I don't own DCMK... like everyone else here, presumably.
So, three things before I begin. First, this was written for the Poirot Cafe's Themed Writing Contest #9. You can vote for your favourite story for that at www . poirotcafe . com (remove the spaces). Please visit to participate in writing contests or simply for community in the DCMK fandom! Second, a big thanks to E, my best friend who helped me edit the first bit of this. Third, if you're still reading this, this story is really different from my last one. You have been warned.
"I love you," it was said, and those three words that he once wanted so much found themselves the bane of his existence.
Conan watched Ran smile into the phone as he called her, laughing at his arrogant comments about a false life far away. He laughed and smiled along with her, but it felt so heavy, so tiring, so hollow, as though playing a person he no longer was.
The call ended and he hung his head. It felt so much like false bravado, a lie, a flaming mask, like the corpse of something long-ago dead.
Before he shrunk, he thought he'd had his whole life planned out. He'd continue as a detective, maybe go to university to study crime-related topics, get married to Ran someday, have kids, and live happily. Why did it all feel so distant now?
He had changed so much because of this, "Conan". He realized that he was incredibly conceited. Being small, it wasn't hard to see himself in a new light and grow up. The toll the Black Org. put on him, the constant paranoia and insanity, was harsh.
Conan would never again be the Shinichi Ran had known.
They, who fit together so well before, would no longer be a match as Shinichi warped into something new while Ran stayed the same. He had never wanted it, but there it was.
He slowly walked back to Poirot, defeated. Conan opened up one of Ran's high school textbooks, but the words flew past him. He could barely lift the heavy book - almost a quarter of his current height - in this new form.
He had never thought that staying so close to his old life meant that he would realize it so quickly and feel it so deeply that he had grown into a defunct abomination, no longer fit to live among his former fellows.
Conan didn't know what to do about it or if there even was something he could do about it. He slowly forgot which parts of him were real, "Shinichi", and which were lies, "Conan". It was like falling past the event horizon and forever belonging to the black hole.
It scared him, and he didn't know what to do about it. How do you bring back the dead? How do you reverse the flow of time? (How do you go on if you can't?)
He didn't want to think about it. It hurt so much to think about it.
So he threw himself into cases. It worked, most of the time. Conan (or was it Shinichi) loved solving cases, after all.
His favourite, as far as crime could be loved, were KID heists. Even Conan had to admit they were mostly harmless, despite his burning sense of justice. The illusions and sleight of hand almost made him more eager to let KID go, so he could see the next one. The performer himself smirked widely through it all, as though nothing else was more worthwhile.
It was like refuge from most of the world's despair and pain.
He called for the waitress, ordering a black coffee. Shinichi (or was it Conan now?) listlessly rested his head upon his shortened arms.
Maybe that was why he asked at the last heist.
It was a week ago and the detective couldn't help but wonder...
Sprinting through darkened hallways holding priceless art, fleeing mouse and chasing cat grew ever closer, each trying to outwit the other. Soon, with no where else left, they ran up in gasping breaths and a trail of magic tricks, soccer balls, and sleeping darts.
It was on a moonlit roof as the thief and detective, for a breathless moment, forgot their chase as it came to a draw. For that moment, no one said anything. It seemed as though time itself had stopped.
And one asked, in a voice much older than its childish tones, "Hey, KID, why do you do this?"
There was no answer. The doors slammed open and the KID Force flooded in. A sad smirk painted itself upon the phantom thief's face and the ghost dived into the night as though banished by aurora behind them.
A flash of hair, indigo eyes, a smile, and a face so much like his own across Poirot.
And he was entranced, deep inside a charming moonlit spell as daylight died.
Conan wondered at the man behind the smile for the first time. Their eyes met, the phantom thief plastering a smile on, as Kaito did the same for his bespeckled detective for the millionth time.
Kaito often though about the shrunken detective. After all, it wasn't every day that an elementary school student beat the KID Force at pursuing criminals or even developed an interest in doing so. Plus, after he figured the situation out, it was hard not to, what with the fact that he had literally de-aged about a decade.
He attacked his chocolate sundae, quietly wondering if the detective would figure him out. He was pretty sure it would happen soon enough.
This was not the first time he wondered about the detective's motives. He assumed that Conan enjoyed solving mysteries and had a strong belief in the law unto sleeping darts. And soccer balls that came from belts with hammerspace. And acting like an actual child.
