Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kaito used to really like the beach. The sand and water was fun to play in, there were shells everywhere to pick and listen to the ocean through, and the seagulls were all screaming and would scatter as he ran through only to reform as he threw bread at them.

He was swimming around with a snorkel and looking at the plants and fish that were flitted across his vision when he saw something shining at the bottom some ways away and went toward it without a second thought.

It was just some glass, he noted with childish disappointment, but next to that was what looked like a really pretty shell he was sure his mom would like.

He reached out to collect the shell and that’s when things got...unusual.

For one, something near the shell moved - he would later learn that it was most likely a crab of some stripe - and scuttled toward his hand, making him startle badly and try to swim back up to the surface.

But, when he tried to kick off from the ground to swim back up, his foot instead hit against a crevice and slipped between the openings, trapping him.

Kaito instinctively tried to make a sound of pain, and air bubbles escaped instead as he began to struggle to free himself. But, no matter what he did, in his panic he couldn’t coordinate his body enough to free himself.

For a second he considered crying out, but he was underwater and his parents were nowhere near close enough to see or hear his distress. He whimpered, unheard, and tried to tug his foot free again. Kaito winced as he felt the rock dig even deeper and looked down only to forcefully look back up where he saw the light weakly filtering in. There was definitely a cloud of red around his foot.

The waves lapped and pushed him further against the rocks, causing him to involuntarily release a gasp of pain and let water flood into his mouth.

And that’s when Kaito started to drown, surrounded by fish that would swim closer only to flit away as he struggled to keep his air.

Another bubble escaped and Kaito could feel the terror and need to survive starting to fade away as more water got into his mouth. He twisted again, weakly, and felt the rock cut deeper into his leg.

And then another boy appeared, looking confused and then terrified as he stared into Kaito’s eyes. Kaito stared back, noting his blue eyes shined like some of his mom’s jewelry. It looked like he had some kind of wetsuit that responded oddly to the water shifting around him.

The boy blinked and swam lower to examine how Kaito had gotten stuck and the six year old whimpered a little and tried to follow him with his eyes. He could faintly see the boy through the cloud of blood, but was forced to shut his eyes as the boy grabbed his ankle and wiggled it free. Gentle as he was Kaito still tried to let out a pained shout and choked as the water filled his mouth -

Before the water abruptly stopped as something covered his mouth, and he opened his eyes to find intense blue of the boy’s inches away from him.

Once he was calm the other boy removed his - his mouth? - and wrapped Kaito’s arms around his neck. And then he transformed into a seal and that was when Kaito realized he may be dreaming at this point as the seal started swimming to the surface.

They broke the surface quickly and Kaito sobbed as he expelled the water from his lungs and clung tighter to the seal. The creature made a worried sound but Kaito was still conscious enough to run a hand down its dark fur-covered back in an attempt to assure it he was fine. The seal made another sound and started leading them back to the shore, slower now that the danger had passed and it couldn’t put him on its back. It looked young, Kaito noted, but he didn’t know enough about seals to guess its age.

Once they were close enough to the shore that Kaito could put his feet on the sand he tried only to let out another sound as sand rubbed against his cuts.

And then the seal transformed back into the boy, who scowled at him even as he tucked his shoulder underneath Kaito’s armpit. “Will you stop trying to help or whatever you’re doing?” He snapped, sounding worried. “You just tore up one of your feet on the rocks, stop making it worse.”

“I’m not making it worse,” Kaito argued, even as he leaned against the other boy and started awkwardly hopping on one foot. “I know what I’m doing.”

“If you knew what you were doing and you did it anyway you’re stupid,” the other boy said, and Kaito was about to argue back when the other boy gently lowered him onto a towel - his family’s towel, he noted in surprise.

“How did you know this is mine?” Kaito asked in surprise, and the other boy looked up from where he was pouring some of their bottled water over Kaito’s cuts.

“You have what looks like a handmade clover patch on your suit and the exact same clover is on the cooler,” he answered. “Also I saw when your family arrived.”

“Oh,” Kaito said a bit dumbly. That was a lot of thought to put into just moving a person onto a towel they saw. “You must be really observant.”

The boy blushed a little at that and stared at Kaito for a second. “Thanks,” he said shyly, the red on his face going brighter for a second, before he moved over to their towels and carefully unfolded one to wrap around his foot. “There, that should prevent a lot of sand from getting into the cuts.” He stood up and brushed the sand off of his knees before nodding at him and turning away.

Kaito felt a bolt of fear at the thought of the other boy leaving and sat up, lunging to hold onto his arm. He blinked a little at the feel of the wetsuit under his hand; it felt like some kind of slick fur.

The other boy turned back around and jerked his arm away from Kaito’s grasp, clearly startled. “What is it?” He asked, eyes wary. “What’s wrong?”

Kaito stared at him before extending his hand again. “Please don’t leave,” he begged. “I don’t know where my parents are.” I’m scared, he didn’t say, and you make me feel safe.

The boy blinked at him, surprised. “I was going to look for your parents,” he answered. “I saw them looking for you.” But he didn’t try to move away again and, after a moment, grabbed Kaito’s hand and let Kaito tug him onto the towel with him. “I’m sure they’ll come back soon,” he said, and Kaito nodded before yawning as the events of the day finally caught up with him. He fell asleep on the other boy’s shoulder, the fur-like fabric soft against his cheek.

When he woke up his parents were around him and checking on his foot and the boy was nowhere to be seen.

Next to him was the shell he’d been trying to reach.

“Did you have fun at the beach, Shin-chan?” his mom asked, and Shinichi blinked at her and fiddled with a sand dollar he’d found on the shore - it’d caught his eye due to the pattern forming improperly and instead of a flower in the center was what appeared to be a clover.

“A little, before that boy went missing,” he admitted, thinking briefly of the boy he’d found trapped by the rocks. He’d seen him playing beforehand but had been nervous about approaching, especially since it was the first time he’d been to the beach in a long time.

He hadn’t wanted his control to slip around the other boy.

“You were quite the hero, Shinichi,” his dad said. He was smiling down at Shinichi as he put his pelt in the back along with Shinichi’s mom’s pelt. “Kuroba-san looked very relieved to see his son back where they’d left their stuff.”

