Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan/Case Closed.

Pairing: KaitoxShinichi

Rating: T

Genre: Romance/Humor/Friendship

Summary: The weight of all his responsibilities and the expectations lavished upon him by everyone from the police to his closest friends has caught up to Shinichi. Just as he is beginning to feel like he's going to run screaming into the hills, his mother comes home and proposes a change of scenery—along with a change of profession and identity.

In Other Shoes

Chapter 1 - Teetering

It was as he was pulling on his shoes at twenty minutes to midnight to answer a call from Sonoko of all people about a murder at a night club—the third murder to surface on his radar just that day—that Shinichi finally admitted to himself that there was a problem. Between cases and university, he had gotten a total of eleven hours of sleep in the last three days. He'd had all his meals on the go, and those meals had mostly consisted of coffee and toast and one serving of pasta—cold.

There, sitting on the floor in his own front hallway with one shoe on, he found himself wondering what the point of it all was. He felt like he was sitting in the middle of a long, long road that stretched barren and unchanging into the infinite distance, heading nowhere. Was this what his life was going to be from now on? Solving an endless stream of murder cases? What was the point when there was always going to be another killer around the corner? Was he even making a difference?

When he thought about it logically, he knew the work had to be done, but there was just no end to it. And that knowledge suddenly filled him with an intense and overwhelming dread.

He was a detective. This was his job. He had to do it—everyone expected him to do it. They counted on him. And he wanted to do it… Didn't he?

To be a detective was all he'd ever wanted. He knew that. But… Now, leaning back against the hallway wall and gazing blankly at the blank wall opposite, he realized that a detective was also all he knew how to be. And he wondered if he even had a choice anymore.

He felt trapped.

His phone rang. It was Sonoko again, asking where he was.

He almost told her that he wouldn't be going. He was exhausted and confused, and all he really wanted to do was lie down, close his eyes, and let sleep take him.

But instead he told her that he would be there soon, pulled on his other shoe, and set out for the crime scene. After all, someone had been murdered. Next to that, Shinichi's personal problems were unimportant.

It was half past three in the morning when he finally got home. By then, he could barely keep his eyes open, and all he could think about was his soft, soft bed upstairs. Tired as he was, he didn't notice the new pair of shoes in the entrance hall. He didn't even wonder why the lights in the house were on, assuming that he had forgotten to turn them off when he'd left. And so he was caught completely by surprise when he walked smack into his mother.

"Oh there you are!" she exclaimed when she saw him. "Where have you been? I've been looking all over for you."

Shinichi could only blink stupidly at her, wondering if he'd fallen asleep somewhere and this was a dream. But then Yukiko was hugging him, gushing about how nice it was to be home again and how beautiful Rome had been and how he really should have gone with her and Yuusaku when they'd invited him, and he knew that this was real because no dream could crush the air out of his lungs like she was doing now.

"I didn't know you were coming back," he said when she finally let him go and demanded to know why he hadn't been home to meet her.

"Didn't you get my letter?" she asked.

At that, Shinichi's gaze shifted automatically to the pile of unopened letters sitting on one end of the dining table. Yukiko's gaze followed his, and she pursed her lips.

"Really Shin-chan, you should know better than to ignore your mail."

Since he had nothing to say to that, he asked her another question instead. "Is Dad back too?"

"No. He went off to do some research in Greece." She went on talking, telling him about the many things she had seen and done in Rome and how incredible it had all been, but Shinichi had already stopped listening. He was so tired that his ears were beginning to buzz, and the kitchen lights were just too bright. It was only when he'd nearly nodded off and begun swaying on his feet that his mother finally noticed.

"Oh, but I guess we can talk more tomorrow. You look dead on your feet."

Relieved, Shinichi wished his mother a goodnight and stumbled up to his bedroom. He didn't even remember lying down.

-0-

In all honesty, Kudo Yukiko knew that she wasn't what anyone would call a model parent. Neither she nor her husband had spent all that much time with Shinichi while he was growing up. Neither of them thought it necessary because the boy had always been so independent. Looking back though, she sometimes wondered if Shinichi had been that way because he had had to be. Because she and Yuusaku had never taught him that he could rely on them when he had problems. And she knew it was too late to try and do so now.

Still, even if she hadn't been a particularly successful or attentive mother, she did love her son in her own way. And, having once been a very successful actress, she was quite good at reading people. And so it didn't take her very long at all to realize that there was something wrong with her baby boy. Figuring out what was wrong was more difficult—due in no small part to the fact that Shinichi himself barely knew what the problem was.

"What you need is a change," she declared three days after she'd come home.

Shinichi, who was in the middle of studying for his final exams while trying to eat dinner at the same time, looked up and blinked at her in incomprehension. "What?"

"It's the best way to deal with a block," Yukiko explained.

Her explanation only served to further confuse Shinichi. "A block…?"

"You know, like artists get when they can't find their inspiration and nothing feels right. Everyone runs into a block now and then. And the best way to get over it is to get a change of scenery. Do something different—something new that you've never done before."

"Final exams are coming up," Shinichi said blankly. "I can't go on vacation with you, if that's what you're getting at."

"Nonsense. You'll be done with exams after next week, and then you'll be on summer break. Don't worry. I'll make all the arrangements. I'm sure Miyako-chan will be able to put us up for a few months. Iroyamura is lovely at this time of year. It'll be perfect!"

"A few months?!" Shinichi squawked, dropping his chopsticks with a clatter. They rolled away across the table only to come to a stop against another of his textbooks. "That's way too long! I have work to do."

Despite his continued protests, however, as soon as his last exam was over, he found himself at the train station with his mother and two small suitcases packed by said aforementioned mother. Part of the reason for this was that Yukiko, being Yukiko, never listened to anyone's opinions but her own once she'd made up her mind about something. But the other part was that Shinichi secretly hoped that his mother was right and a little change of pace would help him find whatever it was that was missing because, if nothing changed, he was afraid he was going to lose his mind one day in the none too distant future and end up running screaming into the hills, never to be seen again.

-To be Continued-