Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan.
Oneshot Fifteen
Tattoo
Conan sighed as he tossed yet another garishly colored shirt with a sickeningly cute animal caricature onto the pile of rejects. He hated being a child once more, and had discovered that shopping with Ran was torture no matter his age (apparent or otherwise).
"Conan-kun, I have some more shirts for you to try on! I even found one with Kamen Yaiba on it!" Ran announced from outside the changing stall, a bundle of children's clothing draped across an arm.
Suppressing a groan, the boy instead chirped a happy response in reply and gathered up the many denied articles of clothing, all the while wondering if living with his sorta-girlfriend was always going to be like this; it had only been a few days since he had shrunk and already the strain of keeping up his act was getting to him.
He was just about to reach for and don his shirt when he realized that would mean setting down his current burden. Not particularly wanting to – Conan just really wanted to get this shopping trip over with – Conan instead shrugged his shoulders. Ran had seen him shirtless before, and it hardly mattered when he was in the body of a child. Stomach curdling at the thought, Conan shook his head to cast it from mind, and instead opened the dressing room door.
Smiling at her charge, Ran relieved him of the rejected clothes – tutting at how he'd refused so many of them; he really needed more, and at this rate it would take all day to assemble a wardrobe – and handed off the new ones to Conan. She was just about to leave when the child turned his back to her.
"Conan-kun!" Ran made a funny strangled sound, as if her exclamation had started out as a scream but got caught somewhere on the way out.
"Hm?"
"Why do you have a tattoo?" Ran choked out after her lips worked silently, pitch rising with every syllable.
A cold wave hit Conan before scalding heat rushed to his cheeks. He had forgotten about that! Not that he particularly wanted to remember; the story of how he got a giant tattoo across his back depicting a buxom blonde riding a velociraptor which had a mohawk made of fire while shooting Martian invaders with an assault rifle was a very embarrassing one that involved Hawaii, his father, and alcohol.
"Err, Hawaiian religious tradition?" Conan stammered on the spot.
Ran stared at him for several long moments before shaking her head.
"Americans are weird." She decided, and left the stall, shutting the door behind her and leaving Conan to privacy once more.
Heart still racing in his chest, the detective-turned-boy slumped against the dressing room mirror. In the process of turning to the most recent clothing to try on he stopped, eyes widening as he caught sight of his back in the mirror.
"I don't recall getting a tattoo of the Night Baron!" he hollered.
Omake:
The first thing Shinichi did after returning to his proper age was enter a tattoo parlor. Later, Ran would come to discover his tattoos and ask him why it was that he had the exact same ones as Conan, to which he would point out that no, it was not the same tattoo. After all, Shinichi's tattoo had a swanky moustache on the woman, which Conan's did not have.
"Hawaiian religious tradition?" Ran deadpanned.
"Exactly," said Shinichi straight-facedly. His girlfriend stared long at him, but when his expression did not break she turned away with a sigh.
"You really need to stop going to Hawaii."
"Trust me, I know."
Shinichi never did find out where that second tattoo came from, though he suspected it was his father's doing.
A/N: I have no regrets. Yet another idea sprung when I should be sleeping (considering how little rest I'm getting these days, this is probably the reason for the deluge of crack-fics). Oh, and there's a new poll on my profile; it will probably help determine which full-fledged stories I have planned will receive the most frequent updating.