Shinichi looked up at them in surprise. “You know his family, Dad?” he asked, and cocked his head as his mom laughed and his dad let out a long sigh.

“We both know them, Shin-chan,” his mom said. “Toichi-sensei taught me about disguising and impersonation, and he and your father have a kind of...rivalry.”

Shinichi kept his head tilted to try and parse what his mom was saying. “So he and dad are after the same thing?”

“Not at all,” his dad said, looking both amused and put upon. “Usually he’s after something and I’m trying to stop him.”

Shinichi got into the car and waited for them to expand on that, but neither of them did, his mom merely laughing as she slipped into the passenger seat while his dad got into the driver side. He fiddled with the sand dollar he’d gotten and listened to them talk some more, quietly losing himself to the rise and fall of their voices and the texture of the sand dollar as he gently traced the clover-like design. He broke out of it when his mom brushed his bangs away from his face. “What?” He asked, blinking to resettle himself, and she frowned a little.

“I asked what you thought of Toichi-sensei’s son. Were you able to talk to him?”

“Not really,” Shinichi admitted. “He was out of it from all of the water and sudden rush of oxygen. I…” he trailed off for a moment, uncertain if he should continue the thought, but now he had both of his parents’ attention on him, so forged on. “I didn’t know when to tell you, but I had to transform to get him to the surface in time.”

He felt the car slow significantly beneath him as his dad instinctively tried to slow it so he could turn and look at Shinichi. His mom looked somewhat surprised as well. “Do you think he’ll remember that you did that, Shin-chan?” she asked, but she didn't really look that concerned about it, merely curious.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Again, he was kind of out of it from the water he’d consumed and his injury. If he does remember it, he’ll probably just think it was his brain being weird from all of that.”

The car picked up speed again as his dad slowly nodded in agreement. “The human brain will do amazing things to understand what it perceives,” he agreed. “He’ll either dismiss that as an inconsistency in his memory or his brain will put your human form in place of your seal form. But please be more discrete in the future, Shinichi. We don’t need more humans interested in us.” His face twisted a little in a mixture of emotions Shinichi didn’t understand. “Especially that man’s family. They’re too nosy for their own good.”

His mom laughed a little. “Oh please. What’s the worse Toichi-sensei would do? Steal your fur?”

The look didn’t abate. “Yes, exactly that, dear. That man steals things constantly without thinking twice about them.”

His mom’s smile gentled at that and she reached out to lay a hand on his dad’s, making the tension his dad was carrying in his shoulders ease somewhat. “I think, if Toichi-sensei knew, he would think more than twice about stealing your pelt. Same with Chika-chan and mine.”

As his parents continued talking about letting people steal their pelts - adults were so strange - Shinichi listened to them for a little while before butting in gently. “I’m getting tired. Would it be alright if I took a nap?”

His mom, who’d been talking fondly about both of the humans, blinked at him for a second in surprise. “Of course, Shin-chan. We’ll wake you up when we get close to home.”

“Thank you.” Shinichi yawned for a second before tentatively asking, “Can I borrow your pelts?”

His mom smiled gently at him and ran her fingers through his bangs. “Yes, Shin-chan, you may.”

He cheered a little at that and carefully tugged their pelts closer, gently maneuvering them until they formed a warm nest which he then curled up in. As he started to nod off he heard his dad say, “I don’t think you should be telling me about your plans to trick a human into stealing your pelt, Yukiko. I think you’ve forgotten that we aren’t supposed to want that.”

“Well I’ve never claimed to be a particularly good Selkie,” his mom sniffed, and Shinichi nodded off to their conversation, thoughts on their words and the sand dollar still in his hand and the dark blue eyes of the boy he’d saved.

They’d been blue like the deeper parts of the ocean, Shinichi thought. He’d rather liked them.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Shinichi!”

Shinichi looked up from his book and turned to the girls chatting near him, not bothering to acknowledge the irritated glare Sonoko shot him. “What’s up?” He asked, and the two perked up a little.

“We were talking about our first loves,” Ran said, and Shinichi blinked slowly at them and lowered the book to rest on his lap.

“Okay? What does that have to do with me?”

Sonoko rolled her eyes and huffed. “Honestly, why do we bother? We’re trying to figure out who your first love was, Shinichi-kun!” She leaned forward a little to better hear what he would say. “It was your mom right? She’s super pretty.”

Shinichi gave her a Look, clearly questioning her thought process. “No, definitely not my mom. She’s a bit...much.”

Sonoko snorted and said something uncomplimentary about him but Ran spoke over her, curious. “So who was your first love, Shinichi?”

Well, to be blunt, his first love had been Ran, Shinichi supposed, and grew red at the thought of having to say that out loud.

But then he thought about that - and really, what better way to distract him from the question than to contemplate the entirety of what it meant for someone to be your “first love”?

Ran had been the first person that wasn’t his parents to acknowledge his deductions positively, and it had painted the beginnings of their friendship in a rosy manner. But now that he was a bit older he thinks that what he’d felt was more an infatuation than anything else. But perhaps that’s what someone’s first love was, Shinichi contemplated.

Shinichi, uncertain of where his thoughts were taking him, for the moment simply shrugged, said, “I don’t know really,” and tuned out Sonoko irritated sounds and Ran’s sigh as he thought about it more.

When he got home he dismissed those thoughts for another time and made his way into the library, not bothering to call out to an empty house, to curl up in his recliner and continue his book.

Beside him sat the sand dollar he’d picked up years ago.

Kaito doesn’t remember how the subject came up, but in middle school his classmates were talking about their first loves when someone looked over at him and said, “So who was your first love, Kuroba? Not like we don’t already know.”

The group laughed but Kaito frowned. Last he checked, he’d never told any of them about that day on the beach, or the boy that’d saved his life. “You wouldn’t know them.” He settled on saying, reluctant to tell them about that day - the f-f-fi-things, his almost-drowning, the boy turning into a seal (which he still really questioned the veracity of); none of those things he was really comfortable with revealing.

For some reason that just made them laugh harder. “Right,” the other boy said, clearly not believing him, but he just shrugged back and returned to his card shuffling, throwing in a few tricks sporadically.

