A/N: I'll be quite honest with you, this fic starts with :D and escalates to :/ in the end so YOU WERE WARNED (send me flames anyways haha). I just word vomited all over the place, this fic was not planned at all I just rolled with it without a filter.
Part of the 100 ways to say I love you challenge. (Re: Driven, Bitter/Sweet, loved you first)
Warning: Lots of cursing. Lots. LOTS; Aged up characters; Alcohol; drunkenness/tipsiness; one sided pining; implied ShinRan; OOC-ness; SECOND HAND EMBARRASSMENT. This is basically a BFF friendzoned fic, read at your own risk. I didn't proofread (recruiting betas and thanks)
Prompt: 50. "I think you're beautiful."
.
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He takes her by the wrist and —in the most discourteous manner— drags her from the comfort of her workplace to some isolated spot in a nearby park. The sun has set on the horizon and she's been feeding mosquitoes under a poorly illuminated street lamp for quite a while, but the man lounging on the park bench seems oblivious to such nuisance. Morosely, he opens his fourth can of beer and downs it with an easiness that quite frankly takes her by surprise. She's never delved too much about the young detective's alcohol tolerance until she got a chance to witness it first-hand, and she wonders if the few times during his short-lived second childhood in which he resorted to baijiu on his feverish desperation had any effect on that.
When he reaches out for a fifth can, the strawberry blonde breaks the long silence.
"If you're thinking about getting wasted right here," Shiho asserts, brows frowning into a judgmental stare, "I shall remind you that I don't possess the physical strength nor the mental ability of carrying a meter-eight tall, 60kg drunk-ass man all the way home. So unless you don't mind spending the night here or, say —in jail… then I'd advise you to stop."
Shinichi looks at her dead in the eye and without tearing his gaze away, cracks opens the can to take a mouthful.
"I'm fine." He assures her defiantly.
"I beg to differ. And what, pray tell, is your intention in bringing me here? If all you wanted was to get drunk, I know a few places nearby that would have offer the same results without the inconvenience of being eaten alive by bugs while drinking—" With a look of disgust on her face, she pours the contents of her beverage on the ground, "...warm beer."
"Hey, don't waste it!" Shinichi exclaims, hovering close to snatch the can from her hands. He downs whatever is left of it before tossing the empty can aside.
"That's disgusting." Shiho reprimands with a grimace.
"Yes, I hope you didn't give me cooties." The young detective mocks. "And the beer is still cold, Ice-princess. It's just your heart that makes everything seem warm in comparison."
"Moron." She shots him a deadly stare through squinted eyes, "If you brought me here to insult and make fun of me I'm leaving right now. I have no interest in becoming your emotional punching bag."
"No, wait." Shinichi pleads, and she feels the warmth of his fingers circling around her wrist once again. She wonders if he realizes the turmoil her heart goes through every time he does such an innocent, unconscious thing. Then again, most probably not. "I'm sorry. I don't—" Gaze averted, his teeth graze over his lower lip as he tries to find the right words to say, "I don't want to go to a bar… too many people, too loud. I just want some quiet."
"Alright then." She concedes, reaching out for another can from the half-emptied pack. Crossing her legs as she reclines on the bench besides him, her lips twist in distaste as she takes a sip of her drink. "But you'll be owing me."
The raven haired boy snorts and looks at her with camaraderie.
"I think I already owe you for life, Miyano."
Half-hidden by her drink, the corner of her lips curl up, "Ah, I'm glad you've been keeping count."
"Well, you make it hard to let go." He smiles back, unbeknownst of the butterflies in her stomach. She internally curses her stupid, naive heart and shifts her eyes away.
"That's because you're loyal to a ridiculous extent." The scientist remarks, squirming to a more comfortable position."It's okay to let go of things sometimes, you know?"
A long silence follows her comment, in which he's seemingly absorbed in watching the shuffling shadows that the cherry blossoms cast on the grass.
"She's getting married."
Shiho doesn't reply right away, instead she fills her lips with more beer and lets the sparkling bitterness down the lump in her throat before she comes up with an impersonal answer.
"It's been a year."
"Eight months."
