Sorry for the long wait! I literally have no excuse for why this took so long… but it did.
Basically I wrote this because I was thinking about a magical realism AU in the Detective Conan universe and then I realized I really wanted an AU in which basically everyone is magical except for Shinichi and he's just SLIGHTLY bitter about it. And then it turned into a mess of fluff and tropes. Yay.
Warnings include shounen-ai, grammar mistakes / general errors, etc. Title from Amber Run's "Spark."
Enjoy! – Luna
First It's the Spark
Shinichi had never quite understood why people were so obsessed with supernaturals. He, personally, thought they fancied themselves better than baseline humans just because they had arbitrarily been born with whatever genetic screw-up allowed them to harness magic energy (and no, Ran, he wasn't jealous, shut up, go back to fluttering around your stupid werewolf girlfriend). It sort of became a matter of pride – he would use logic and reasoning to remind the world that baseline humans weren't any less resourceful or powerful than supernaturals. Secretly, he'd promised himself that he'd never ask for help from a supernatural.
"You should ask for help from a supernatural," Agasa advised.
"Professor," Shinichi groaned, and tried to kick him. He missed spectacularly – unsurprising, considering that his leg was about two feet shorter than it had been ten minutes ago.
He'd been unlucky enough to stumble upon an illicit amulet (?) transaction between a witch, who had been accompanied by his fedora-wearing familiar, and some random aging politician. The witch had hit him over the head with a baseball bat and force-fed him a de-aging potion before teleporting off, humming Beethoven's fifth symphony and leaving Shinichi sprawled, gasping as his bones shrank, on the ground. Shinichi woke up in the body of a six-year-old, surrounded by confused police officers.
And all of that had come after an entire evening of third-wheeling Ran and Sera around a theme park. Shinichi's life was pure agony.
"No, really. I can't help you; we're dealing with magic," Agasa insisted now as he passed Shinichi a paper cup of tea. He patted Shinichi on the head in a way that made Shinichi want to try to bite his hand. "You know, I think your parents knew a pretty good magician. Kuroba Toichi, I think his name was. We could ask him –"
"Or we could also not, because this is already humiliating enough," Shinichi interjected, and tried to take a spiteful sip of tea while Agasa gave him a narrow-eyed look. It didn't work, mainly because Shinichi burned his tongue and spent the next five minutes sullenly eating ice chips from a plastic cup, because apparently Agasa didn't trust his tiny six-year-old hands with glassware anymore.
Agasa was nodding decisively by the time Shinichi vengefully hurled the plastic cup into the sink (he had to drag a stepstool out of Agasa's cleaning closet just to reach the kitchen counter, which sort of undermined the dramatic flair of the moment, but that wasn't the point). "Yes, I think I'll try to get into contact with Toichi-kun."
"Fine," Shinichi groaned before he tried to throw himself down on the couch – "tried" being the operative word, because he ended up tripping of the leg of his pants and smashing his face against the coffee table. He manfully resisted the urge to cry.
As it turned out, Kuroba Toichi was currently in Salem with his wife for a convention of supernaturals and therefore unavailable for consultation – but, he had hurried to say, his son (who was also a supernatural) was still in Japan, and since Yukiko and Yusaku were old friends, he would love to set up an appointment between Shinichi and his son. His son was a recent graduate from Touto University's prestigious magical studies program, he assured Shinichi, and was more than able to help him.
Shinichi arrived in Ekoda mostly hating the world and glaring dead-eyed at anyone who gave him the kind of concerned look that preceded lost child calls to the nearest police box. (In hindsight, maybe he should've let Agasa come with him, but he still had his pride.) He trudged up to the Kuroba house, marveling a little at the colorful array of roses filling the front yard. The air smelled unobtrusively sweet and comforting, and the flowers swayed in the breeze, as if waving to him. The warm feeling in Shinichi's chest dissipated when he realized that he had to jump to ring the doorbell.
The door opened a moment later. Shinichi's first thought was that Kuroba Kaito seemed alarmingly tall, possibly due to Shinichi's height (or lack thereof). His second was oh my God he's hot I hate my life.
Kuroba Kaito was squinting down at him, wearing the half-baffled, half-hesitant expression of someone who had discovered an inexplicable, squalling baby on their doorstep. (Which – Shinichi realized with a wince – was an alarmingly accurate metaphor, all things considered.) "Are you Kudou Shinichi?" he asked, blinking a few times in rapid succession.
"Yes, that's me." Shinichi sighed, trying to look as if he had the intellect of a twenty-two-year-old beneath the Kamen Yaiba shirt he was wearing. (Neither he nor Agasa had been able to find any of Shinichi's old clothes, so they'd been forced to improvise via the nearest thrift store.) "And you're Kuroba Kaito?"
"Oh, right. Yeah, I'm Kuroba Kaito." Kaito ran a hand through his hair, which was dark brown and stood up in scruffy, ungelled lumps. It probably wasn't supposed to be as endearing as it was. He grinned, a bright flash of teeth and very red mouth. "You want to come in, darling?"
Shinichi wondered wildly if all magicians were genetically predisposed to being hot and calling people they'd just met "darling." He'd have to reconsider his embargo on supernaturals if that was the case. "Sure," he said.
After some a brief scuffle over trying to find a pair of slippers that fit Shinichi's feet (they never did), Shinichi found himself sitting in Kaito's living room. It was a pleasant enough room – the walls were a mess of bookshelves full of heavy volumes with titles like Practical Application of Spell-Derived Charms and The Theory of Human Magnetism and Positive Energy, and Shinichi suspected that the couches had been hexed into being supernaturally comfortable.