If they really thought they knew who his “first love” was, then it was better off for him. They wouldn’t bug him about it anymore.

On the walk home Aoko was behaving weirdly, blushing and giving him tiny glances. He had no idea what that was about. “What’s up with you?” he asked, and she startled a little and grew redder for some reason.

“What you said today,” she said, tugging on a strand of her hair. He blinked and waited for her to continue. “Did you mean it? They wouldn’t know you’re first love?”

“Of course not,” he said, irritated at the subject being brought back up. “I’ve never told them, how the hell would they know?”

“Oh, that’s what you meant.” She said that...weirdly, but Kaito just brushed it off. “Will you...tell me about your first love?”

Kaito shrugged a little, uncomfortable. “Seriously, you wouldn’t them. I met him on a beach a little before I ran into you.”

“He?” She asked, voice cracking a little. “Your...your first love was a boy?!”

“Yeah? Why are you saying that like it’s weird?” He eyed her, confused and somewhat wary, and she seemed to notice that and wave her hands a little in front of herself.

“Sorry, I was just surprised! You never really showed interest in guys so I wasn’t expecting that.”

Kaito hummed a little back, somewhat skeptical but willing to believe her, and they continued the walk home with their normal behavior.

When he got home he called out an absent greeting to his mom and went up to his room. Throwing his bag on the bed he sat at his desk for a moment and stared at the shell he’d kept all those years ago, lying in plain sight of the whole room.

Shinichi screamed as the poison coursed through his body. Damn it all! If he’d had his pelt he might have been able to fight it off better. He couldn’t think anymore as another rush of pain coursed through him and he fell unconscious.

Later, in this new, smaller form, after his pelt had failed to cure him after the fact and he had been led to the Mouri family’s house, he would acknowledge that, while the thought was a good one, he would never have been so careless as to just have his pelt on hand in public without reason. Not when anyone could damage it or steal it off of him.

So he didn’t think on it anymore, instead focusing his resources on trying to catch the men who did this to him and try to get his body back the human way.

Though he had to wonder, after a month had passed, if he’d managed to piss off the fucking Morrígan with the sheer amount of dead bodies not related to that strange organization he’d managed to stumble across.

He glared sullenly at a crow across the street from the Mouri Detective Agency. “If you needed my help, you should have told me,” he grumbled, cursing the goddess of fate for her finicky ways.

He’d seen more of humanity’s worst back to back then he had in...quite a while. It only compared to the amount he saw when his dad was actively taking him to crime scenes, he thought with a trace of wistfulness for those old days. Back when his dad thought taking your son to work was a proper, human way of bonding with your offspring, not taking into account how gruesome his side job was considered to humans.

But in comparison to those old cases, with rather straightforward reasons for the murder, these new ones were a sliding scale of gruesome, from trying to burn those who had wronged them alive to committing suicide over a misunderstanding to…

Shinichi’s shoulders hunched forward a little as the low tones of a piano played through his mind, the fire crackling as it reached out to consume everything in sight, before he forcefully shook the memory away.

He couldn’t help but think that he wouldn’t leave the ocean for a year when he got his body back, because he was quite fed up with senseless human cruelty.

“What the hell, Mom?” Kaito demanded the next time he video chatted with her, for once frowning and not fiddling with any items as he focused on her. “Why’d you tell Ahoko about my...less than favorite animal?”

She grimaced apologetically but didn’t look remorseful. “I’m sorry, Kaito, but she was telling me about how you’ve been behaving recently and it was the only thing I could think of that would make you think twice about bothering her.”

“You’re not wrong about that,” he grumbled. “But still! That was a secret for a reason!” Because how could he ever explain that he’d nearly died surrounded by fish as a child only to be saved by a boy that turned into a seal? It was just easier for no one to know about his fear of fish in general, to not inspire their demands to know or incredulous reactions.

“I know honey, and I won’t ever tell her why, but you were tormenting her quite badly from what I’ve heard.” She then smiled teasingly at him. “Pulling her pigtails?” She asked, and he snorted a little.

“Only like how a friend would mess with another friend. Or a sibling. I definitely don’t like her like that,” he told her and her smile remained, to his mild surprise, before it suddenly gained a teasing edge.

“Too busy being in love with your little savior from years ago?” she asked, and he suddenly regretted this entire conversation.

Kaito felt his neck grow hot as he sputtered in protest. “Of course not! I just want to thank him some day! I didn’t get to,” he ended weakly, and his mom hummed skeptically.

“You know it was my friend’s son that saved you,” she reminded him. “I can just have her call him and meet you.”

And yes, he did know this. He’d thought about it a lot, actually; saying yes, meeting the boy-now-teen that had saved him from drowning and seeing where things went after that. But he still shook his head, hard-set on this. “I want to meet him on my own,” he said.

“You don’t even want a name? It would make things easier,” she offered, but he shook his head again.

“I’ll know him when I see him.”

And that was that.

Shinichi was incredibly unimpressed with the fake pearl they were using as a placeholder for the Black Star. “It’s not even the same amount of brightness if the Black Star really has been in the Suzuki Family’s possession for generations,” he grumbled, ignoring the way his senses were stretching out to the bauble only to ring back falsely.

“What was that, Conan-kun?” Ran asked, and Shinichi made sure to paste on a smile as he crossed his arms behind his head.

“I was just saying that pearl is really pretty, Ran-neechan!” Ugh, even calling that thing a pearl had felt gross. He walked away from the display as he ran through the code again and turned his eyes thoughtfully to where the sun was streaming through the windows.

In his attempt to better fit in with humans, Shinichi could admit that he...probably overdid it. From what he was able to gather humans rarely offhand knew how to tell time with a watch or what distinguishing features to look for in paintings or gems to spot fake ones. But it certainly benefited him as he looked up the location that the Broadcasting Satellite would be such that it would line up with what Kaito 1412 describes in his code.

Later that night, as he waited for the thief to arrive, Shinichi contemplated who - or what - the man could be. A thief who has been leaving notices and stealing gems for decades - barring the eight years he disappeared - has to have left some sort of paper trail, has to have lived a type of life that somehow would trace Kaitou 1412 back to him in some way. So the fact he was still a mystery was rather baffling.

