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“The kids seem to have gotten into the candy stash, again,” Haibara mutters, soft eyes amused as Shin’ichi wanders out into the cold.
He doesn’t even bother to give her a reply; why does she think he decided to get out of the house, anyhow?! Instead, he meanders his way over to her to collapse, face-first, into the nape of her neck.
“You expect too much,” Shin'ichi groans into her loose-knit sweater, muffled, as the festivities of his friends and family roar raucously into the night.
Haibara huffs out a sardonic smile, cold-brewed moonlight striking the strands of her tea-colored hair as she breathes out foggy breaths. “Maybe,” she retorts, “You simply expect too little.” Shin’ichi just digs his gloved hands deeper into his coat pockets; out of the corner of his eye, he sees the warmth cupped between her palms, sees her sip: at a mug of hot cocoa filled to the brim.
“... Aa,” he responds, after a pause. Shiho feels the shudder that goes through him, either from the cold or from the particularly loud shriek of his mother’s (often dramatized) surprise, but he doesn’t move any closer.
Rolling her eyes, she sinks back into the embrace, and feels the poor, stubborn detective relax, if only just for a moment. Shin’ichi’s nose brushes the crown of her head, and she sighs.
“You have people here that know you and care for you.”
She intertwines his fingers with her own, and he presses the clasped palms to his cheek, soaking in the closeness.
“It’s not a bad thing,” she hums, “To yearn for that kind of happy ending.”
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It’s almost terrifying, how calm things get after all is said and done. After the poison, after the Syndicate. After Conan .
Terrifying, and something Shin’ichi struggles to live with, because even though this is the sort of thing he’d wanted, for far too long… it’s strange, that now that he has it, he doesn’t know what to do with it.
(To be free, to be unafraid. To return to those bygone days where the truth wasn’t quite so heavy a cross to bear.)
It’s idiotic, that he wishes Haibara had followed him into this new unknown, when she’s still right beside him, if not in a more… miniature… package. Idiotic, and maybe just a little bit wistful, because he doesn’t know who he is, sometimes, when she isn’t there to remind him: he is not alone.
“There’s nothing for Miyano Shiho, here, Kudou-kun,” she’d explained, that night he’d begged. Begged, with crumpled pride, on his knees, head to the floor and eyes shut tight. Begged, desperate and weary, going out of his mind with a paranoia he could not cut loose.
“Please!” Shin’ichi had whispered, voice hoarse with the nightmares that still keep him up at night.
I can’t , he couldn’t say. I don’t want to .
(Not again.)
A light touch to his forehead. A meeting of winter skies with the shades of an ocean in their depths, as slate-sepia stardust lit the memories around them both.
“But,” Haibara had offered, a soft smile gracing her features, as she’d reached up to cup his face between her hands, and promised, “Haibara Ai has a whole future ahead of her.”
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So wait for me , she hadn’t said. Would you?
(... Always. After all, we’re partners, aren’t we?)
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In the wet autumn rains, Edogawa Conan and Haibara Ai chased after murderers and thieves, and pretended that these days that well up within their hearts at the crunch of boots on concrete, the sluice of water on skin, the whistle of the wind at their cheeks, would last a lifetime and a half.
Time spent searching, time spent wanting. These childish days, like a bubble within a flask, untouched by the hardships of reality.
“Was it truly a bad thing, if I wished those summers wouldn’t end?”
Shin’ichi huffs out a short, bitter laugh into his drink, and concedes, “If it was, I’m probably just as bad as you.”
A sardonic smile, and the tap of nails on wood. “To future regrets, then?” she proposes, offering a sherry to his bourbon. He raises his glass, in turn, to clink against her own.
“Aa,” he agrees, watching the sunset filter in through the cafe blinds. “To future regrets.”
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The truth is hard, isn’t it? he ponders.
[ Kudou Shin’ichi feels more like a lie than Conan ever did. ]
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"I thought you were getting the turkey," she complains, arms filled with boxes of pasta grain, bags of vegetables, and a shopping list a mile wide. She looks kind of ridiculous, Shin’ichi thinks; for someone so short to be carrying so much, that he couldn’t even see the top of her head from where he’s stood.
( Almost adorable, if he didn’t know her vicious personality like the back of his hand.)
Instead, Shin'ichi, bundled in a thick wool sweater and a scarf almost as wide as his face, fondly shouts back, "What, I thought you were!"
… He also almost spills the trays of pumpkin spice latte in his hands, as he moves to try and help her out, when a file from the Beika City PD slips past his arms and almost takes a bath in a melted snow puddle on the sidewalk. But, no one saw that slip-up, so he’ll take that as the small victory that it is, and pointedly ignores the amused stare Haibara tosses his way.
