already rented for the rest of the week. I'm sure Ran-chan and Sonoko-chan and the kids wouldn't mind one more. What do you say, Kuroba-kun?"

Kaito internally winced seeing as Mouri Ran had a personal vendetta against him from the time he knocked her out and impersonated her on that cruise, the time he left her father tied up and in his skivvies at a rest stop so he could impersonate him, and, let's not forget, the time that he let her believe that he was actually her boyfriend and tried to steal a kiss. And then there was Suzuki Sonoko, Kid's biggest fan. Sure, she'd mellowed over the years, but there was no telling what she'd do if she learned his secret identity. Kaito was sure it would only be annoying. To top it off, the "kids" Sera mentioned could only be those kids, led by that midget bloodhound from hell, Edogawa Conan, who would see through Kaito the second he dropped his guard.

And yet, Kaito smiled and answered honestly, "That sounds awesome, if it'd actually be okay with your friends. I don't want to impose." Because despite the risk, it would be nice to have a free roof over his head, and, knowing Suzuki Sonoko, it would be a nice free roof. And Sera would be there, sure to keep his mind off of how much life sucked right now.

It would be nice to be around people, around Sera. Much, much preferable to sitting alone with his thoughts in the cheapest room he could find.

"Nah, I'm sure it wouldn't be any trouble at all. We'd be glad to have you!" she assured.

"All right," he agreed with a grateful grin. "Thank you very much."

"Awesome!" Sera cheered. "Now that that's settled, let's play poker for pocky until we pass out!"

With a laugh and a nod, Kaito retrieved one of the decks and started to shuffle.

The

End

…

Mikau: It was fun to do this little Kaito and Sera fic. I hope you liked it. When I asked my brother for a word limit (so that I wouldn't get too terribly carried away as I'm like to do), he originally said one thousand. When I let him know my draft was nearly five thousand, he told me that normally people didn't exceed a limit by five. "If this was featherweight boxing, you just threw King Hippo into the ring against Little Mac." Whoops. I hope you enjoyed it.