"So." Kaito set a tray of thumbprint cookies and tea on the coffee table before he sat down. He had an asymmetrical smile and long eyelashes. Shinichi realized abruptly that he was weak for both of those things. "You got de-aged by a witch, if I heard correctly?"
"Yeah," Shinichi nodded, reaching for a teacup. He scowled when he realized that his fingers didn't even span the entire circumference of the cup. "He hit me over the head and then fed me some kind of potion."
"So it was a potion," Kaito muttered to himself, chewing a cookie thoughtfully. "I don't know if I can reverse that." When Shinichi gave him a look of utter betrayal, he waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, calm down, darling. I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that I majored in charms and hexes in university. I know the basics of potions-based spells, but I'm not an expert. That's all I meant."
"Hm," Shinichi said distrustfully, and bit into a cookie.
"I can help you, I promise," Kaito assured him. "Where do you live?"
Shinichi stared, alarmed.
"Stop looking at me like that, darling," Kaito said. "I just need to live with you for a little."
Shinichi stared, even more alarmed.
"No, I just – ugh," Kaito groaned, putting his face in his hands. If Shinichi didn't know better, he would've thought that Kaito was flushed as he peered at Shinichi through his fingers. "I need to monitor the energy signature that you'll be emitting as a side effect of the potion. That might help me come up with a cure. The easiest way would be for me to live with you, or for you to live with me. I could keep tabs on it constantly."
"Oh." Shinichi was unaccountably relieved. For a second, he'd been worried that Kaito was some kind of – pedophile. That would've explained the "darling" thing as well. "That's fine, then." He tried not to think about living in the same house as a guy who had cheekbones as pretty as Kaito's, mostly for the sake of his own sanity.
You're six, he reminded himself when Kaito licked crumbs off his fingertips in a thoroughly distracting manner, what even would be your plan?
Ran was waiting on his front step when Shinichi returned to the Kudou mansion with Kaito in tow. She clearly had been alerted to the situation. Shinichi vindictively thought up an exhaustive list of ways he could assassinate and/or maim Agasa.
"Oh my God," Ran squealed the second she saw him, hurtling across the lawn to scoop him up in her arms. Shinichi flailed. "You're adorable, Shinichi!" She set him down when he started trying to bite her, patting him condescendingly on the head. "You're even cuter than usual when you're like this," she announced in the patronizing tone people took with four-year-olds and small woodland animals. Shinichi glowered at her, but he could tell that the loss of most of his body mass may have affected the effectiveness of his glares.
Behind Shinichi, Kaito cleared his throat. He looked vaguely bewildered. "Uh, are you…?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Ran apologized immediately, smiling radiantly as she extended one hand. Kaito shook it, wearing the expression of someone handling live ammunition. Shinichi kicked at the ground, petulant. "My name is Mouri Ran. Shinichi and I go way back."
"I'm Kuroba Kaito," Kaito informed her, eyes darting between Shinichi and Ran. He pulled his hand back to hitch his backpack (which was full of textbooks and a few suspicious-looking potion bottles) higher on his back. "I'm here to help Kudou-san with his, ah, little problem."
"Oh, of course. Please, take your time with that," Ran snickered, grinning sharkily down at Shinichi in a manner that implied she was thinking of all the embarrassing outfits she was going to put him in. Shinichi kicked her in the shin, but considering his current lack of muscle, she didn't seem to care or notice. They engaged in a stare-off (well, Shinichi stared. Ran smirked and looked smug).
Kaito blinked, opened his mouth, shut it, and then opened it again. "Well, anyway, I'm here to track Kudou-san's energy signature for the next few days. That might help me find a way to revert him back to normal."
"Good." Ran straightened to smile at him warmly. The dissonance was terrifying. "Good luck with that, Kuroba-kun. I'll be… back." Shinichi had visions of her returning with a camera and stared mournfully after her when she left, knowing he had no way of stopping her.
"I don't mean to offend you, but she's a little terrifying," Kaito remarked when Ran had disappeared around the street corner. He sounded awestricken. Shinichi cast him a sidelong look, trying to figure out if he was thinking about getting into her (proverbial) pants.
"If you're thinking about asking her out, she's taken," he told Kaito as he walked up the front steps, digging around for the key to his front door. "Sorry to disappoint." For a moment, he considered adding, "Also, her girlfriend knows at least one form of martial arts and is a born werewolf, and I saw her decapitate someone with her bare hands once," but decided that was largely unnecessary.
"Oh." Kaito sounded slightly startled. "I – oh. I… see." He trudged past Shinichi into the house once Shinichi had opened the door, dropping his bag heavily against a wall. "Have you got any slippers, darling?"
The next morning, Shinichi woke up to the smell of something warm and sweet cooking, which was as disturbing as it was pleasant. Shinichi's cooking skills mainly extended to instant ramen, and sometimes he couldn't even get that right because he had a tendency to forget that he was boiling water. He'd burnt the protecting coating off ninety percent of his cookware.
Pulling on a t-shirt and a pair of running shorts that could've doubled as pants, Shinichi stumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen. He nearly brained his head on a chair when he discovered that Kaito was sitting on the kitchen counter in jogging bottoms and a Touto University t-shirt, idly twirling a finger at the stove as he read a battered copy of something called An In-Depth Study of Potional Aftereffects: Energy Signature, Chi, and Physicality. The veins in his arm shone bright golden with magic. At the stove, batter was pouring itself from a bowl onto a heated griddle into neat, perfectly circular silver dollar pancakes. Every now and again, blueberries would appear out of nowhere and drop into the pan, and then the pancakes would flip themselves.