Or perhaps he was some type of fae, searching for something but demanding entertainment as he did so. It could explain the riddles, the way he returned items, the strict creation and following of rules - but it didn’t explain the reliance of illusion and traditional magician abilities.

Unless he was hiding himself as a layman.

Shinichi cut off his thoughts - and his call with Agasa - as he sensed a presence behind him and stood up, shutting the phone and tucking it away in his coat.

It looks like his new opponent has made his appearance.

“What do you have there?” The phantom asked him, and Shinichi smirked as he set off the small fireworks, successfully managing to hide the way his body flinched at the way the small explosion lit up the area like fire in the sky.

“Fireworks!” he chirped back. “I thought this would be a good place for them, being so high up. Oh, what’s that?” A helicopter was approaching to check the disturbance and Shinichi had to admire the way the thief stood unflinchingly across from him despite that.

As the light hit the man and he talked, Shinichi felt something click with uncertainty in the back of his mind. He looked human - granted Shinichi couldn’t see his ears - and he sounded human - no riddles, no echoey quality to his voice, no verbal traps beyond those meant to maintain his own anonymity - but he couldn’t be a day over twenty from the looks of him.

The shrunken teen sucked in a sharp breath as his opponent mimicked two people’s voices flawlessly and had every police officer in their area converge on this one location. “Now look what you’ve done, Detective,” he heard the thief mock, but Shinichi’s mind was spinning, trying horribly to connect dots that didn’t belong together.

Shinichi read the follow up notice, feeling another bolt of energy at how easily the thief called out the Suzuki family’s replica pearl, and attended his next heist with easy enthusiasm.

And so their first chase began and ended, Shinichi high on adrenaline as he matched wits with a man that barely seemed human.

Chapter Text

Kaito couldn’t tell if it was weirder that he was looking forward to facing off against a seven year old at his next heist or that he had every right to be. Edogawa Conan was frighteningly intelligent and was a good mental match for Kaito whenever he attended a heist.

Which was why he was sulking a little as he heard Hakuba confirm he would be attending the heist tonight. He doesn’t think anyone’s really noticed – usually because Hakuba stuck to heists in Ekoda while Edogawa only to Old Man Suzuki’s – but from the look of things the infamous Kid Killer never attended a heist Hakuba was going to. Kaito had only noticed recently, and he was still debating on just how intentional the avoidance was.

And don’t get him wrong, Kaito was incredibly grateful he wouldn’t have to deal with both at once any time soon, but it still chafed. Hakuba already got in the way at a bunch of his heists and at school; he didn’t want him to get in the way of seeing his favorite critic.

Kaito growled a little as Hakuba sent him another smug look at being able to attend the heist later that day and pulled out a deck of cards to mess with and bide his time. He’ll hit the bastard with a paint bomb once Aoko stops watching out of the corner of her eye.

The minutes ticked by in relative peace that slowly turned uneasy the longer Kaito spent silently shuffling his deck and he mentally swore as the attention of the room began to turn to him but kept up a grin as he heard Keiko come into the room and counted down: 3…2…1…

“Aoko-chan!” Keiko called out in greeting, and Kaito struck the moment she was distracted, throwing a mixture of powdered pigment and glitter at the other boy before he could react. He crowed a little and jumped back as Hakuba swiped out reactively to try and get him in response.

“Kuroba-kun, what the hell?” He hissed, trying to wipe the pigment away before scowling in dismay as the color refused to budge. Glitter fell out of his hair in a small shower as he ran a hand through it and he hissed like a scalded cat.

“What can I say,” Kaito snickered. “Your head was getting so big, it made an excellent canvas for me to work on.”

Hakuba glowered at him and Kaito returned the look full force before ducking to avoid the mop that sailed over his head. After that Kaito and Aoko fell into their usual song and dance and the day continued as normal, Hakuba a now more colorful participant in the day.

Shinichi was utterly convinced that Haibara was a fae, as he stared at her in mild bafflement. “You’re taking the whole ‘I have a pelt that lets me turn into a seal and may prolong the length of the cures’ thing really well,” he said, trying his hardest to not let the tangle of emotions he felt at his own words get away from him.

She waved her hand dismissively and passed him a prototype pill. “I could tell that something was off about you from your behavior with the children and Mouri family. This...doesn’t quite put all of the pieces together, but it explains quite a bit. Now take that test antidote and help me determine how much the pelt lengthens the time you have.”

He stared at her for a moment, taking in her light hair and rounded ears, before saying, “I think you’re my favorite half-fae.” and popping the pill into his mouth, his pelt lengthening from being a tiny shawl around his shoulders into engulfing his form completely.

He heard her make an amused sound as the pain started to creep through his nervous system, and thought he might have felt a hand on his forehead before his bones started to melt and his muscles ripped and lengthened.

When he blinked himself conscious and got off of the ground, he ran his hand along his pelt and smiled. It had lengthened to follow his body and formed a simple body suit to cover his modesty.

“So now we’ll start the timer and see if there’s any change in the estimated time it takes for the prototype cures to kick in,” Haibara said after sparing a fascinated look at the pelt but doing nothing more, to Shinichi's mild relief. He nodded, got up off of the table and stretched a little to help adjust to his now normal-sized limbs.

“Wonderful. Do you have any interesting books?” He asked. “Or I can just head over to my house and spend the time there?”

She shook her head. “I want you here for this first test, in case something happens and I need immediate access to my equipment. You can read this.” She offered him a paperback that he took and examined, sending her a glare that she smirked back at as he read the title.

“Truly, you’re a comedian,” he said, a finger tapping on the cover. She didn’t say anything back and got out a fashion magazine to flip through, but her amusement was clear and he sighed before reluctantly opening “Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar” and settling in to read.

The young master was sulking as he sat at the bar, and Jii sighed from where he was cleaning a glass. He’d been like this ever since he’d returned from successfully stealing The Nebula and Jii could only presume it was due to the Kid Killer’s absence. He passed the teen a mug of hot chocolate and resisted the urge to roll his eyes as the young master curled over the mug like an alcoholic clinging to their next drink. “Young Master, please,” he sighed. “You could at least thank your good fortune that it wasn’t both young Hakuba and the Kid Killer in attendance.”

