a/n:

hi hi so sorry it's taken me months to update i…accidentally gained a new hyperfixation. oops? plus i've been sick this whole week and thought i would write this to make myself feel better lol so do not expect anything at all we're just vibing in here

also this was a humongous chapter that i refuse to post all at once because i do not hate myself THAT much

. . .


i swear i had an amazing title for this chapter but i cannot for the life of me remember what it was so until the day i do which might actually be never this is gonna be the working title


So. Here he is. Moderately shouting less than suitable phrases underneath a child's (temporary, hopefully very much temporary) window. Huh, well, can't say this was how he saw himself spending the afternoon.

"Will you cut it out already?!"

The aggravated bawl hauls him out of his head and into the bleak, very bleak, very miserably bleak, very utterly astonishingly dysfunctionally horrifically miserably bleak reality.

Thus, Kaito, like the presumed adult he is, receptively replies.

"No!"

The little bugaboo, who a handful of minutes ago crawled out of the cozy comforter to check out the engrossing three-sided yelling match Kaito's got going on beneath his window, is irked further.

Who cares?!

Kaito has been losing his damn mind for much longer here! He has seniority privileges over him!

"Shut up!"

"Make me!"

Kaito, who had blissfully gone half-brain-dead after the traumatic—and that's too sunshiny a word even—discovery, wrenches himself back into semi-wakeful consciousness, just enough to begin recognizing his mortiferous mistake.

'Oh no! Why did that just come out inherently sexy?!'

Curse his 'enemies to lovers phase that was never really a phase, mom!' but much more of a lifestyle that since the brutally inflicted wound upon his ego has been steadily leaking into every nook of his life like a surprise-nosebleed during a very big exam where he's scrambling off his seat and trying to salvage what he can of the paper before the answers are splattered in his lifeblood whilst trying his damnedest to avoid the professor's stern stare trained on the mess unfolding on his desk and all the while the dude to his left keeps incessantly asking him for the answer to question 17 like his life isn't falling apart right in front of everyone's eyes!

Not–Not that something as pathetic ever happened to him, hah, this just happens to be a casually plucked example out of his repertoire of casual examples...of course.

"Watch me do that." Comes strangely quietly and suddenly pointedly from the octagonal little balcony above his head.

"...oh god." Kaito finds himself muttering under his breath, slightly scared but also slightly thrilled, and what the fuck is wrong with him? The doctors should already have had the answers to this age old question at this point.

The tiny troll's expression appears piercing even from this distance as he...

Wobbles in place.

Before falling to his knees.

And not moving anymore.

Unfortunately for himself, the child's first dumbfall and Kaito's second (or third?) traumatic finding appear to have sucked all the humor out of the situation for him to find its sequel anything more than disappointingly lacking, anonymous sources claim, further demanding, who let it happen?

In fact, faced with the upending sight, Kaito's veins chill so quickly they refashion themselves into cold-storage boxes for his blood, evoking the core memory of Aoko once chucking ice cubes at his face to wake him up because she said she had run out of water to do so.

See, the thing is, Kaito does not run upstairs.

He isn't rushing to get to the little gremlin in the shortest possible time, his muscles aren't spasming, his calves are not on fire and he is most definitely not out of breath from the sprint that never even occurred. And when Franky asks him what's the rush when he isn't running past him to get to the right room that he doesn't anxiously uncover through trial and error, Kaito is hasty to assure him that no, he isn't actually in any rush, he's just training for the annual competition for slowest stairs sprinters, and, yes, it is an occult sport that not many are aware of.

Kaito gently pulls the door open with a very regular breathing pattern as he most definitely is not currently feeling like the arctic ocean has taken residence in his lungs.

Only to find the whippersnapper sitting on the floor of the balcony with a glass of sweet apple juice that he coolly sips through a straw like nothing even happened at all and—woah, woah, woah.

Why does he get one? They never gave him a straw! When will these bigoted double standards end!?

The gremlin holds the enviable straw between his teeth with a moderately aggressive chew to it, and regards him in much the same vein. "Please go hack up your lungs in your own room."

"Shut up?" Kaito cordially asks, offended and not out of breath from the single flight staircase.

The pipsqueak narrows daring eyes at him. "Make me."

Gah!

Is the scritch secretly into the 'enemies to lovers' trope too? Just how precocious can this child really be?! Someone quickly stop the little troublemaker before this turns into A Thing!

GAH!

Kaito is supersonic fast to loudly and clearly broadcast his thoughts to all the psychics currently tuned in to his utmostly purest and chastest brain waves: This is absolutely not A Thing at all and will never ever ever be ha ha! There is absolutely no need to involve the police here ha ha!

When in the next ten painstaking seconds no secret service agents or the pope come crashing through the walls to apprehend him, Kaito deems the situation sufficiently handled. Having soothed his own conscience, and no doubt the conscience of many a psychic out there, he allows himself the luxury to slide down the doorframe, which causes a squeaky friction that only helps to underline the sudden awkwardness of the moment.

To fight the aforementioned awkwardness and his own perpetual downward spiral, Kaito attempts to strike up a casual conversation (as if his brain didn't just turn into deliquescing goo trying to squeeze out of his ears).

"So, how's it going on your end?"

"None of your business."

"Me too."

The pipsqueak throws him a look, which toes the fine line between disconcerted and dumbfounded, which Kaito returns in double.

There's a muted exchange between them. It is not quite understanding, but something kind of possibly akin to maybe that.

A weary twin sigh lifts at once from the both of them.

Kaito grimaces. Oh no, are they already in the mirroring stage of their non-existent relationship? Because Kaito would truly like to skip this one altogether.

He shudders at the mere thought of sharing anything ever at all with his soulm—

Kaito is, thankfully, saved from another downward spiral when a couple voices call for Doito Katsuki to get his ass downstairs!

Who the fuck?, Kaito thinks for a disorienting second.

"...oh, shit, that's me!" Kaito mumbles to himself a reorienting second later, swiftly getting to his feet so he can once and for all leave the pipsqueak behind and hopefully never see him ever again.

"You comin' to see the magic show?"

NO!

This was not what he meant to say at all! In fact he had meant to keep his mouth selead shut until the rest of forever—what is wrong with him!?

The gremlin seems taken aback for a drawn out moment.

"Uh...yeah?" The kid whispers back, looking even more taken aback by his own answer.

Kaito ignores the tiny thrill of warmth that trills up his ribcage.

It's not like he would care if the child attended the stupid show or not. Actually, it would be much, much better if he wasn't there at all, which he unfortunately is, gonna be there, that is.

"Well. I'll see you there. I guess." Kaito utters with as much distaste as he can infuse into his voice.

For good measure, and with minimal amounts of snort-chuckling, he ends up adding.

"Don't let the snowbank hit you on your way out."

At that, he hears a disgruntled whisper aimed at his back that distinctly sounds like "dick".

Kaito is, admittedly, too out of it right now to realize a child just swore. So, as he breezes down the stairs to join the rest of the crazies, his first thought goes out to how this cockeyed group features that member already, and he just could never steal someone else's spot.

After all identity theft is a very serious issue, Kaito thinks while pretending to be somebody else.


. . .

a/n:

god have i missed writing this one. like, this is good for my soul