"Honestly Kudo," The girl scoffs irritated. "If it bothers you so much you should have tried to win her back back then. You haven't even talked to her in months, so don't act as if the poor girl backstabbed you or anything. It was only a matter of time until someone with common sense would realize her worth and snatch her away."
"I talk to her regularly." Shinichi objects, pouting. "We text. Sometimes."
"Oh, wow." She deadpans, "Romance of the century. Shame is a little too late now…. or what are you planning on, crashing the wedding and stealing the bride?"
"Don't be ridiculous." He huffs with a dry laugh, "She invited me. Ah… I got your invitation too, by the way. It's back home."
The strawberry blonde eyes him curiously, "So you plan on attending?"
He groans, "Do I have a choice?"
"Don't be stupid." She frowns at him, lips parting into a sigh, "Of course you have a choice. We always have a choice. It's a matter of whether you're acting on it."
She watches him purse his lip into a childish pout, "I don't want to be the bitter, petty ex-boyfriend who didn't show up."
"Then it's a matter of pride to you, not heartbreak."
"Don't say it like that!" Shinichi protests, "Ran and I… you know we go way back. She's my best friend. And she was all I had for a very long time."
"Yet friendship wasn't enough to sustain romantic love, was it?"
It never was. At least for Shiho, no.
"I don't think I know about love anymore." He chortles humorlessly, tired fingers combing back his hair. "It's like she flipped every idea I had about it. I always thought love was this… unwavering thing, you know? But she said we changed." A snort. He shakes his head, discouraged. "All these years, all this... for her, trying to get back to her. And a year later she tells me that we're not who we used to be, that this isn't love. At least not the kind she wants. And I honestly have no idea what happened. Wasn't friendship supposed to be the perfect basis of love? What happened to that?"
"You can't calculate love like that," The scientist objects, "Love isn't some kind of equation you can solve by inserting the correct variables."
"Then what is it about, love expert?" He taunts.
She huffs.
"You don't deserve her anyway." Shiho teases back, eyes rolling back a little as she avoids the question. It's unfair, she thinks, that he would ask her such a thing. That he would be this painfully oblivious to her feelings still, after all this time.
Shinichi scoffs at her observation, incredulous. "Gee. Thanks, Miyano. You're supposed to be on my side, you heartless woman!"
She shrugs sheepishly in response, and her heart breaks a little.
"It's the truth." The scientist beams back at him, the corner of her lips curling into a knowing smirk. "She's too good for you. It's a miracle she'd tolerated you for that long."
The boy's face twist into a grimace before he casts an annoyed glance at her.
"You seem awfully cheerful at my predicament. Is there a particular reason or do you just find joy in watching me suffer?"
Embarrassed, her cheeks turn a pale shade of rose and she brushes the bridge of her nose with clumsy fingers as she averts her gaze to take a sip of her drink. It's pathetic, she knows. To be this enamoured of someone who's still hung up on their childhood love, even long after breaking up.
"You're drunk, Kudo-Kun."
"Yes, Miyano-San." Shihichi admits. He chugs the rest of his beer and crushes the can before tossing it away into the small pile. "I'm drunk and heartbroken, in case you failed to notice. And you're a horrible counselor."
She glares at him through squinted eyes, "You dragged me here. Unceremoniously, at that."
"Wow." Shinichi deadpans, mocking her tone earlier. "Friend of the year."
"Touché. Hattori would have been a wiser choice."
"Nah." A dismissive hand gesture. He stretches his legs to accommodate himself as both elbows hang from the backrest. "Too far away. Kazuha would be all over the phone and I don't feel like dealing with girls right now, to be honest."
Her expression suddenly turns into a bemused one. "Uh, hello?"
"Ah, but you don't count." He smiles at her, a look between apologetic and reassuring. "I don't see you like that."
"Gee. Well, fuck you too Kudo." Shiho retorts, full sarcasm.
"Oi, you know I didn't mean it that way—"
"Whatever." She brings the booze between her lips and lets the bitterness fill through her lips. Ironic, she thinks. What a joke.
He peers at her, curious and a bit remorseful, it almost makes her give in. Almost.
"You mad?" Half-jokingly, he memes her.
"Fuck off."