After two more batches of self-cooking pancakes, Kaito finally glanced up to see Shinichi gawking at him. He beamed. "Good morning, darling. You're looking quite lovely." He eyed Shinichi's shorts/pants speculatively.
"How are you even real?" is what Shinichi wanted to say, but what actually came out was, "I wasn't aware that I owned a griddle."
"You didn't. I had to enchant your toaster," Kaito informed him. He hopped off the counter, shutting the book. "Pancakes, darling?"
"Yeah," Shinichi agreed, mostly shell-shocked. "Yeah, okay."
The pancakes, predictably, were excellent. Kaito produced fresh whipped cream out of somewhere. Shinichi briefly considered asking Kaito to move in, but he thought it might be a little premature.
"So this is how you monitor my energy signature?" Shinichi asked. He shifted a little on the bed. "Isn't this kind of, you know, weird?"
"There's nothing weird about this, darling," Kaito responded before he unceremoniously picked Shinichi up and dropped him onto Kaito's chest. Shinichi found his face disconcertingly close to Kaito's collarbones, which he had been idly thinking about licking for the past few hours. He swallowed.
Oblivious, Kaito reached up to rest his hands on Shinichi's back. His fingertips were hot. "I just have to align our hearts and then we'll be good to go." He maneuvered Shinichi around until the centers of their chests lined up. Shinichi's face ended up resting against the juncture of Kaito's neck and shoulder. Kaito smelled good, like fresh laundry and the distinctive metallic scent of magic. Shinichi tried not to inhale too obviously.
"Hold on, darling," Kaito told him, close to Shinichi's ear, before Shinichi felt a flare of warmth envelop them. When he managed to wriggle around enough to see something other than Kaito's t-shirt-clad shoulder, he realized both of them were glowing faintly – Shinichi a cool silver, Kaito a warm gold.
"That's your aura," Kaito said, sounding a little breathless. Shinichi pulled back to look him in the eyes, eyebrows lifting when he realized Kaito's irises had gone molten gold. "I've never seen one that color." Kaito smiled. "It's beautiful."
Aren't you the beautiful one? Shinichi thought a little incredulously, but he didn't dare vocalize that.
Shinichi had long since come to terms with the fact that there was nothing more terrifying than Ran armed with a credit card and a day at the mall. He had to revise this opinion when he realized there was nothing more terrifying than Ran armed with a credit card and a day at the mall while he was three feet tall and unable to fend her and her purposefully awful clothing taste off.
"Look, Shinichi!" she called as she pulled a shirt off a nearby rack. It had historically inaccurate orange dinosaurs on it and glittered when she moved it. Shinichi felt his eye twitching as she added it to the pile of clothes she had amassed, which filled two carts and involved a lot of animal-themed graphic t-shirts. "This one is adorable!"
"Ran," he said, a little desperate, as he trailed after her. Behind him, Kaito whistled something cheerful under his breath, flipping through the racks with a careless flick of his fingers. Shinichi didn't even want to know what he was picking up. Pitching his voice low, Shinichi hissed, "Ran, please. If you've ever cared about me –"
"You're so overdramatic, Shinichi." Ran sighed at him as she picked up a pair of jeans with heart-shaped buttons sewn along the waistband. Shinichi blanched. "I think you'll look absolutely adorable. And anyway, it's only temporary. You're not going to be six for that long." But her eyes gleamed, betraying the fact that she was definitely enjoying this, the sick sadist that she was. Shinichi glowered.
"But I don't want to wear any of… that," he insisted, glancing at the carts with apprehension.
"Light-up shoes!" Ran squealed instead of responding and ran off towards the shoe section. Shinichi considered smothering himself in the display of sailboat-printed pajama pants to his left.
"Darling?"
Shinichi turned around just in time to catch a bundle of clothes. Kaito was leaning against a shelf of tank tops, smiling faintly at him. "Maybe those will be more to your tastes."
Looking down, Shinichi thumbed through the stack. It was composed of pairs of jeans and solid color t-shirts and a casual varsity jacket, and it was a vast improvement from Ran's choices, which all fit the general theme of "embarrassing, bright colors, and/or sequins." Something surprised and warm bloomed in Shinichi's chest as he looked up at Kaito, who beamed at him.
"Thanks, Kuroba."
"No problem, darling. It was the least I could do. I'm really being selfish – I'd die of secondhand embarrassment if I had to be around you while you were wearing some of those shirts," Kaito replied. Shinichi doubted that, seeing as Kaito seemed to be the kind of person with a nonexistent embarrassment threshold, but he couldn't help but smile up at him anyway.
Kaito flicked his head over at the dressing rooms. "Let's go try it all on. Maybe we can beat Mouri-san to the register."
In the end they did, only because Kaito distracted her with a rack of fuzzy animal hats. Ran pouted for hours after, but she did send Shinichi a knowing wink when Kaito, in true gentleman fashion, offered to carry all the bags. Shinichi did his best to pretend he hadn't seen it.
Kaito was talkative. That wasn't surprising to Shinichi; his first impression of Kaito had been someone charming and extraverted who liked intellectual conversations and constant communication. And he wasn't exactly wrong. Kaito did like to talk, even (especially?) to people he didn't know – he stopped in the supermarket to discuss prospective cabbage choices with little old ladies and flirted a free coffee off of Azusa every time they went to Poirot.