The young master sighed and took a long sip of the hot chocolate. “But I didn’t want to face off against that bastard Hakuba,” he whined. He pulled out The Nebula and tossed it in the air idly without moving his head from where he was staring blankly ahead. “Besides,” he continued, “Tantei-kun wasn’t going to show up.”

“Oh?” Jii asked, curious. He switched to a different glass and actually did roll his eyes a little when the young master pushed the mug closer to him in a silent demand for a refill. He did so and placed it back down by the young master’s hand with a quiet clank. “What do you mean?”

“Tantei-kun has never shown up to a heist Hakuba was also going to,” Kaito told him, and Jii thought back for a moment before realizing in surprise that, yes, that really did appear to be the case. “Why’d he have to go to Old Man Suzuki’s challenge?” Kaito grumbled to himself.

“Strange that the Kid Killer would avoid crossing paths with young Hakuba,” Jii pointed out, ignoring the young master’s complaint and wanting to see what his thoughts were on the matter.

The young master hooked his chin onto his crossed arms and released a breath through his nose. “Too much ego in one room,” he gave as an explanation before focusing on his hot chocolate, and Jii smiled a little but didn’t say anything to that. After a moment Kaito sighed. “Who knows? Maybe Nakamori-keibu thought that bastard Hakuba would be better than Tantei-kun and didn’t invite him; maybe he really doesn’t want too many young detectives running around making a mess; maybe Tantei-kun is sick every time Hakuba plans to go to Old Man Suzuki’s challenges.” The last one was incredibly skeptical and Jii couldn’t help but feel the same. The young master shrugged. “Don’t know.”

Then he drank the rest of his hot chocolate and pushed the mug toward Jii for another refill, and Jii sighed in fond exasperation.

“You didn’t go to the heist last night,” Haibara said, and Shinichi looked up from his book to see her staring at him in silent demand for an explanation.

He blinked, confused from being dragged so abruptly from his reading. “I didn’t,” he agreed, and was about to return to his book, ignoring the silent demand entirely, when she made an irritated noise at him and swiped at his book, which he dodged with an affronted noise.

“Why?” She finally asked, and he quirked an eyebrow at her and put the book aside.

“A few reasons, honestly,” he told her, counting on his fingers as he went. “For one, Nakamori-keibu sounded like the last thing he wanted was to deal with two upstart detectives at once, even if one is the ‘famous Kid Killer’.” He couldn’t help the amused lilt to his voice as he said that and saw Haibara smirk as well.

“Since Hakuba is also an accomplished teen detective, Sonoko has been up in arms about his attendance to one of her uncle’s challenges, as he’s been explicit about his intentions to send Kaitou Kid to jail as best he can, instead of putting Kid in a situation that would introduce the poor man to Sonoko.” Even as he said the last part mockingly he felt his lips go up into a fond smile. Sonoko, for all her fangirling, really just wanted to make sure Kid was free at the end of the day, and wasn’t going to torment her boyfriend about all of this beyond saying how attractive she found the phantom thief. “She then convinced Ran and the old man to not attend as well, so I had no feasible way of getting there.”

She nodded along, ever the unwilling soundboard for his deductions.

“The last of my concerns are about Hakuba himself; seeing as my behavior at a normal crime scene tipped off Hattori, I didn’t want my behavior at a heist to make Hakuba suspicious and look into my background or situation. The last thing either of us needs is another poking around without knowing the dangers that’ll come along with that.” As he curled his third finger out he saw her nod again, understanding plain on her features, before she frowned and cocked her head to the side.

“There’s more to it than that,” she said, and he cursed a little at the way he froze at her words before trying to feign relaxed confusion. The look she shot him called him out on his bullshit quite easily and he caved.

“Hakuba was raised in England,” he finally admitted, shrugging to try and remove the awkward tension in his shoulders. “He grew up surrounded by stories of my kind, or he could have done some digging to find out about us. As much as I don’t want him knowing about my current height deficiency, I don’t want him learning that I’m a Selkie even more.”

Haibara hummed. “You think he would try to steal your pelt.”

“I think he would do it to prove that I’m not a Selkie,” he corrected, crossing his arms at the sudden chill that overtook him. “From what I’ve heard Hakuba is a very black-and-white kind of detective - those types are very certain in their views of the world, and if he doesn’t know that the myths he was taught as a child are real, I don’t want him trying to figure it out by using me.”

“That’s reasonable,” Haibara said, and he snorted a little at her note which caused her to throw him a small glare, “but why hasn’t that concerned you before now?”

“If you look into the myths surrounding Animal Brides throughout the world, you’ll actually notice that Japan doesn’t really have mammalian Skin-Shifters,” Shinichi told her, nudging at the book he’d put down earlier but making no attempt to pick it up. “They have Shifters that use feather cloaks. Any mammalian shifters are shape shifters like Tanuki and Kitsune, and their discovery method doesn’t match the Skin-Shifters’ at all.”

Haibara made an acknowledging sound and Shinichi let her stew in her own thoughts as he wandered toward her lab and leafed through some of her notes to find anything he could understand.

It was the lack of mammalian Animal Brides in Japan that had brought his parents to these lands, Shinichi knew. They had told him as much once, when telling him about places to be wary of should he end up traveling the world like they do. And for all that his parents were flippant with their secret around him and each other, he knew when to take them seriously.

Haibara knocking on her own doorway drew him away from his thoughts, and he closed her notebook and looked at the tiny scientist. Her arms were crossed, but she gave him a tiny smile and moved into her own lab, and he took that as an implied agreement to drop the subject. “Are you sad you missed the heist?” She asked and he gave a snort and didn’t bother dodging as she swatted at his head.

“Don’t be stupid, I’m not sad. I would say...disappointed, maybe. It’s not a win or a loss for either of us, but I hate having to let the current score stand.” Kaitou Kid had one point more than him in the semi-arbitrary scoring system the phantom thief had spewed at him once while they were exchanging shots. It rankled at Shinichi’s senses.

“So you were looking forward to seeing him again?” She asked, and Shinichi thought there was more being said than just that but answered anyway.

“Of course. Despite what the Detective Boys and police force think, I can engage my mind without a murder being involved. I don’t have to do things just because the Morrígan threw them at me.” He heard her hum again, amused about something, and narrowed his eyes. “What is it?”