He finished the sundae and sipped his hot chocolate as the detective secretly looked his way.
His own motives had been simple. It had been about finding who killed his father. Every day, though, it seemed to slip farther and farther away. It was so long ago that he started pursuing the culprits but they seemed to disappear into thin air every time he tried.
Now, he pondered why he did it even as he slipped into the night.
Everything was changing around him and he couldn't keep up. They would be graduating in a few short months and he still didn't have any concrete plans. He wanted to be a magician, but he couldn't bring himself to find someone to mentor him, to play student to and pretend he didn't already know how to create the most show-worthy of tricks. No matter how good he was, though, without a famous mentor nobody would want to take the risk of hiring him. The world was rotten like that, sometimes.
Aoko, Hakuba, Akako, and everyone else were so far away. Slowly, his dual identity dragged him away from them (especially those who suspected him and who he didn't want to get hurt), unable to confide in anyone and unable to stop lying.
He never thought that he enemy, the great detective could have been so similar to him. He never thought that he would take this track in life. And, if nothing else, he was desperate for someone to talk to. If no one else, then perhaps the detective who gave him refuge from the world in trying to impress his critic would do. He had a plan, anyway.
He looked across at the great detective, making up his mind.
Conan pondered without avail. It didn't make any sense. Why would KID appear before him here? And in civilian dress without a mask, to boot!
It didn't surprise him, though. Years of repaying favors, uneasy alliances against worse foes, and the familiar chase lended themselves to a strange cameradity.
"Yo," said a voice behind him, unmistakably that of the phantom thief.
"KID," he greeted, taking another sip of this coffee.
The phantom thief slipped into the booth across from him. He looked grim, mouth in a tight line. His eyes lost their usual playful light and he set a hot chocolate on the table.
"I never quite got around to answering your question, Tantei-kun. I started doing this to find my father's killer," KID said quietly, with almost a touch of nerves. Perhaps he, too, was confused at his presence.
"So you really were a successor. Started?" Conan couldn't help but ask, and the thief smiled. He was thankful that the detective was asking rather than deducing, like someone who cared.
He replied, "I knew you'd get to that. You've noticed the mysterious people who try to sabotage my heists, right? The ones the police investigate privately? It's them. They're really slippery, though. Now, I'm not so sure. It's a fact of life, more than anything else. I'm not sure what to do with myself after all of this. I was wondering about you, though."
"Me?" Conan said incredulously. He took a sip of coffee and privately pondered when temporary pacts of mutual aid and one-sided emotional shelters had progressed to something more like friendship.
"You were never interested in my motives. What changed?"
Conan debated whether or not to tell the phantom thief. On one hand, KID was still a criminal. On the other, he was the only one who he could tell without really worrying and had no say in Conan's life. He knew the phantom thief was honorable, if nothing else.
KID continued before he could say anything. "It's okay. I know who you are, Meitantei-san."
Conan sighed. Heiji, Takagi suspecting, and now KID. He really hoped Ran didn't figure it out. "You know who I was. I've changed so much since then, though, and I'm not sure if I can go back. I'm not sure I even want to go back."
Conan didn't know, but he looked up at Kaito with large, sad puppy eyes. His face was more serious than any apparent 7-year-old's had any right to be and his expression older than his years in either age.
"You have to tell Mouri-chan than, you know," the phantom thief said.
"I know. I don't want to lose her, though," Conan said in return, finishing his coffee again, "she's one of the few people I'm close to."
Kaito never knew that the detective was so lonely. It somewhat resonated with him. After his often-absent mother, Aoko, her father, and Jii, he really didn't have anyone else.
Kaito continued on with his plan, writing his name and number down on a napkin.
He smiled and asked, slipping the piece of paper to the shrunken detective, "You won't turn me in, right?"
The other boy's eyes bugged out.
"Why are you doing this?"
Smiling manically, Kaito dyed Conan's hair neon green with a flick of his wrist and powdered colouring.
"Because we both need someone to confide in. Bye bye, Meitantei-san."
He turned into the street and walked to a bus stop, feeling the burden on his shoulders lighten. If detectives could be trusted for anything, it was that they were honorable. Besides, Conan still owed him a favor from a few heists ago.
Kaito boarded a bus back home. Planning to take advantage of his knowledge of the detective's identity tomorrow, he turned in for the night.