What surprised Shinichi a little was that Kaito didn't seem to mind that Shinichi didn't often reciprocate whenever Kaito talked at him. It bothered Shinichi a little at the beginning, Kaito's constant little comments as he read and the casual flirting he spouted when he noticed that Shinichi had walked into the room. Shinichi wondered if Kaito thought he was standoffish when he didn't respond.
But over the course of a few days, he realized that Kaito didn't seem to expect Shinichi to respond. When he said things like, "Darling, you look lovely as always," and "Good morning, darling – oh, is that a new sweater?" he didn't actually think Shinichi would reply. Which Shinichi appreciated, because he didn't actually know how to formulate a response to comments like that.
Although, once, when Kaito said, "If you're this cute as a six-year-old, I have to wonder how you look when you're twenty-two," Shinichi answered, "Why don't you stick around until I get my body, then?" and the shocked, delighted smile on Kaito's face had been worth the embarrassing flush that spread down Shinichi's cheeks.
Since murder was still one of Shinichi's chief passions, he still went to all the crime scenes he could, even though Satou liked to give him lollipops and stickers of cute animals and Takagi had developed an incurable habit of ruffling Shinichi's hair every time Shinichi wandered into range.
The first time Shinichi brought Kaito along to a crime scene (a man who had been stabbed in Beika Park), Kaito spent five minutes throwing up behind a bush while Shinichi prodded at the body. He emerged looking an unhealthy shade of green and clutching at his stomach, flinching visibly when he accidentally glanced at the body. "How's it going, darling?" he asked.
Pausing in his inspection of the corpse's suit jacket, Shinichi looked up at him with a frown. "You can go home if you want, you know. I know this isn't that pleasant to be around."
"No, I'm fine," Kaito insisted in a high-pitched voice that screamed I AM NOT FINE in several languages. He sat down on a bench and began thumbing through a pocket copy of something titled Basics of Potion Brewing. Shinichi eyed him a little longer before he went back to investigating. By the time he figured out that the victim, a salaryman who had been having an extramarital affair, had been killed by his jealous wife, Kaito had finished his book and was nervously setting his hands on fire. The police officers were starting to look concerned.
After he brought Kaito to a few more crime scenes with similarly disastrous results, Shinichi made the executive decision to ban Kaito from coming with him to work.
Kaito protested when Shinichi told him about his intention to keep Kaito away from the corpses.
"This is a big part of your life, darling," he said, throwing his arms out wide and making the risotto he was cooking splash around in the pot. "I want to be a part of it."
Shinichi squinted at him. "Kuroba, you passed out the last time you came with me to a crime scene."
"There was a disemboweled body. There were entrails," Kaito sniffed, crossing his arms across his chest. The risotto bubbled understandingly behind him. "I think I had a perfectly normal reaction."
"Yeah, sure," Shinichi answered. "I think you can maybe stay at home."
"You sick child," Kaito mumbled, but there wasn't any real feeling behind it.
But there were times where it was inevitable, since Shinichi was a veritable corpse magnet. They went out to get lunch at Poirot one Tuesday – Shinichi got a kid's meal (mainly because he had long since lost any shame he may have felt about the situation) and Kaito got curry rice – and they were arguing about the latest episode of Detective Samonji when the woman sitting at the table beside them began convulsing, gasping for air as her face went purple. She collapsed on the ground, twitching and hacking all the while.
"She's been poisoned," Shinichi announced when he got close enough to see her face. She had gone still and lax during the time it had taken him to reach her side. He fumbled for a pulse, half-certain it was already too late, but Kaito interrupted him by flipping the woman onto her back. He pressed his hands to her face, teeth gritted, and Shinichi watched as gold light sloughed off his hands and sank into her pale, damp skin.
The woman twitched, but her face remained lifeless. Shinichi's gaze flickered up to Kaito, who was now frowning. His irises burned behind his eyelids when he shut his eyes. His veins glowed with a latticework of gold as energy pulsed out of his hands and into the woman's immobile body. Sweat began to crawl down his temples after a few minutes.
Shinichi thought he had never seen anything so beautiful and sad.
In the end, the woman died, even though Kaito spent all his magical energy trying to save her. Shinichi stayed by Kaito when the forensics officers carried her body away on a stretcher. They went straight home after the ambulance left. It was the first time Shinichi had walked away from a case, but he took one look at Kaito and couldn't bring himself to regret it.
The next morning, Kaito made them Belgian waffles with strawberry preserves and pretended everything was okay. Shinichi let him.
In hindsight, Shinichi probably should've realized that it was only a matter of time before Hattori showed up. He had a private theory that Hattori was a previously undiscovered lifeform that thrived on embarrassment (rather than a werebear from a well-respected bloodline). Knowing that, it should've been obvious that Hattori wouldn't miss the opportunity to laugh at him.
He also knew that Hattori was the kind of person who didn't believe in basic human civility. For example, Hattori often drank milk straight from the carton and used Shinichi's toothbrush when he forgot to bring his and showed up on Shinichi's doorstep unannounced. These were all things that Shinichi was painfully aware of.
Still, Shinichi was surprised when Hattori walked into Shinichi's bedroom on a Friday and said loudly, "So I heard you got turned into a six-year-old and shacked up with a hot guy, Kudou. Way to keep me out of the loop."