“I simply find it entertaining that you are likely the most human-like creature well acquainted with the fae and that you would fall in love with the most fae-like human that currently exists.”

He cursed as her words caused him to drop a notebook onto his foot and glared at the smug look she was levelling him. “What? I’m not in love with him!”

“Oh?” she drawled, not believing him for an instant. “What do you feel at the thought of him trying to steal your pelt?”

I’d like to see him try, He almost said, before the words gave him pause. It wasn’t fear; it wasn’t apprehension; it was the drive to beat the thief that inspired those words, the cat and mouse that could come from Kaitou Kid trying to find his pelt and Shinichi having to outthink him at every turn.

He was excited at the thought.

“Oh,” he said. “Shit.”

He was in love with Kaitou Kid.

Chapter Text

Edogawa has been acting strange lately, Kaito noticed.

At first he didn’t think anything of it; the soccer balls were coming a little off-aim, the child’s reactions a touch too slow to catch him.

But he was starting to look conflicted before the heists would begin, and he’d missed the last heist all together, even with Hakuba missing. It was the easiest steal he’d done in months, and Kaito could feel the growing disquiet at the child’s dropped enthusiasm. Was the little detective getting bored or was he just distracted by something?

“Young Master,” he heard, and startled out of his thoughts to realize that Jii had been trying to reach him.

He looked over as his assistant and friend and quirked an eyebrow. “What’s up, Jii?” As much as he didn’t want to think about his favorite critic growing tired of him, he had to if he wanted to figure out how to renew his interest in chasing Kid. But Jii clearly wanted his attention for a moment.

The old man frowned at him but didn’t say anything about his distracted mien and slid a newspaper to him, which he snatched up. “It would appear that Suzuki-san is challenging you once again, but this one is up in a mountain villa he owns.”

“The Snowstar?” Kaito read aloud, propping his head up on an open hand. “These names get more ridiculous the longer Old Man Suzuki keeps up this rivalry, I swear.”

“Indeed,” Jii agreed, sounding amused. “Would you like me to reserve two tickets for skiing on that day?”

“Yeah, go ahead. I’ll start making a response to send back and tell Aoko my mom’s visiting and we’ll be spending her time here skiing or something. Catch you later, Jii!” Keeping the paper in hand Kaito slid out of the bar stool and ran out, heading home before Aoko could pop by and pester him.

A quick hop, skip, and scaling of a wall and he was back in his room and shoving the newspaper into a drawer as he heard Aoko open the front door and call out for him. As he was stowing the paper, however, he caught a glimpse of a snippet from farther down on the paper.

While the Kid Killer is not confirmed to be attending the challenge, Suzuki-san has confirmed that he extended the child an invitation, along with one to his cousin and the savior of the police force, Kudou Shinichi.

Kaito frowned for a moment as he swept out of the room and sat at the table while Aoko messed around in the kitchen and made them breakfast.

That could put a damper on things. From what Kaito had heard, Kudou Shinichi was young but good at what he did.

And what he did was catch criminals.

Kaito ate in relative silence as he thought about this potential new challenger, ignoring the suspicious looks Aoko was shooting him.

There was also that nagging feeling that he’d met Kudou before, but Kaito couldn’t place it. He shrugged it off; it was probably due to his family being a household name. Anyone can sound familiar if you’ve heard their name enough times.

“Kudou-kun, please,” Haibara said, more a demand than any actual request or plea. “You’re behaving childishly…” she trailed off in a way that implied she at least assumed this was childish behavior for a Selkie, and Shinichi wasn’t going to change back to tell her otherwise.

The seal pup huffed and turned around, swimming to the other end of the filled Western-styled tub from his friend to continue his sulking. He heard Haibara let out a noise of irritation and was triumphant for a moment before he heard a clunk and the sound of water draining away. He spun around, splashing water over the side, and let out a high-pitched bark at her, which she responded to with a glare.

“It’s not suddenly the end of the world just because you realized you’re in love with Kaitou Kid,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest when he whined back. “You were in love with him before you figured it out,” she pointed out, and he finally shifted back.

“But now I know,” he groaned, hitting the half-gone water with a hand petulantly. He slumped over the side of the tub as Haibara sat on the nearby toilet to watch his pity party. “I don’t know anything about courting, fae or mortal. And I currently look seven.” He let out a loud sigh and could feel her rolling her eyes. “I’m not much of a prospective suitor.”

“Considering that you’re still going to heists and he, from what you’ve told me, looks forward to it, I think you’re doing fine as you are,” Haibara said, and Shinichi made a noise as he felt a towel hit his head. “Worry about your crush once the Organization is gone and you have your body back.”

He lifted the towel enough to shoot her a disgruntled look. “I know that. Taking down the Organization takes priority.” He sighed, stood up in the now-empty tub and started drying his hair, the pelt an already dry body suit around him. “I just wanted a moment to come to terms with it all.”

“You wanted a moment to sulk like a child,” she said, unimpressed with him as he made a face back at her. “Now come on, we have to get some prototype cures for your trip; apparently Kudou Shinichi was sent an invitation as well.”

Shinichi nodded, and took her offered hand to help him out of the tub. “Thanks Haibara,” he said, and she gave him a tiny smile and bumped his shoulder with hers.

“Of course. Someone has to keep your focus on what’s most important.”

I like being around frighteningly competent half-fae, Shinichi thought, his chest growing warm at her support.

Kaito felt like jumping for joy when he saw the little detective walking around the room holding the Snowstar and checking all of the exits Kaito had already cased, his form encased in what looked like a thick fur jacket. It appeared that whatever had been messing with Edogawa during the last heist was resolved, as he looked quite sharp-eyed, scanning the room and glancing near where Kaito was standing suspiciously.

He watched his favorite critic glance out the window as the young miss he hung out with a lot stood next to him and they began to talk. Kaito mentally mapped out where he’d installed his listening devices and grinned in triumph as he realized there should be one right beside them and clicked his earpiece on, tuning into it.

“Excited for the heist?” he heard the little miss ask, and from where he was standing next to other lodgers he could see Edogawa cross his arms.