Back in Poirot Cafe, a bespeckled boy started contemplatively into his coffee darker than anyone his age should drink. He smiled and walked upstairs.
x
Kaito woke up to the smell of coffee. The first thought that registered in his head was that someone had broken in. None of his friends had his key and all of them were busy, especially now that it was so close to graduation.
The second thought was to curse Arthur Conan Doyle for ever writing his stories about a certain British detective a slew of (okay, two so far) amateur detectives imitated.
Because right there in his kitchen was none other than Edogawa Conan, A.K.A. Kudo Shinichi, A.K.A. the Heisei Holmes, making coffee from grounds he never bought and drinking it nonchalantly among disassembled pranks, as though he hadn't just broken in. He briefly debated what was the oddest part of that sentence before deciding it to be a draw.
He got up off the couch, folding up a blanket (since when did that get there?) before turning toward the detective intently watching his back.
"Good morning, Tantei-kun," he greeted.
"I see you're awake now," the detective replied, pouring himself another cup of coffee, "it's not good to sleep on the couch all the time, you know, Kuroba-kun. I'd never have thought that you were so close to Inspector Nakamori's family, of all people."
"Why are you here? I know I gave you my address and everything, but why now?" Kaito countered, getting up to make himself and his unexpected guest some breakfast.
"It got kind of lonely at Ran's. Is that why you reached out to me? Because you felt similarly isolated from the people around you?" Conan asked, causing Kaito to internally curse Arthur Conan Doyle again. Stupid perspective detectives.
He did owe him a reply, though.
"Probably. You don't enjoy yourself as much solving crimes anymore, too. I feel the same, sometimes, toward my heists these days."
"Would you mind me asking why?" Conan reached out, voice tremulous. Kaito was surprised that he bothered to ask when he could deduce it. It was touching.
He said so.
"You could figure it out just by looking, right?"
"Yeah, but it would be much friendlier to hear you out," the other boy said in return, face slightly scrunched up. "The kids aren't really used to me doing that, so I've just fallen into a habit."
"How cute, Kudo-onii-san~," Kaito teases, and is rewarded with a blushing, stuttering detective.
"It's not like that…"
"Whatever you say~. Well, I suppose it's more like I've started thinking about my life ahead of me, besides jewel theft. I want to be a magician, but I'm not sure if I can find a good mentor. Recently, I'm not sure if what I started this for can ever be completed. The audience, too, would start to get bored of me, repeating the same experiment to no avail…"
Conan looks at him with an indecipherable expression.
"Hey… do you want to perform for a different audience. Say, maybe the kids?"
A nod and a pact of friendship was sealed, a refuge created.
(The kids, by the way, was the most skeptical and critical audience he ever had. Conan smirked slightly in the background, the bastard! Kaito blamed him for everything. It made him smile when he could fool them, though, especially that Haibara girl.)
x
It felt nice, having breathing space apart from his increasingly-interconnected dual life as high schooler and phantom thief. He almost got kicked by Mouri-chan when he went with them to Poirot's one day (seriously, did Conan have the ability to infect everyone he met with detective-ness?), but he could see why the detective loved her.
It reminded him why he loved Aoko.
Past tense, though. He had gotten over that a while ago. Lying to her as a friend was one thing, but doing so as a lover was a line he never wanted to cross. Their lives were so out-of-sync anyway, her moving on to life goals and him still wanting to peddle sleight of hand, her motivations of blind justice and his of vengeance, her wishes and his lack thereof.
Ordering the same chocolate sundae as always, he wondered if he had changed.
Talking to Tantei-kun was nice, even if the detective was rather odd. Seriously, he thought Hakuba had an obsession with Sherlock Holmes. And the other boy blushed so easily when teased. It was endearing, really, like a puppy.
He gave the waitress a rose and a joke as she left for the kitchens. She smiled and granted him a genuine laugh in return.
Their friendship kept him grounded through the months leading up to graduation and his decision to go into acting, compromising between realistism, his dual identities, and his dreams. Being a stage magician was really too big of a hint for now.
Perhaps the next series of events was not entirely surprising, then.
It was the same thing, really. Conan finally accomplished his goals of defeating his much-detested Black Org. international crime syndicate and getting back to his own life as Kaito failed to see what was happening before it was too late to adapt.