Shinichi, who had been in the middle of looking over a case file, squawked and fell off his bed. Kaito, who had been sitting at Shinichi's desk logging data about Shinichi's energy signature, startled so hard the pen he was holding shot out of his hand and hit Hattori between the eyes.
"Um, ow," Hattori said.
"What are you doing here," Shinichi demanded, dragging himself back onto the bed. He glared. Hattori looked delighted.
"You're tiny," he gasped in something horrifically close to a coo. "It's adorable." He advanced on Shinichi, making grabby hands. Shinichi scrambled to the far wall.
"Who are you, and what are you doing in here?" Kaito cut in, getting slowly to his feet. There was something dangerous about the way he was looking at Hattori, something hard and uncompromising in his expression. Shinichi watched with fascination as a latticework of gold shot up his forearms and his eyes went hot and luminous. It was dreadfully attractive.
Hattori, unsurprisingly, didn't appreciate that. He seemed to fill the room as he let out a low growl, his face shifting to something more feral. "Are you threatening me?"
"For God's sake – Hattori, Hattori, don't shift here, you monster," Shinichi groaned, eyeing Hattori's fingers, which were beginning to sprout claws, with some incredulity. He glanced longingly over at his bookshelf, which was filled with first-edition copies of Sherlock Holmes novels and porcelain bookends. The last time Hattori shifted indoors, Shinichi's mother's entire china collection had suffered a devastating fate.
"Maybe I am," Kaito responded coolly, talking over Shinichi. His palms filled with light as his eyes flared. "I'll ask again. Who are you?"
With a roar, Hattori shifted fully into his gigantic black bear form. He immediately tore Shinichi's comforter in two, probably in some misled attempt to intimidate Kaito.
"You suck," Shinichi said feelingly.
Across the room, Kaito launched a disc of light at Hattori's head, which only seemed to irritate Hattori when it singed the fur off his forehead. Hattori growled so loudly Shinichi thought the ground might've trembled beneath their feet, and Kaito responded by blasting him in the face with a knot of lightning. Shinichi rolled his eyes so hard he suspected he might've pulled a muscle.
"Both of you, stop," he shouted, stalking over to stand directly in front of Hattori. When Hattori rumbled a complaint at him, Shinichi turned and smacked him on the nose as hard as he could. Hattori whimpered and gave him a betrayed look.
"Hattori, shift back right now," Shinichi snapped. Hattori somehow managed to look simultaneously cowed and annoyed as he melted back into his human form. He was missing a sock but otherwise clothed, for which Shinichi was indescribably thankful.
"Kuroba," Shinichi said, shutting his eyes, "this is my…"
"Best friend," Hattori supplied.
"…yes, that," Shinichi admitted grudgingly, after a moment of contemplation. He couldn't think of a better description, except maybe the guy who challenged me to a deduction battle and then started following me around after I apparently won. "Hattori Heiji. He's a werebear."
"I did figure that out, darling," Kaito piped up with the kind of smug smirk that only looked good on him because Shinichi already liked him. Hattori looked unwillingly impressed. He peered at Kaito with a challenging frown. Kaito flicked a fireball at him.
"And Hattori," Shinichi continued, ignoring Hattori's outraged shout, "this is Kuroba Kaito. He's helping me with my whole de-aging thing. Play nice."
"Pleasure to meet you," Kaito drawled, eyes narrowed. He sat back down at Shinichi's desk.
"Yeah," Hattori snarled, his eyebrows doing something angled and angry. "Same."
Shinichi sighed and rubbed at his face.
"Kudou," Hattori said in a low, conspiring tone when Kaito was out buying groceries, "I think Kuroba is a pedophile."
From where he was flipping through a book, Shinichi slowly lifted his face to look at him. "Excuse me?"
"Think about it," Hattori hissed, dragging his armchair closer to Shinichi's until they were close enough to whisper. Shinichi resisted the urge to scoot back. "Why else would he willingly live with you for this long?"
"Thanks." Shinichi frowned.
"And what's up with all those weird energy collecting things?" Hattori steamrolled, waving his hands frantically and nearly upsetting a nearby table lamp. Shinichi ducked out of the way, scowling. "Is that really how you measure energy signatures, or is it just an excuse to feel your young, nubile body pressed up against his?"
Shinichi squinted suspiciously at him. "Have you been reading Kazuha's romance novels again?"
"The point is," Hattori persisted, wringing his hands like a scandalized nun, "there's definitely something suspicious about him, Kudou. Did you know him before this whole debacle?"
"Technically, no," Shinichi admitted, toying with the corner of his book. "He's the son of the magician who taught my mom, though. So I think he's probably fine, as far as sanity is concerned. And I mean, he graduated from Touto University with a degree in charms and hexes. And he can cook. And he's nice. And he doesn't treat me like I'm actually six, like some people do." He gave Hattori a pointed look. Just an hour ago, Hattori had given him a coloring book and a stuffed alligator.
Hattori looked disgusted. He jabbed a finger in Shinichi's face. "You just don't want him to be a pedophile because he's hot and you like him, don't you."
"No," Shinichi said after what was evidently too long of a pause, because Hattori threw his hands up in the air and stormed out of the library.
A month or so after Shinichi had been shrunken, Kaito finally decided to take Shinichi to see a potions specialist.
"Why didn't you do this earlier?" Shinichi wondered, tugging his jacket tighter around himself as he followed Kaito up the front walk of a quiet little stucco house. The entire front yard was divided into a neurotically neat grid of various types of plants. Shinichi picked out wolfsbane and nightshade amongst the brightly colored blooms and lifted an eyebrow.
