How I Met Your... Other Father
"Do we have to go to this entirely pointless dinner?" Kuroba Kaito griped, even as he slid into the leather seat beside Kudou Shinichi.
Shinichi shrugged, turning the key in the ignition and causing the couple's white Mercedes to roar to life. Tugging his seatbelt across his torso, he said, "Ran and her husband invited us to her house for dinner with a few other couples we know. It's not a big deal, Kaito."
Kaito brooded, leaning his face against the glass of the car window. "When those 'other couples' are the Hondous, the Hattoris, and –" he held back a shiver – "the Hakubas, I think the time would be better spent away from the group of newlyweds."
"The Kyogokus are coming too. Oh, and your statement is invalid, as Mitsuhiko and Haibara will be there, and they aren't married. Also, all of them except for the Kyogokus have been married for over a year and barely qualify as newlyweds." Shinichi said in an amused tone.
Kaito groaned and bashed his head against the window.
He was nursing a growing bruise and cursing his idiocy when the Mercedes pulled up in front of the Hondou abode. It was a spacious two-story building painted crisply white and with a well-kept front yard. Numerous multicolored cars were parked nearby, either on the driveway or across the street.
Shinichi turned to Kaito and smirked. "You ready?"
Kaito pulled back his bangs and pointed at his forehead. "Kiss it better?"
Sighing, Shinichi rolled his eyes and exited the car. Pouting, Kaito followed him up to the front door, where Shinichi pressed the doorbell purposefully.
The door opened within moments, and a glowing Ran smiled at them. In the background, the two could hear the rumbling chatter of talk. "Hey boys! C'mon in," she greeted, stepping aside and letting them pass.
"Thanks, Ran," Shinichi returned, grinning back at her; "Thank you, Hondou-chan," Kaito nodded.
"Please, call me Ran, Kuroba-kun. You and Shinichi have been together for how long?" Ran insisted, shutting the door.
"Let's see... I think our three-year anniversary's coming up this October," Shinichi answered.
"Three years?! Please, Kaito, call me Ran," persisted Ran, pointedly calling Kaito by his first name.
"Of course, Ran."
"Tha – Good God, what happened to your forehead?"
"I – er –"
Smirking, Shinichi made his way through the neat, picture-lined hallway until he found himself in a brightly lit dining room. A table laden with food was surrounded by people. "Hi everyone."
"Hey, Kudou!" Hattori Heiji called, grinning at his friend. His wife/childhood friend, formerly Toyama Kazuha and now Hattori Kazuha, smiled over at him.
Hondou Eisuke, Ran's husband, stopped talking and glanced up, face brightening upon seeing Shinichi standing awkwardly in the doorway. "Shinichi-san!" he exclaimed, standing up and somehow managing to land his hand inside a bowl of steaming rice.
Kyogoku Sonoko dabbed her lips primly and sighed at Eisuke. "You haven't changed a bit," she commented as the bespectacled man gasped in pain.
Ran hurried into the room. "Eisuke, are you okay?" Taking in the scene before her, she put her hands on her hips, groaned, and led her injured husband in the direction of the bathroom.
The tan man sitting beside Sonoko rose. "I don't believe we've met. I'm Kyogoku Makoto."
Actually, I have met you, Shinichi thought to himself. Guess you wouldn't recognize me as I was three feet tall at the time. He nodded. "Nice to meet you, I'm Kudou Shinichi."
"I've heard about you," Makoto said, sitting back down.
"Good evening, Kudou-san," Hakuba Saguru called from where he sat beside his wife Aoko.
"Hello, Hakuba-san," Shinichi answered, waving enthusiastically at his fellow Holmes worshipper.
He sat down in one of the two empty seats.
Hearing a small clearing of throats, Shinichi looked to his side to find an old friend seated beside him. "Hey, Haibara," he said, grinning.
"Kudou-kun," the sixteen-year-old responded, sounding bored.
"Hello, Kudou-san!" the excited, freckled boy sitting beside her beamed.
"You're... Tsuburaya-kun, right? Haibara's told me about you," Shinichi said.
"Really?"
Before Mitsuhiko could continue, Kaito's arrival drew attention away. He had a bandage slapped on his forehead and was looking slightly annoyed.
"Hey guys," he called in forced cheerfulness, sitting down beside Shinichi.
A mixture of "Hey, Kaito-san," "Kuroba-kun," "Ugh, Kuroba," and "Hi, Kaito!" resonated through the room.
The dinner resumed, and Shinichi started at the touch of fingers upon his hand. He looked over at Kaito, who feigned innocence as he gripped Shinichi's hand.
Repressing a smile, Shinichi squeezed his hand back. He leaned over and whispered, "This isn't so bad, is it, Kaito?"
Kaito shook his head slightly as he reached for the rice paddle.
The talk paused as Ran and Eisuke returned. The host took his seat, but Ran remained standing. "Um..."
Everybody stared at her.
Ran flushed a gentle pink, and Shinichi raised an eyebrow. "Are you okay?"
"Shinichi!" Ran whined, blushing harder. "I just wanted to make the announcement that... that I'm pregnant!"
There was a very long silence. Eisuke was grinning, Hattori looked blank, Kazuha had a smile spreading across her face, Sonoko was openmouthed, Makoto was blinking, Saguru was forcing a half-smile, Aoko looked excited, Haibara was yawning, Mitsuhiko was gaping, and Kaito was staring at her, almost uncomprehendingly. And Shinichi smirked.
The silence exploded with Kazuha screaming, "Oh my God! Ran-chan!"
The other females all jumped up (minus Haibara) and swarmed Ran while the males, excluding a proud Eisuke, sat in an awkward quiet.