"Hey, don't be like that! I just mean that there's no… like I don't think of you as—"
"... As a woman. Yes, I'm very well aware of that, thank you. You've already made it very much clear that I have no sexual appeal to you."
"I didn't say that!"
"It was implied. And unlike you, I do know how to take a hint. You don't have to spell it out for me."
"That's not true, stop twisting my words!" he argues, the man-child's pout back again on his features. It pulls the right strings of her heart, and she honestly thinks that a grown up man with the level of maturity such as himself shouldn't have any business looking like that. "Just because I don't see you that way doesn't mean that… I'm not saying you're— I mean, I think you're beautiful!"
"Honestly Kudo, the last thing I want from you right now is your lousy excuse of a compliment, so let's just leave it here and move on, shall we?"
Just like she's been trying to.
For the past five years.
"Hey, I can compliment you properly if you want—!"
"No, thanks."
"You… uh, you've got… beautiful eyes. There's that."
"Oh, God." She covers one side of her face with her free hand, mortified, "Please don't do this."
"But it's true!" He insists, gesturing at her face, "They're beautiful! Like… green, and stuff."
"Wow," she deadpans, "Beautiful and green…. and stuff. Okay. I'm flabbergasted, actually."
"Oi, cut me some slack. You know I'm not good at these things!"
"That's why I told you to stop it already." She fumes, glaring at him.
"Look, I could tell you that your eyes are actually jade speckled with gold, which is extremely rare. And rare things are beautiful. Did you know that only 2% of the world's population has green pigmentation in their eyes? Which, by default, makes you more attractive than over 98% of the world's population. And your hair… Jeez, could anyone get any more lucky than that? Natural strawberry blonde is one of the most unheard of, rarest shades of hair color to exist. That, and your facial proportions being near perfect—" His gaze softens for a second, and she feels her chest close at the sight. Heart picking up pace, her cheeks blush a faint shade of pink. "I could go on and about all the statistics why I think you're nothing short of stunning, but that wouldn't be very romantic, right?
Good gracious, she's going to need therapy after this. And heavy medicament. Tons of it.
"Why on earth would you want to sound romantic to me?"
He seems taken aback, and there's a two-second long hesitation before he challenges.
"And why do you care whether you have sexual appeal to me?"
They stare at each other with a mix of embarrassment and apprehension.
"You are so drunk." Shiho concludes awkwardly.
"So are you, shut up." Shinichi mumbles back, busying himself with a sixth can of beer.
"I had one beer. You're insulting my alcohol tolerance. And I'm not the one sputtering nonsense about romance."
"Yet you seem deeply concerned about me not finding you attractive. What is this all about, huh, Miyano?"
"Honestly Kudo-Kun, if your head was any bigger you wouldn't fit through the door." She says, eyes rolling back in exasperation."I'm not interested in entering my name into your dark little list of conquests, if that's what your question implies."
"Mmm..?" Before she knows it, the raven haired boy is hovering over her in a most suggestive fashion. Warm beer forgotten behind him, a beguiling smirk spreads across his face as he inches closer to her. His fingers gently twine into a lock of strawberry blonde hair and she feels her breath hitch on her throat as her stomach coils at his sudden, torturous proximity. Her heart races wild on her chest when she feels the warmth of his palm pressing against her flustering cheek. Head tilted to the side, he lets his gaze lock into hers through half-lidded eyes, "That's a shame. I was starting to think—"
Slowly, Shinichi's thumb trace a scorching path from her cheekbone to her lower lip, and the pad of his fingers caress her skin ever so slightly before he draws near his lips to—
SLAP!
White-hot fire on his left cheek, and next thing he knows she's pushing him away and standing on her feet.
"How dare you!" Lips pursed into a frown and cheeks burning red, Shiho's eyes glimmer with sheer fury. She inhales deeply and, fists shaking, throws him a last murderous glare."Kudo Shinichi, if you were looking for a rebound you called the wrong person. I'm worth more than your busted ego."
Staggering back on his almost-drunken stupor, he doesn't recall what apologies he managed to splutter at the fuming scientist. She doesn't bother answering back, instead she picks up her coat and stomps away from him.
"Don't follow me." She warns.
He doesn't.
A.N: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