"Because I thought I could figure it out on my own, of course," Kaito replied, turning to look at Shinichi when he reached the front doorstep. "Don't you trust me, darling?"
Shinichi was saved from trying to figure out how to respond to that – because he did trust Kaito, for no real reason, but he also didn't want to admit to it – when the front door opened and a sandy-haired man poked his head out. He had the kind of face that broadcasted well-bred manners and casual arrogance. Shinichi wasn't sure if he liked him or not.
The man zeroed in on Kaito. His neat, delicate eyebrows (did he pluck them, Shinichi wondered?) advanced up his forehead. "Kuroba-kun. How… nice to see you."
"Hakuba," Kaito grunted in response. Shinichi was surprised to see him frowning – with the rare exception of Hattori, Kaito was generally friendly to everyone. "It's been a while."
"Did you finally get stumped with the de-aging Kudou Shinichi case?" Hakuba snorted, not quietly enough that it went unnoticed. Kaito bristled. "I knew you wouldn't be able to come up with an antidote. Your potions grades were always abysmal." He flipped his hair. "Well, I'm sure I'll be able to restore his body." Unlike you, you peasant, his eyes seemed to say.
Okay, Shinichi thought, I think I know why Kaito didn't want to come to him for help.
"Sure, Hakuba, whatever," Kaito got out from behind gritted teeth. He extended a hand towards Shinichi, which Shinichi took as his cue to shuffle forward and smile uncomfortably up at Hakuba. "I brought him, so could you come up with an antidote already?"
Hakuba's expression went sunny the instant he laid eyes on Shinichi. "Oh! You're Kudou Shinichi?" He looked delighted. "I've read so much about your cases!" Glancing at Kaito, he added, in a lower tone, "Kuroba-kun's also been following you in the news, you know. I think he keeps a collection of articles about you on his phone."
"Hakuba!" Kaito squawked, red stealing up his neck in bright swatches. "Don't tell him that!"
Well, Shinichi thought blankly. Well, that is definitely – interesting.
"Anyway," Hakuba said, gesturing into his house, "come inside, and I'll take a look at you and see what I can do."
What Hakuba could do, as it turned out, was make a full antidote. In ten minutes.
Shinichi elbowed Kaito hard in the side as Hakuba poured the antidote into a cup and stirred it with a spoon. "Why didn't we come see him sooner?" he demanded, scowling up at Kaito. Kaito was apparently very interested in the shade of paint Hakuba's walls were painted – so interested, in fact, that he completely ignored Shinichi.
"All you have to do is drink this, and you'll revert back," Hakuba announced, ruffling Shinichi's hair as he handed him a cup of smoking purple liquid. He cast a complacent look at Kaito. "The witch didn't use a particularly powerful potion, you know." Kaito rolled his eyes at him.
Sighing, Shinichi sniffed at the potion – it smelled a little like blackberries – before he downed in, eyes squeezed shut. It burned going down his throat, and Shinichi coughed and dropped the cup by accident when pain shot through him and he collapsed ungracefully onto Hakuba's hardwood floors. It felt as if his bones were being stretched – no, it didn't just feel like it; his bones were actually stretching, growing, and Shinichi couldn't help but groan when he felt the seams on his shirt splitting with a horrible snapping sound.
He must've blacked out for a few minutes, because when he came to, Kaito was shouting, "You couldn't give him a little warning, you bastard?" from somewhere overhead, sounding enraged.
In comparison, Hakuba was blasé as he answered, "Kuroba-kun, he's experiencing sixteen years of growth in a couple of minutes. Of course it was going to hurt."
Shinichi didn't get to hear what Kaito said in response – it sounded angry, but that was all he could tell – because when he opened his eyes, he realized his clothes were in sad-looking tatters around him and he was lying naked in the middle of a stranger's kitchen with two magicians standing over him, which. Well. Shinichi's pride had seen better days.
It was, of course, at that exact moment that Kaito stopped shouting at Hakuba long enough to look down and realize that Shinichi was staring up at him. He instantly flushed, pink swelling across his cheeks as his mouth opened and shut soundlessly, and Shinichi winced as he dragged himself into a seated position and tried to arrange the remnants of his jeans over his lap.
"I'm sor –" he began, but Kaito interrupted him by blurting out, "Oh my God, you're so hot."
There was a silence.
"Oh," Shinichi mumbled. His cheeks felt warm. "I – oh."
Kaito stared resolutely at the ground. He was red to the tips of his ears.
"Should I leave you two alone?" Hakuba offered, alarmingly smug.
"So," Shinichi began, rocking onto his heels and then onto the balls of his feet. He and Kaito were standing in the entry area of the Kudou house. Kaito was wearing a hunted expression, even as he got out the pair of slippers that had long since become his.
It was a little unnerving, that the guest slippers weren't just "guest slippers." Somewhere along the line, they had become "Kaito's slippers." Shinichi had the feeling that if he looked around the house, he'd find a lot of other things that had become Kaito's: a towel in the bathroom, a blender in the kitchen, a stray paperback on the dining table.
"I, uh," Kaito started, and then cut himself off. He shifted from foot to foot, his face doing something anxious and tentative and confused. "I didn't mean to make things weird. I don't want to make things weird." He coughed.
"Was Hakuba lying when he said you were a fan of mine?" Shinichi asked when the silence had stretched on for too long.
"Um," Kaito squeaked, rubbing the back of his neck. "I – well, no."
