Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan.
Oneshot Thirteen
Loophole
Heiji frowned as Conan sighed once more, kicking his feet as they dangled from the tall stool upon which he was seated. His friend had been like this ever since he had dropped in for a surprise visit. The dark-skinned teen scowled; he did not come all this way just so that Kudo could act all forlorn on him.
"Come on, what's wrong?" he asked after the pseudo-child did another one of those unhappy little sighs. Conan turned to face him.
"What do you mean?"
"Yer best friend is in town and we're out for a bite at one o' da best diners around, and yet here ya are with tha' expression on yer face, like . . . like somebody stole yer ice cream from ya!" Heiji accused.
"Ice cream, Hattori? I wouldn't get so upset over that," said the shrunken detective with a sniff. Heiji could have sworn though that he heard him mumble something afterwards about murder and demon shopkeepers. What was that about?
Whatever, Kudo was just weird like that.
"Then what is it? Wait, lemme guess; yer sulkin' over bein' little again, ain't ya?"
"I don't sulk, I brood," Conan stated seriously.
"Right, right," Heiji chuckled, ignoring the glare that the not-boy shot at him.
The awkward silence from before resumed after this small exchange. The Osakan twitched as, after a few minutes of poking at his fries, his friend sighed once more.
"Out with it!" he snapped, grabbing Conan by the collar and forcing him to look up at him. Hearing disapproving mumbling, Heiji looked around to see that the other people in the diner were staring at him and Kudo with concern – for the latter – and anger. The last was directed only at him. Rubbing the back of his head sheepishly with his free hand, the larger teen relinquished his much smaller friend.
Ah well, at least he finally got his answer, as Conan started speaking.
"If you must know, Ran has banned me from going around sniffing out murder cases. I'm not allowed to diverge from my daily schedule at all without supervision. In other words, I'm grounded of all things," Conan explained. Heiji winced.
"Tha' sucks." Being just as obsessive as Conan, Heiji knew what it was like to be held back from investigation. Not fun. Not to mention that being grounded by one's sorta-girlfriend had to be mortifying. Come to think of it, when was the last time before being shrunk that Kudo had been grounded? The guy had been living on his own for a couple of years, after all, and his parents didn't seem like the kind to care if their child was a hellion wreaking havoc in the streets.
"Are you ready for me to–" the waitress that had come up to them at the moment suddenly clutched at the area over her heart before keeling over onto the counter in-between them.
She was dead.
The corpse's face was close to Conan's own, and he could smell the bitter almond scent characteristic of cyanide on her. He looked up at Heiji and mouthed 'cyanide' at him, paying no heed to the screams and strangled yelps of surprise that came from around them.
Heiji nodded as he came to the same conclusion that his friend had.
Murder.
He was just about to start investigating when something occurred to him.
"Does that punishment of yers count a murder case comin' up ta ya?"
"You know, she never clarified."
"Then technically she can't punish ya further until she says so. Come on, you need to cheer up."Heiji patted the eastern detective on the back.
"Now this is why you're my bro." Conan grinned, and together they started working on their new case.
A/N: Why did I write this at five this morning? No clue. Anyway, sorry for taking forever to update, but rest assured that I have not been slacking! I've just been working on story planning and long chapters for various stories. Already cut out around five thousand words from the second part of the first chapter of The Wolf, rewrote most of it, and added in and removed scenes as the whim struck.