AN: I interrupt your irregularly scheduled multi-chapter fic updates to present you all with this silly oneshot based off of a silly headcanon that I have. gosho aoyama why won't you let Heiji and Ai interact with each other.
You've Got Mail
Canon: Detective Conan
Characters: Haibara Ai, Edogawa Conan, Hattori Heiji
Summary: The last thing she expected to receive from Hattori Heiji, a boy she'd met all of once, was inexplicable one A.M. picture mails.
The light vibration of her phone was enough to rouse Ai out of her slumber. She had never been one known for heavy sleeping, after all, not unless she was quite sick. Grumbling a little, wondering who could possibly be trying to send her something at... what time was it even, she wondered, bleary eyes looking at the screen of her phone.
Precisely one in the morning, it helpfully informed her. She half wanted to ignore it and curl up back into her bed, but there was the off chance that it might be something important. Yawning loudly as she opened up her inbox, wondering who it might be, she frowned for a moment at the name, trying to place it in her mind.
She had, after all, only really met this 'Hattori Heiji' all of once, and had barely spoken with him even then. They'd exchanged phone numbers in the event of an emergency, but Ai had always been the one expecting to contact him in the event of one, not the other way around.
One thing became rapidly apparent to Ai as she opened up the mail he'd sent her- that this was very definitely not an emergency. The mail turned out to be a photo mail, and said photo mail appeared to be a picture of an iguana. Thoroughly baffled by this early morning photograph of an overgrown lizard, she scrolled down, hoping to get more context- and only found a single, short, incredibly unhelpful caption.
'Mustache lizard'.
Indeed, upon scrolling back up, Ai did notice that timely placed piece of grass in front of said iguana did in fact, make it look like it had a mustache, but for the life of her she couldn't figure out why the only other person outside of herself, Agasa, and his parents that famed high school detective turned child, Kudo Shinichi, trusted with his secret, was sending her a picture of an iguana with a mustache. At one in the morning, at that. She would have been baffled by this during normal waking hours, but what on earth was this Hattori Heiji doing at one in the morning that prompted him to send a picture like this to a girl he barely even knew?
Kudo-kun's friends, she decided, were strange.
When she brought it up to the shrunken teen detective himself, a look of complete understanding crossed his face.
"So he started sending them to you too, huh?" Conan asked, giving her something that resembled a sympathetic look. If she'd asked him, he would have told Ai why it was a bad idea to give Heiji her phone number, but he hadn't exactly had the chance to amongst all of that commotion.
"Too?" Ai asked, her eyebrows arching ever so slightly. "Do you mean he sends such things to you as well, Kudo-kun?"
"All the time." Conan grumbled. "Apparently he sends them to Ran sometimes as well, but he sends them to me the most."
He wasn't quite certain what to make of his rival's somewhat unusual habit, to be frank. He didn't understand why Heiji felt the need to send him pictures of anything that caught his interest, at literally any and all hours of the day- he'd even gotten one at three in the morning at one point. He was starting to wonder if Heiji ever slept. What on earth was he even doing when he wasn't hanging around him? This was almost one mystery that Conan didn't exactly feel like solving.
The picture mails, of course, never had any real context, only captioned by unhelpful comments such as 'eyebrow dog' or 'murder ducks'.
"Is there any way I can get him to stop?" Cutting straight to the point, Ai had a feeling that she already knew what the answer might be.
"Not a chance." Shaking his head, Conan gave her a helpless shrug. "Unless you change your phone number, he's going to keep sending them to you."
"Wonderful." Came Ai's rather dry reply. "But why to someone he's barely even met?"
"Well, he's Hattori." Shrugging his shoulders once more, Conan gave her the slightest hint of a smile. "Odds are he probably already thinks of you as a friend. That's the sort of guy he is." After all, the moment he'd discovered his secret, he'd pretty much automatically seemed to decide that the same boy he'd once come all the way out to Beika to find and challenge to a deduction showdown was now going to be his best friend. The sudden shift in gears had left Conan reeling to catch up, even if he returned the sentiment now (not that he'd admit that out loud, he wouldn't give him the satisfaction).
"Whether I want it or not, I take it." Ai closed her eyes, heaving a slight sigh.
Well, she supposed it was something she could live with. Maybe she should send some back, just so he could get a taste of his own medicine.
At the sound of his phone beeping, helpfully informing him that he had a message, Hattori Heiji glanced up from his motorcycle. Pausing to wipe his oil coated hands on a rag, he quickly plucked his cellphone out of his pants pocket, wondering who it was that was sending him a mail.
His usual wide grin quickly surfaced on his face as he saw who the sender was, and eagerly opened it up, wondering what it was that little Neechan had sent him this time. Over the course of the past few months since he'd met her for the first time, he'd barely ever had a chance to interact with her face to face- but they'd developed a rather healthy phone correspondence.
One that mostly consisted of picture mails. It was a fact that pleased the Osakan detective. He himself wasn't quite certain how he'd picked up the habit of sending picture mails out of anything that caught his interest to just about everyone he knew, but almost nobody ever sent any back. He wasn't quite certain what had spurred that girl to do so in the first place, but it made him rather happy.
Of course, the person he sent them to the most was still Kazuha, with Kudo following behind as a close second- but the hard third was none other than the girl known as Haibara Ai.
Beaming down at the picture of the sleeping cat that the little Neechan had sent him, Heiji fiddled with his phone, quickly setting the image as his new lock screen. He was more of a dog person himself, but it was a nice picture.
Once his work here was done, he should probably head out and find something interesting to send to that little Neechan, he thought himself. There was one of those cat cafe things that had opened up not far from his usual stomping grounds- she'd like that, he thought.
Now if only he could do something about that pesky ringtone of hers.
