A/N CoAi Week is here!
Be sure to check out other works (I'm sure they'll be flooding in this week!) and watch out for the pieces I'll post in the following days (hopefully I get to finish all seven!) XD
The prompt for this fic is "Trust" :D
Day 1. Trust : To Each His Own
She trusts him. He trusts her. [CoAi] [ShinShi]
He trusts her silence. While he can never understand why she's keeping what she knows under wraps, he trusts her. Truthfully, he understands why, but he's just a bit disappointed she doesn't trust him enough to lay her secrets bare. Just a tiny little bit disappointed, that was all he can admit. But not today. Today, he's livid, and he really can't spare the time to think about anything else, so, shut up, Megure-keibu.
She trusts his recklessness. She knows she won't be able to stop him once he's set his mind, and she admires him for that. Hmm, admires his stupidity, yes, because how can someone so intelligent be so frustratingly incorrigible and unrelenting? She can never win against him. By the way, no one needs to mind how her heart has somehow taken on that detective's relentlessness in those rare—not really, but she doesn't want to recognize it—moments of gallantry he surprisingly—not really, but, again, she doesn't want to recognize it—shows. But a few erratic beats here and there are to be expected, because she is, after all, a teenager. But right now, she's pretty sure her hormones are not the cause of all this tension. In fact, she's 100% sure—she has a kid's body after all—and thinking about idle matters did not help in calming her at all. And so, while she might curse his thick head almost every day, she begrudgingly considers today as an exception and just wishes that he'd get here already. No matter how impossible—ahh, improbable for him it is. Because she knows for sure that he'd get to her. She just wishes he was here already.
She isn't pining by the way. It's just that, the entire room is burning and she just can't breathe.
"Haibara!" Right on cue.
"Here!" Coughing, she moves clear from the door. Few moments after, she hears, "Get away from the door, I'm kicking it open!" and in just two seconds—yes, she counted—the burning door is opened, and she feels a hand on her wrists, dragging her out, before she sees him. She swears to herself, the smoke got to her eyes and it's making her teary.
Small frantic footsteps, she can't help but note, "I think we've done this before already."
"Shut up and save oxygen, moron." An acerbic reply from him, and it both amuses and irritates her. She assesses herself: she has some burns but nothing she can't handle, and she feels calmer, even as burning debris and furniture fall around them. Calm enough to think that she'd have his leg burns checked as soon as she sees a medic—and she does hope the stupid detective thought to call backup this time, since she'd been stuck here—and maybe assist Hakase on checking which fire-retardant mixture would work best for his creations.
She's also calm enough to retort, "I'm not the moron who took so long to figure out which was the twisted pedophile in that group. I hate saying I told you so, but there's one moron here and it's not me."
"You know, unconscious you maybe a pain to carry, but I'm starting to think that's preferable to this."
"You know, if you took any longer, I would have had to jump from the window."
"Don't joke around, that was the fourth floor."
"I know. And there wasn't anything I could use as cushion."
He grips her wrists a bit tighter. He doesn't notice. She does. "I trust you, Haibara, so don't go killing yourself off because I don't know what to think."
"...I trust you too, Kudo-kun."
He stops, looks at her, notices her injuries, barely resisting the urge to wipe off the dirt in her cheeks because, his logic says, he'd just put more dirt on her face and she will certainly notice and maybe, just maybe, she'd slap him unconscious and leave him in this burning hell. Nevermind that he's still confused, why did she have to say that now? He stares a second too long, and she smirks. He desperately wants to roll his eyes, he can't believe he fell for that again. He tugs her to the right, they're near the exit.
"You're making fun of me? I'm still angry, and I just saved your life, so you could try to not make fun of me right now."
"Ah, but that's impossible."
"You're impossible."
The moment they step out, the night air greets them, cold and clean. "Next time, tell me before you go." He doesn't know when he released her wrist to hold her hand, but he hopes he got his point across as he squeezes her hand.
"You'll find me anyway."
He doesn't let go.
Until Hakase clears his throat, and Haibara shoves him to the medic.