"Oh." Shinichi momentarily wondered which articles about him Kaito had saved, and then if Kaito had seen any of the many and varied blogs dedicated to Shinichi's various body parts (for example, Shinichi knew of a website devoted solely to pictures of his hands). Possibly, Shinichi should've been creeped out, knowing that he'd been living with a fan for this long, but he found that he didn't mind. "Well, okay."
"I…" Kaito winced and looked away. His eyelashes were dark against his cheeks. "I don't want to make this weird," he repeated.
"Of course not," Shinichi agreed affably. "Want to measure my energy signature?"
"What?" Kaito's head snapped up. "You want me to…?" His cheeks were pink.
"Why not?" Shinichi shrugged, trying not to seem too affectionate when he smiled at Kaito. "I mean, what if there are aftereffects from the antidote? Don't you want to keep monitoring my energy levels?"
Don't go, is what he was trying to say. Don't leave yet.
And Kaito seemed to understand, because he nodded, eyes wide, and said, "I – yeah. I'd – I'd like that, darling."
The thing about the energy measuring, though, was that it was notably different when Shinichi was in his real body.
"Okay, don't move," Kaito murmured. He was slightly breathless. Shinichi felt similarly inclined, mostly because he was lying on top of Kaito, their chests pressed together. Their faces were so dangerously close that Shinichi was able to count the eyelashes lining the lower edge of Kaito's eyes and feel a near-imperceptible brush of air across his mouth every time Kaito exhaled. He also had the opportunity to watch Kaito's irises swirl golden, the color spreading from his pupils to the outer edges in a ballooning pulse, when his magic unfurled. It was like watching ink drop into water.
"Your aura is perfectly the same, darling," Kaito remarked, his chest vibrating beneath Shinichi's. His hands settled hesitantly at Shinichi's lower back, holding him in place. Shinichi tried not to make any unbecoming noises. Kaito's hands were hot, almost uncomfortably so, and Kaito was so close and solid and just –
"So there isn't anything wrong with it?" Shinichi asked, in lieu of doing something embarrassing like wrapping his arms around Kaito and refusing to let go.
Kaito laughed lowly. His hands wandered up to Shinichi's waist. It was alarming how well Shinichi fit in his grasp. "No, it's just beautiful."
"I hear you got your body back," Hattori said, sounding irritatingly sad about the fact. There was a rumble of static over the line that Shinichi translated as a heavy sigh. "And I'd been thinking of short jokes to use the next time I visited."
"Thank God I got the antidote, then," Shinichi answered, snippy, and Hattori's eye roll was somehow audible over a phone call.
"I also hear that you haven't kicked out the magician," Hattori added, in a very insinuating tone. Shinichi wistfully recalled an easier time, when he hadn't been acquainted with Hattori and lived a much less annoying life.
"Because I like the magician," he informed Hattori primly. "I'm not kicking him out." He cast a glance across the room, at where Kaito was determinedly kneading dough for homemade garlic bread. Kaito had long fingers and elegant wrists that made Shinichi think ten different kinds of inappropriate thoughts, a fact that became more apparent when Kaito did things like kneading dough or washing cucumbers.
"Oh, right, you like-like him," Hattori sing-songed. "Kuroba and Kudou, sitting in a tree –"
Shinichi frowned at the phone, disgusted. "Are we twelve?"
Hattori's only response was obnoxious kissing noises.
"I'm telling Kazuha about the time you left the laundry out in the rain," Shinichi announced, because while he wasn't twelve, he wasn't above petty revenge, and then hung up on Hattori's horrified yelling.
Kaito glanced up from his kneading. He had a streak of flour across his cheek. It was unbearably cute. "How's Hattori?"
"Fine." Shinichi looked expectantly at him. "Do you need any help with that?" He nodded at the dough.
"No, I'm fine." The soft smile Kaito gave Shinichi made something in Shinichi go sticky and warm, like ice cream left out in the sun for too long, and Shinichi dropped his head on the counter and tried not to sigh.
"This is really disappointing," Ran muttered, stirring sugar forlornly into her tea. "I was hoping you wouldn't change back for a little longer and I could laugh at you some more." She sighed heavily, somehow managing to sip her tea with an air of disappointment. "At least I have photographic evidence."
Shinichi glared, crossing his arms over his chest. She was lucky they were in a public place. "You're the worst, and I can't believe I actually care about you."
"I can't believe you're willing to put up with this guy," Ran told Kaito, ignoring Shinichi entirely. She leaned her face onto her hand, adopting a pensive expression. Kaito, who was sitting next to Shinichi, smiled bemusedly back at her. "Doesn't he get annoying to live with? He can't cook, and he's a terrible conversationalist, and he's obsessed with murders…" She shuddered.
"I don't mind," Kaito said, because he was Shinichi's favorite person. He laid a protective hand on Shinichi's shoulder. Shinichi couldn't help but smile fondly back when Kaito grinned at him. "He's got other things going for him, which I'm sure you're aware of."
"'Other things,'" Ran snorted in a way that meant she was probably thinking of a dick joke. Shinichi tried to mutilate her with his eyes. He had no idea where the innocent, kindhearted girl of six years ago had gone, but he mainly blamed Sera.
As if on cue, the bell over the door rang and Sera, in all her tattooed glory, sauntered in. Shinichi would never understand the werewolf predilection for black leather and combat boots, but Sera pulled it off well-enough. At the very least, she looked like the leader of a hardcore bike gang when she dropped into the seat next to Ran and slid her arm proprietarily around Ran's shoulders. Ran practically swooned, leaning into her. Sera grinned.