“Anxious,” his critic answered, and Kaito frowned a little and ducked his head to hide the expression. “A blizzard is starting outside. If Kid intends to leave tonight it could be dangerous. And it would be easy for the police to simply search everyone’s belongings if he disappears into the crowd.” Edogawa hummed contemplatively before they both went silent. Kaito peaked up cautiously to see Edogawa on his phone, looking up something based on his mien. He finally stowed it away. “I guess we’ll just hope for the best.”

Kaito clicked off the earpiece as they walked off and started discussing something about pills and grinned into his mug. It sounded like the little detective was worried about him, and that caused a well of fondness to form in his chest.

He left his spot to change and get into position, determined to ease his favorite critic’s mind as much as possible.

Shinichi swiped at the thief and had to stop his own smile as Kid grinned and jumped over his entire form, dodging in front of a Task Force member as Shinichi took a shot and the anesthetic needle hit the man, knocking him out while Kid laughed in delight.

Shinichi winced and comforted himself with the fact that he at least hadn’t kicked a soccer ball at the guard as he gave chase through the villa, dodging to the side to avoid the card Kid shot at him.

But still, he had to admit that Kid looked to be in top form that night, stealing the gem with what appeared to be a wave of his hand, and maintaining a merry chase between him and the Task Force that kept him at the head of the pack.

He was a clever creature, a part of him said, sounding disgustingly smitten, and he shook the thought away and kicked a ball so that it would ricochet off of a banister and pass inches from Kid’s face as he danced to the side. “Close one, Tantei-kun!” He called out with a laugh, and Shinichi hoped his glare would cover up the rush of adrenaline that came in response.

He still felt like an utter mess, this was ridiculous.

Whatever else he thought at that moment was lost to him as Kid disappeared out the front balcony with a cheeky bow. Shinichi felt a jolt of fear as he looked out the window and saw a gust of snow pass by and ran out the door, heedless to Ran’s panicked calls, only just barely remembering to grab his backpack as he passed it.

As he crossed the threshold to the outside Shinichi had to immediately shift his pelt to cover his face as wind whipped the snow up to try and hit him in the face. The blizzard had begun recently, and Shinichi started looking around only to see that Kid had completely disappeared, his clothes doing an excellent job in hiding him in the snow.

If Kid had activated his glider when exiting via the balcony it would have been child’s play for the wind to send him careening off in a direction, and again Shinichi felt that horrible, nervous tugging that told him he wouldn’t get any sleep tonight until he could insure that the thief was safe.

He started calculating where Kid could have landed based on where he’d jumped from the balcony, wind speed and wind direction and slowly started turning to the west. Apprehension coiled in his gut.

If he remembered the map he’d checked correctly, there was a sizeable lake over there.

Shinichi started running that way, hoping that Kid had actually managed to get away but fearing the worst. The snow crunched beneath his feet and seemed to swallow his leg up to the knee, the cold beginning to permeate through his winter clothes.

He panted as he came to the shore of the lake, feeling the way the ice gave away warningly beneath his feet. As his breathing calmed down he looked around, squinting and trying to pick out a phantom thief in a snowstorm.

His eyes ran over the lake and he hissed. There was a form out there, vaguely triangle-shaped, lying next to what looked to be a hole in the ice over the lake. Shinichi ran the chances of Kid getting not being in lake, and cursed the low odds. He threw his bag down and started digging through it, pulling out the container for the prototype cures Haibara had made for him.

Time to go save an idiot.

In hindsight, trying to use his glider in a blizzard wasn’t his best idea. Granted, he thought it would take longer before it actually hit, but this time it looked like Lady Luck was not on his side.

Kaito blinked for a moment in the inky darkness, trying to get his bearings as the weight of his clothes dragged him lower. He twisted and managed to unhook his cape, and tried to tell up from down.

He couldn’t see any light above or around him. As he tried to kick out in the hopes of colliding with the ground he felt nothing but open water beneath him and felt a horrible sinking in his stomach.

This wasn’t looking good for him.

It was as he was thinking this that he felt something grab a hold of his collar and lashed out, that horrible human fear of the unknown fueling his movement. The thing abruptly let go and Kaito felt a moment of relief before the thing swam around to the front.

And it was so close that, no matter how dark the water around them and sky near them was, Kaito was instantly able to recognize the gem blue eyes staring back at him.

The cold beginning to slow his movements, Kaito managed to get his numbing arms around the seal, who shot off further into the water. The thief felt a moment of fear, before dismissing it and burying his face into the seal’s pelt. He would trust his savior a second time.

His trust was rewarded as they breached the surface a few seconds later, and Kaito gasped as he breathed in the harsh winter air around them. And then he felt the seal he was clinging to begin to shift, and spun around as quickly as possible.

He would admit that of all of the faces he had tentatively imagined would appear when he found his first love again, Kudou Shinichi’s was a very pleasant surprise. “Are you alright?” The other teen asked, and Kaito felt his brain abruptly short-circuit as an arm wrapped securely around his waist.

I don’t know, Kaito thought half-hysterically, I was in that water for a while, I may need mouth-to-mouth.

Kudou’s face did something complicated before turning a little red and Kaito was certain the blood that was abruptly rushing to his own face would keep him from freezing to death with little issue. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?” He asked.

“You did,” Kudou confirmed before offering him a tiny, crooked smile that Kaito was sure would have turned his legs to jelly if he could feel them. “Don’t worry, I think it’s cute. Now come on, there should be a guest cabin nearby.”

Kaito let Kudou lead him away from the lake after grabbing a bag nearby. While using his glider hadn’t been the best idea, Kaito thinks he would consider the day an overall success.

Chapter Text

The guest cabin was rather close to the lake, which Kaito was grateful for as Kudou herded him into the building. He thought he heard him mutter something about Sonoko as he opened the front door but didn’t say anything about his awareness of where (he assumed) the emergency key was located.

The cabin was surprisingly small, and bare of the opulence Old Man Suzuki preferred. When he said as much to Kudou he shrugged. “All of the Suzuki family use this villa from what I’ve heard, so no one person has claim to the guest cabin for decorating.” He walked over to the kitchen and started messing around while Kaito cased all of the entrances and exits he could see.