"My God," Haibara sighed. "They certainly took their time."
"Ai!" Mitsuhiko hissed, flushing at his girlfriend's behavior. "I'm sure Eisuke-san and Ran-san had reasons for... erm... waiting to... uh...!"
Eisuke was blinking. "Huh?"
"You two have been married for almost three years now, huh?" Makoto noted.
"So?" Eisuke shrugged.
"Well, have you guys been trying, or was it the first...?" Makoto asked, trailing off at Eisuke's confused expression.
"Anyway, it's not a big deal. Hondou-san will have the baby, and then we'll all spend our days plagued with annoying questions," Haibara continued.
Saguru's interest was piqued. "Annoying questions? What do you mean by that, Haibara-chan?"
It was Shinichi who answered. "I think what Haibara means is something like the child asking things like 'why's the sky blue?' and 'why is my hair brown?'"
"Actually I was thinking about questions more along the line of 'how did Mommy and Daddy meet?' and 'where do babies come from?'" Haibara corrected, her lips curling upward.
This elicited a flinch from all of the males.
"How do you even answer those questions?" Hattori asked tentatively.
The rest shrugged.
The females, who had just sat back down, all glanced around the table. "What are we talking about?" queried Kazuha.
"Awkward questions our future offspring might ask," Saguru answered.
"Like what?"
Saguru cleared his throat in discomfort. "According to Haibara-san, questions like 'how did Mommy and Daddy meet?' and 'where do babies come from?'"
"Oh, those are easy! You'd just tell them that babies come from the –" Sonoko started, but her husband shushed her.
"Hmm... how did we meet, anyway?" Ran asked, turning to Eisuke.
"I transferred to your school, and we started hanging out, and over time... we fell in love," Eisuke answered, smiling lovingly at his blushing wife.
"Wait, how did we meet?" Mitsuhiko asked, turning to Haibara.
"Same thing," Haibara replied. "Transferred to your school and over time, we fell in love."
"Aoko and I met because we both attended the same school, too," Saguru stated thoughtfully.
"We're childhood friends," Kazuha explained, looking at Hattori, who nodded.
"Let's see... you were stalking me after you saw me at one of Ran's karate tournaments," Sonoko said fondly.
"That is true in essence," Makoto admitted grudgingly. "Though I do prefer 'protecting you' to 'stalking.'"
"So most of us, except for the stalker boy, knew each other as kids or attended the same school," Ran surmised. "Wait... hey, Kaito, Shinichi, you two haven't told us how you met."
"That's right. You couldn't be school friends, because Kuroba went to Ekoda and Kudou-san went to Teitan," Saguru realized.
Oh God save me, Shinichi thought. He had been praying the storytelling circle wouldn't come to this. After all, he couldn't very well say, "Well, since Kaito is the Kaitou Kid and I was Edogawa Conan, we were kind of rivals. And we were also kind of in love with other. And finally Kaito declared he was willing to become a pedophile if he could date me as Conan. So we started dating then."
"Well? How'd you two meet?" Sonoko asked.
Shinichi looked at Kaito, feeling a sweat breaking out.
Surprisingly, the magician was perfectly composed. "We met because of a brown cat, a sexology professor, and one yen."
Shinichi's eyebrows jerked up.
"What happened was I was eating at this coffee shop. And after I finished, I checked my pocket and realized that I didn't have any money. So I was sitting there trying to decide what to do when Shinichi walked into the café. Apparently I had some brown cat fur on my shirt for some reason, and the case he was investigating – the murder of a human sexology professor – had something to do with a brown cat. So he came in to interrogate me and see if I had anything to do with the dead sexology professor.
"I didn't, actually, but I insisted that I might, but I didn't want to get interrogated in the café because it had negative vibes. So Shinichi was going to pay for my meal so we could leave, but he ended up being one yen short. The café owner got really pissed for some reason, so to make a long story very short, we ended up stuck in a locked closet for two and a half hours.
"So we knew each other pretty well – in more ways than one, I may add – by the time the café owner got the closet door opened and we got out," Kaito finished, grinning brightly at the flabbergasted room.
There was an awkward moment where everyone was motionless before Hakuba finally said, "Nothing's ever normal with you, huh, Kuroba?"
"Where'd you even come up with that story?" Shinichi asked Kaito as he changed into his sleepwear. "I mean, I'm glad you did, but how'd you even do it?"
Kaito grinned as he unbuttoned his shirt. "You remind me of a cat sometimes – you're always a little sleepy – and your hair is brown. You like coffee, thus the coffee shop."
Shinichi blinked.
"The locked closet door is because you always solve locked room murders. And the one yen is from the fact that your name contains the kanji for one, Shinichi."
Shinichi grinned. "I can't believe you thought up that story just like that."
"Because I was thinking of you," Kaito explained, turning cherry blossom pink.
The two continued in silence before Shinichi frowned and turned to his lookalike.
"Oh, but wait. Why'd you choose a human sexology professor?"
"Uh... I think that should be pretty obvious."
"...KAITO!"
Woooo! This was almost posted under "Luna's Drabbles" but I realized it's fairly long for a drabble IMO, so it'll be posted as a one-shot. Hope you liked this extremely badly written fic. It ended up being not that ShinKai-y and more just very multi-couple-y.
I read a fic in the Kuroshitsuji archive and got the idea for this. I would've made it be Shinichi and Kaito telling their kids about how they met, but as mpreg scares the shit out of me, I decided to go with this version.
OMG THIS IS SUCH A FAIL SHOOT ME PLEASE
Okay, sorry. It's that time of the month.
Thanks for reading. Hope you like it.
- Luna