A/N: Quite a lot in this. Plot and romance in a nutshell. Aren't you happy? Also, Kirby-chan, buttefly-chan, don't kill me. You still want me to write the next chapter. Don't deny it.
Warning–nothing in this.
Disclaimer–no owning on my part, no suing on yours, all is well with the world.
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2.1
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They ended up checking in a rusty little hotel at 10.55 pm after two bus-days straight. The place was old, and half-empty, but the suite they were given, comprising of two bedrooms and one showerplace, was comfortable and rather cheap for what it was.
Aoko claimed the bathroom first, washing off days of travel and dust, washing off the stress that had accumulated onto her shoulders; washing off the worry and concern of will we be too late next time. When she came out, she felt relaxed and at ease for the first time in weeks.
Kaito did not. He was leaning against the wall when she came out, hands buried in his pockets, expressionless. He looked up when the door opened, and heaved a breath at the sight of her.
"You okay?" she asked tiredly; this was too heavy for him, she was sure.
He smiled thinly. "I'll be better after a shower. Go to bed. Shoo." His hand brushed her damp hair as he slipped past her into the bathroom. The door closed behind him, and she tightened her bathrobe around her waist, biting her lips.
A slight bleep from the desk caught her attention. A laptop sat there–god, Kaito, she hadn't even known he had one–whose was his bag, Mary Poppins? the thought made her smile as she stepped closer. The screen was lit up and showed several windows–one, a map of some kind, two, a diagram, three, an e-mail box. Just as she sat tentatively before the desk, that window popped up with a new message.
Kuroba, it said–apparently it was programmed to open automatically– dunno where you are now, but you need to hurry over. I'm past Highway-34 right now. Mortown is the name.
–K.
She clicked on the map window. Highway-34 was there, a little northeast from them, and a blinking dot was beeping as it followed the light line. Mortown–
The bathroom door opened just as she looked up Mortown on the Web. She did not freeze, did not turn. Her fingertips stilled on the keys. "… Aoko, what are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" she asked coldly. She whirled around in the rotating chair, glaring tightly at Kaito's tense figure by the bathroom door. "Apparently you did not think it necessary to tell me you had a informer."
"Kudo answered?" In seconds he was beside her, tugging her out of the chair, taking her place, typing. "Mortown," he muttered under his breath, and she could have sworn it caught for a second. He followed the same course of action she had seconds later–looking up the town on the Web, locating it on the map–west, west again and again, on a direct line from their current setting–calling up a fifth window to check on the bus' schedules.
"No bus until the tomorrow night," he sighed, and turned slowly, tiredly, to look at her. "… you weren't supposed to see this."
"You bet," she snapped. "That's why you left your laptop open and kept the windows up. Don't you think I'm a fool, Kuroba Kaito."
"I know you're not a," he said, cut himself off, and something grew in his eyes. "I… actually, I have something to show you. I should have showed it to earlier but–" a defeatist gesture, as though to say, Now's the worst time. He pushed another key, and the window slipped down to give way to another, much bigger one.
She bent cautiously to watch. "What's that?"
"A video. An old one, so the sound's pretty scratchy, but you can understand anyway." He flicked Play. The two figures on the screen sprang into life.
One was painfully familiar. The other was, too, but no ache came with it. "That's my dad," she breathed, eyes roaming over the recognizable features, the short hair, the angry air that had curiously softened to that of–defiance, somewhat. "And that's–"
"Mine," he said. "Yes. Listen."
'You are quite sure about that.' Her sob stuck midway in her throat at the young, much younger voice of her father's. It had been ten years, and if she counted years correctly, that tape was at least eighteen years old. She had been–she'd been nine.
'Yes,' Kuroba Touichi said, with a smile that was almost his son's. He, too, was young, but pretty much as he was on all the pictures she had seen of him. 'I am. I left you all the data I could find.' His grin turned a little softer, a little cooler. 'If things turn bad, I rely on you to keep an eye on my family.' –and then warmed again. For the first time, Aoko realised how great a father Kuroba Touichi must have been. 'If things turn bad, you'll be sure to see Kaito again in ten's years' time.'
Her father smiled, too, if tightly. 'Yes.' A hand was extended, between the thief and the policeman. 'Goodbye, Kuroba.'
The hand was accepted. Shaken. 'Goodbye, Nakamori. Take care.'
The video plummeted then. "My father died two years after that," Kaito's voice said soberly, beside her, but distant as though by years. "That's all I could recover of the tape. Everything else's rotten and you can't make out a thing." A pause. "But it's enough."
It wasn't. "It's not!" she said, grabbing his collar to make him look at her. "That's why my father died? That's why?"
He shook his head. "I don't–"
"Don't say you don't know," she hissed, her face very close to his. "Because you do. You know much more than you admit. You lie all the time–by omission. So now you're going to tell me, or I'll–"
His eyes hardened a little, and his hand tightened over her nape, bringing her closer still. "There's one thing I know," he said. "Only one," and kissed her.
Over the bed, the clock ticked to 12.00.
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That last line's a shameless ploy to keep on my update basis. Also, next chapter might be steamy. Sort of. By the way, that's the end of the second third. There're seven chapters left of this, and I'll be finished by March 1st.
Ahem. Cookies?