He pasted on a fake grin as she arrived with his order. It would be awkward, after all, if he just bursted out with all that was running around in his head. As she left, it slipped off his face. It never really belonged there, after all.
The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Kaito finally understood that saying, still far too late. Still unable to prevent himself from losing his last refuge.
Conan had said so much about his false expressions. The detective was so damned observant sometimes. Too observant for most people, he supposed.
In the first place, their friendship was based on their mutual displacement and wish for companionship. What reason would it hold after it was no longer needed?
For months, he put off heists. He didn't want to be alone. Both he and Conan (Shinichi, now) still occasionally played with the Detective Boys, but it felt like a thin veneer atop a bottomless hole of questions.
Attacking the sweet goodness (the same flavour as always), Kaito internally frowned.
Like, are we still friends? Do you still want me here? Why does it feel so different talking to you as someone the same corporal age as me?
Shinichi (Conan? Shinchi?) scrambles down the stairs after his no-longer-estranged girlfriend, Ran, running with her past the cafe without a second glance to greener pastures.
He knew, deep inside, that his life was only a very small part of the world. That he was central to no one's story but his own. That everyone else had lives as deep and realistic as his own. That he, too, was changing, albeit turning away from everyone else.
Kaito ate his chocolate sundae (his favourite dessert) mundanely, slowly, without much enjoyment.
Jii found information saying that his own shadowy organization would be moving in a few nights. He needed to plan a heist for then, no matter how much he dreaded meeting with Shinichi.
Paying his bill and leaving a generous tip, Kaito leaves the cafe to go home.
(It felt so much like before.)
x
Shinichi silently apologized to Kaito as he dashed past Poirot. Today, his first police-testimony-free day, was already promised away.
He and Ran would be going to Tropical Land.
"A new beginning," she had put it, smiling hopefully, and he smiled back, agreeing.
They took roller coasters, climbed through the castle, and revisited their misadventures throughout the park. It was lighthearted and sweet, absolutely perfect.
Shinichi couldn't bring himself to like it. And he knew he couldn't do it anymore.
He jumped at every oddity, shying away from shadows. He wasn't the person Ran was looking for, not anymore. He wasn't interested in teasing bragging. Nor did he find much pleasure anymore in revisiting past cases where so much human discontent lay.
"Ran," he told her as the two of them visited the Mystery Coaster, "I don't really want to talk about it. It's depressing."
"Oh," she replied, at a loss for words.
The rest of their visit continued in silence. After being apart for so long, there wasn't much the two of them could talk about anymore.
It felt like a betrayal of his heart to fall out of love. But perhaps that was just what this was. A betrayal, on his part. Maybe that was why people committed crimes. Tit for tat.
They got snacks, and stopped to watch the fireworks.
At the dance of lights under moonlight, gunpowder sounding, he had decided.
"I love you," it was said, and those three words that he once wanted so much found themselves the bane of his existence.
"Sorry, Ran," he began and he hugged her when she cried, calling Agasa-hakase to give her a ride home when she dashed away.
He walked off, contemplating. Tomorrow would be the next KID heist.
x
A monocle, a snow-white suit, a showy cape, a top hat, a grin and Kuroba Kaito transformed into Kaitou 1412.
A pair of wedges into his shoes and he became a mere overenthusiastic KID fan attending tonight's spectacle. Why hide in the shadows if you can do so in plain sight?
It would have been glorious, had there not been so much in his mind. Things were much more thrilling when Shinichi was at his proper size and large enough to catch up.
(It still felt so different talking to him and his heart was rather liable to flutter, but that was a secret.)
Kaito was running to an upper floor in full KID regalia when it happened.
Three shots rang in the air, missing him by millimetres as he rushed to tackle Shinichi aside.
"Damn it!" the detective exclaimed, carefully peering out of the window.
Kaito pressed them closer to the wall as another volley of bullets flew into the room. Shinichi took out a walkie-talkie, thumb over the buttons.
"Do you mind?" he asked, turning it on when Kaito shook his head. "Jodie-san, someone's sniping at us from the 64th floor of the building's east wing, um… 21 windows from the north… No, I'm fine. I'm pretty sure it's them… Huh? Oh, he's nowhere to be seen."
Finishing the message, Shinichi clicked the device off. Then he blinked and turned bright red.
"Would you mind… moving?" he asked.
After a moment of confusion, Kaito mirrored Kudo's expressions and jumped away as he realized just how close they were. Goodness, he was practically pinning the detective to the wall!