"Hey, babe," Ran told Sera, and Sera kissed the corner of her mouth loudly before she turned to Shinichi and Kaito.
"Nice to see you, Kudou-kun. If the pictures Ran showed me are any indication, you make an adorable six-year-old," Sera informed Shinichi – Shinichi winced and closed his eyes – before she gave Kaito a cursory glance and an approving nod. "Hey, Kuroba-kun." She lifted an eyebrow when Kaito didn't respond immediately. "I… assume you're Kuroba-kun?"
"Right." Kaito's gaze was focused on her arm, which tightened around Ran upon scrutiny. "That's me."
When he didn't say anything else, Sera blinked and exchanged a confused look with Ran. When Ran shrugged at her, Sera let her head fall onto Ran's shoulder. "I'm Sera Masumi, if you didn't know."
"I know," Kaito replied, rudely, and then had the nerve to give Shinichi a bewildered Look, as if Shinichi had done something wrong.
"Well," Shinichi said after approximately thirty seconds of silence. Kaito was still looking at him as if Shinichi had just admitted that his favorite pastime was drowning kittens. He cleared his throat. "Sera, why don't you order something?"
"What's wrong with you?" Shinichi demanded the second they got home. He tossed his jacket onto the coatrack before he whirled on Kaito, who was regarding him with sullen irritation. "Why were you so rude? Why did you spill an entire cup of coffee on Sera?"
"You can't prove anything," Kaito insisted petulantly, and Shinichi opened his mouth to shout that he had definitely seen a bolt of Kaito's particular brand of magic hit Sera's coffee cup before it overturned itself into her lap, before he realized that Kaito was trying to distract him. He sighed, raking a hand through his hair, before he crossed his arms over his chest and glared.
"Okay, sure, whatever. But you can't deny that you were incredibly rude to Sera for no good reason." Shinichi hadn't been expecting much of a reaction, but Kaito, immediately and unexpectedly, began to bristle.
"How can you say it was for no reason?" he said, sounding infuriated. "That guy was totally hitting on your girlfriend! And you let him! You didn't do anything! You just sat there while he – he…" As quickly as he'd ignited, Kaito burned out. "Darling, I know you don't think about me the way I think about you, but I still want you to treasure yourself a little more. You deserve a girlfriend who cares about you and friends who don't hit on your girl."
"Uh…" Shinichi had to take a moment to parse all of that. There were too many things he didn't understand. "Who… are you talking about, exactly?"
"I'm talking about Sera hitting on Mouri-san," Kaito snapped, looking annoyed. "Who else would I be talking about?"
"Wait, you're trying to say that… who's my girlfriend in this situation?" Shinichi squinted at him.
Kaito glared. "Mouri-san."
"I don't…" It came together abruptly, and Shinichi had to lean against the shoe rack for support. His brain was doing confused cartwheels inside his skull, but his heart was doing something even more frantic behind his ribcage. "Oh my God, did you think Ran was my girlfriend? And that Sera was trying to seduce her away from me?"
"Am I… wrong?" Kaito was starting to look more mystified than anything.
"Uh," Shinichi stammered, instead of saying "Yes, you're completely wrong in a lot of ways" and/or laughing hysterically in Kaito's face. "Yeah, a little. Ran isn't my girlfriend. She's just a childhood friend. And Sera is actually her girlfriend."
"Girlfr –" Kaito looked as if someone had hit him over the head with something heavy. He flushed, color spreading up his neck in a rush. "Oh. I… didn't know that." He coughed into a fist. "You can forget that last thing I said. The – the part about… feelings."
"But why would I forget about that?" Shinichi said, smiling uncontrollably when Kaito gave him an incredulous look. "It was my favorite part."
Kaito opened his mouth, presumably to snap at him, but Shinichi hurried to cut him off with a kiss. It seemed like the best idea.
And it was, because Kaito was so hot and pliant beneath his hands, and his mouth was sweet and slick when Shinichi pried him open with tongue and teeth, and it was better than any fantasy Shinichi had thought up when he was six and Kaito was the only one who treated him like an adult. It was better than anything.
"No, Kaito," Shinichi said, longsuffering, "we are not having faerie strippers at the wedding."
Kaito gave him a wounded look as he somehow managed to fit eighteen pancakes onto one plate. "The bachelor party, at the very least."
"No," Shinichi said forcefully. "Have you forgotten that Miyano is half-faerie? Don't you think she'd be creeped out?"
"Nymph strippers, then," Kaito announced decisively, and Shinichi resisted the urge to smack his face against the counter until he forgot he'd ever met Kuroba Kaito and actually agreed to marry him. Shinichi was either stupid or a masochist.
As if hearing his thoughts, Kaito reached over to thread a hand in his hair. "Darling?" Shinichi lifted his face, sullen. "Darling, I just want you to know how glad I am to have met you." He leaned down to kiss Shinichi on the cheek, and Shinichi melted embarrassingly.
"Also," Kaito continued when he pulled back, "Mouri-san sent me pictures of you as a six-year-old, pictures which I can and will show at the wedding reception if you don't agree to my demands." He grinned. There was a distinctly evil edge to his smile. "So it's either nymph strippers or your six-year-old pictures. Pick."
Shinichi groaned and put his face in his hands. He was definitely either crazy or hopelessly in love.
Hope to see you all soon! - Luna