“... I’m assuming your mother already picked it up, then?” she asks, readjusting the bags and boxes into a more manageable balancing act.
With decidedly less bags on her person, it’s easier to make out Haibara’s face. The reddened cheeks, the ruddy button nose that appears to have the beginnings of a sniffle coming on. He can’t help the grin that breaks out.
“Yeah. Kaa-san is a monster around Christmas time; I’m just surprised she and Tou-san were able to escape the editors, this year.”
Something in his tone must have given it away, because Haibara just rolls her eyes at his words. “You should be more grateful, Kudou-kun. They’ve put up with you for this long, haven’t they?”
Her words are teasing, softly chiding, but they do strike a nerve, all the same. “They haven’t been around enough to put up with me,” Shin’ichi can’t help pointing out.
Haibara cuts a glance towards him, curious, but Shin’ichi doesn’t give her the chance to question it. Now’s not the time to worry over past mistakes, after all.
“More importantly!” he shouts, quite a bit louder, as he slings an arm around Haibara’s shoulders to crouch down and level her with an unimpressed stare. “Why’d you have to go and invite the whole neighborhood to the dinner?”
She pauses, her eyes widening, as her breath condenses into the chill winter air. A soft blush rises high on Haibara’s cheeks, unnoticeable amidst the ruddy redness already there.
She coughs to collect herself, and asks, “... They are our friends, aren’t they?”
What she doesn’t say: you miss them, and they miss you. Conan, Shin’ichi, whoever you are… it makes sense, to want to spend time with those you’ve left behind.
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“Don’t you want to see how they are?”
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The sad thing is, he does. He really, really does.
Which, of course, means Genta gets into the christmas cake early, Mitsuhiko figures out the mystery Shin’ichi had planned for the Detective Boys and finds the presents too soon, and Ayumi steals Haibara away long enough that Shin’ichi ends up on cleanup duty when Genta and Mitsuhiko’s shenanigans had uncovered an actual, honest-to-god kidnapping from across the street.
“Rough day?” Haibara asks him, when she returns with Ayumi in tow, her arms crossed as she leans against the stairwell bannister.
From where he’s collapsed on the sofa in a hectic heap, Shin’ichi slowly shoves his face into his palms and groans.
“Rough doesn’t even begin to cover it,” he mumbles, after a few seconds of wondering just how this is his life (and, no, he definitely didn’t make these choices).
He hears her soft steps thumping across the carpet long before he feels her settle atop the armrest. He peers up from between the gaps of his fingers to see her propping up her chin with a hand, gazing at him with an arched brow and amusement dancing on her lips.
“But, you had fun, didn’t you?”
“... Haibara, there are three elementary school students, the babysitter who took them from their homes, and a worried uncle outside right now. And the abuse allegations the babysitter stated was their reason for murdering the mother are still being investigated.”
She actually has the audacity to roll her eyes. “Of course there was. Yoshida-san was beginning to wonder what the boys had gotten themselves into.”
“You haven’t exactly disproven my point.”
“You are a detective, after all. This should be par for the course.” The consoling hand she settles on his back is more than a little patronizing, but her words aren’t sarcastic when she insists, “Still, the evening wasn’t all bad, was it?”
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Here’s the thing: Kudou Shin’ichi is used to things turning sour even when he never intended them to. Sure, even the best-laid plans of mice and men can go awry, but is it too much to ask for even a single night of peace?
According to Haibara, he should have picked a different profession. According to Hattori, the quiet life’s not built for people like them. And, according to the universe, the simple answer is: yes, yes it is.
But, between his family and friends — Ran, with an engagement ring freshly-bought as she exclaims over her latest success in a martial arts tournament; Sonoko, with her braggart ways as she goads Shin’ichi into revealing the latest mysteries he’s wound up in, much to the Detective Boys’ awe; Kaa-san and Tou-san, as they bring out the baby pictures and tall tales where, somehow, Shin’ichi still hasn’t learned the lesson his father had wanted to teach (though, the crinkle in his eyes gives away a lot more than that) — Shin’ichi can honestly say that the night had been worth it.
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“It’s not a bad thing,” Shin’ichi agrees, after the festivities begin to die down.
“The family you’re born with, and the family you choose…”
As Haibara puts her cup away, Shin’ichi stops stifling the urge to embrace her, and, instead, whispers, “You don’t choose who you build your life with, and… you don’t choose how things change, but.”
He stutters, embarrassed, as he stumbles through what he wants to say, but Haibara is merciful, as she completes the words for him.
“I’m glad, too, that I stayed.”
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Don’t run away.
(After all, I’m not the only one who wants you to stay.)
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