Shinichi licked his lips and Kaito subconsciously swallowed.
"So how are things between you and Mouri-chan?" Kaito asked, desperate for some ordinary conversation. It felt somewhat painful now, as though it were somehow different from their time as each-others refuges.
He hoped that it was the jealousy of having your relationship work out. Rather that than falling for a detective of all people, no matter how close they were, no matter what sweet shelter from the world they had between them.
"Oh, um…" Shinichi replied, hesitating as though he didn't quite know what to say. "We're not… together anymore."
Kaito felt relief wash over him before guilt overtook that emotion. It was unforgivably selfish to wish such pain upon others, wasn't it? He felt bad really, but at the same time… he was hopeful. Why now, when all was over between the two of them?
He hoped that this time too, he could be Shinichi's refuge. Maybe… he hoped for forever.
The detective softly shook his head.
"I don't think we would've worked out, anyway. It's better in the long run to stay honest. We're so far apart now, our lives so distanced from one-anothers. We never really had all that much in common in the first place, looking back."
Footsteps are heard running through the hallway.
"Go," Shinichi says, getting up and brushing himself off. "Let's just count this as a collaboration against a worse foe. Meet you at Poirot tomorrow at noon?"
Kaito nods, too scared of sounding far too hopeful when he himself didn't even understand what he was wishing for. Shinchi extends a hand and Kaito accepts, the detective pulling him up. His hand is warm, with callouses his smaller form didn't yet have.
The magician under moonlight disappears again as aurora dispelled the night and footsteps rush in vain to try to catch him.
x
Shinichi hyperventilated as he tried to go to sleep that night. Honestly, what had he been thinking, asking KID about that? Seriously, had he even been thinking?
(He could never think ill of his refuge, though, and he hoped…)
x
Kaito could try to tell himself that the fact that he was wearing a completely new set of clothes was coincidence, but he was sure Shinichi would be supremely unimpressed. It flew in the face of the evidence that was his empty closet back home and clothes everywhere in his room, not to mention that he spent the last two hours getting dressed.
It was more than he did crossdressing, even counting the times he did so on purpose.
He could also try to say that he wasn't nervous, but he was half an hour early and currently sucking on a breath mint as he rode the bus to Beika, checking a map on his phone despite having been to Poirot some several dozen times before.
He wondered why Shinichi called him there. He was hopeful, but he barely knew enough about it to voice his own desires. He wondered if that was enough.
The waitress giggles as she directs him to a booth, Heisei Holmes already inside and reading a mystery novel. It looked like he was concentrating on writing a letter to the author.
Ordering the same chocolate sundae on instinct, Kaito realized how much he missed these hours spent in refuge with the detective. He was so hopeful.
"I was kind of interrupted last night, so here's the continuation," Shinichi says, bringing Kaito out of his reverie. "I think I also fell in love with someone else during that time… so I was wondering what you thought about that."
Kaito's throat closed. On one hand, he didn't want Shinichi to leave with someone else. On the other… he wanted Shinichi to be happy, above all else. It was stupidly romantic, but there it was.
"I think you should go for it," he replies, willing his heart to stop breaking.
Then, the impossible.
"I love you," it was said, and those three words that he once wanted so much found themselves the bane of his existence.
Because there was no way that this was happening and he felt as though he could die of happiness. He looked out at the aisle for someone else the detective could've been saying it to and found no one. He looked at Shinichi, who was reaching out to him.
His heartbeat fell into allegro, thumping fast and hard.
"I love you, Kaito," the detective repeated, cupping Kaito's cheek in one hand. His other hand danced nervously to the other boy's fingers.
Kaito pulled him in and kissed him on the lips. They were rough, but somewhat smoothed, as though he had put on lip balm beforehand. It was heaven, warm with the taste of the bitter coffee Shinichi had been drinking.
Their teeth clacked against each-others and they laughed when Kaito's sundae got knocked over. Shinichi handed him a napkin.
"I love you too," it was said, and those four words that Shinichi once wanted from someone else were perfection on Kaito's lips.
AN: Hoped you enjoyed reading this. I'd be really happy if someone would vote for this story in the contest or reviewed... reviews are author-food! Plus, I know this is going to go up around five minutes late, but the story itself was still competed on time. I swear! Upon my honor as a DCMK fan!