“Electricity and water is out, but at least we’re out of the cold now,” Kudou called out, and Kaito made an acknowledging sound as he hunted down a towel in the bathroom. As he was drying off his hair he heard the thump of a bag against the door. “You can use my clothes.”

Kaito stared blankly at the door, utterly confused for a moment, before he remembered the black bodysuit Kudou appeared to be wearing. “Right,” he muttered to himself as he grabbed the bag on the other side of the door.

As he put on the clothes he tried not to think about how the shirt was tighter on his shoulders but the sweatpants were incredibly loose and failed miserably. Wasn’t Kudou also known for his skills in soccer? That must have done good things to his legs, a part of him mused and Kaito brutally squashed that thought along with the mental note that there wasn’t any underwear in the bag.

As he shoved on the shirt - some soft thing that was clearly made for lounging - Kaito fished out his phone and tried turning it on. It flickered briefly, clearly considered not turning on, before showing his front screen. He quickly navigated to his contacts and sent Jii a text that said, I’m fine, stayin in S guest house, call me tmrrw.

He could already feel the chill start to reluctantly dissipate as he finished putting on Kudou’s clothes and started look around for him. He found Kudou making a beeline to some other part of the house, arms laden with a few blankets and pillows. He had a flashlight in his mouth and Kaito felt himself smile a little at the adorable sight. “Do you need any help, Meitantei?” The question slipped out before he’d really thought about it, but Kudou just hummed and nodded with the flashlight deliberately.

Once Kaito had eased the device out of Kudou’s mouth he heard the other teen’s mouth click shut for a second to readjust. “Thank you,” Kudou said, adjusting the pile of items in his arms. “I didn’t want to lose it while I was scavenging. Can you light the area ahead of us? I’m trying to get to the bedroom.”

Kaito nodded and led them both through the hall, poking his head into the rooms before dismissing them when Shinichi made a noise. He finally found a room that already had a small pile of pillows and blankets in it and moved aside for Shinichi to step in.

After the detective set all of his stuff down he turned to look at Kaito and stared at him for a moment in contemplation before his eyes lit up. “You’re the boy I saved a few years ago!” he said in realization. The black bodysuit had loosened and looked incredibly soft and inviting. He ran a hand over it as he thought and Kaito’s mouth became noticeably dry. “You’re kind of a mess, aren’t you?” he said with an amused, teasing smile.

I am and I want you to take care of me, he made sure to not say out loud, but then his hand moved over the suit again, making it shimmer in the light, and Kaito’s brain short-circuited. “Um,” he said instead, doing absolutely nothing for the argument about his being a mess.

Kudou laughed a little but thankfully dropped the subject. “We should hopefully have enough blankets now to comfortably get through the night,” he said, a trace hesitantly, gesturing to the bed before beginning to lay the blankets he’d found out on the bed.

It took Kaito a moment for what he said to click, and when it did he felt his face heat up self-consciously. “Wait, are we sharing the bed?” he asked, and Kudou glanced up.

“Yes? It would make it easier to shift blankets, and the bed is certainly large enough.” Kaito looked at the bed again and realized, yes, the bed was large enough for four people, never mind two tentative allies.

“Makes sense,” Kaito admitted grudgingly, and stood there awkwardly for a second until Kudou finished laying out the blankets and getting comfortable in the bed. Kaito wanted to sulk at how nervous he was in comparison to the seeming perfectly at ease teen until he spied a blush creeping up Kudou’s neck and grinned. “Nervous, Meitantei?” He brushed against the other as he went to mess with his own side, and felt Kudou lean against him for a second as he did so.

“Not at all,” Kudou said, a lie if Kaito had ever heard one, and tugged at his suit. To Kaito’s surprise, the thing began to change shape, lengthening and detaching from Kudou to be draped over his shoulders until he pulled it off and added it to his blanket pile.

Kudou was only wearing a pair of boxers now, and Kaito felt his blush from before return full force for a second before he turned around to start moving his blankets around until he was comfortable. “What’s with that thing, by the way?” he asked, in an effort to distract himself from the abs he definitely did not see on Kudou’s person. “It seems like quite the handy utility fabric.” He doesn’t know how to ask if that’s how Kudou can turn into a seal, if it simply helps with the seal transformation thing, or something different altogether, and thus doesn’t ask.

He heard Kudou hum, confused and thoughtful, from some point behind him and saw the bed dip a little. “My neighbor made it for me,” the other teen said. “It can take quite a number of forms.” Kaito glanced behind him to see that Kudou was under his side of the blankets, barely visible without the flashlight directed his way.

“You detectives sure do like your gadgets,” Kaito said with a bit of surprise, turning back to his task when he saw Kudou glance at him. Hmm, that didn’t sound right to Kaito, was the detective lying to him? The item actually reminded Kaito vaguely of the tales of the Swan Maidens, and he felt a stab of both longing and apprehension at the thought. If that were the case, he wouldn’t do that to Kudou...but that didn’t mean he could stop his want either.

Either way, it would explain Kudou’s hesitance to tell him.

“Like you’re one to talk,” Kudou said back, and Kaito broke himself from his thought to give him a look that he hoped successfully called him out on how nonsense his argument was.

“Excuse you, I’m a magician,” he snarked, flipping one of his pillows over his head for emphasis, and he heard a quiet laugh from Kudou.

“You’re a pest,” he snipped back, and Kaito would have continued their banter but heard his detective give a small yawn, and they fell into silence as Kaito finished fidgeting and crawled into the bed.

The cold seeped into him immediately and Kaito shivered, his mind torn between that and the distance that stretched between him and Kudou. “My assistant knows how to find me tomorrow,” Kaito told the other boy, wanting to make that last point clear before they both drifted off.

“Good.” Kudou sounded relieved. “I’m in a similar situation with a friend, so it looks like we’ll both make it out of this alive and without frostbite.”

Kaito huffed a small laugh into his ice-cold pillow. So many years had passed and if anything, based on their interactions and everything they’ve gone through today, Kaito was beginning to suspect he was even more in love with Kudou than he had been as a child. “Glad to hear it. Night, Meitantei.”

“Goodnight, Kid.”

Shinichi woke up that night and furrowed his brow, curling up tighter beneath the blankets and his pelt. He wasn’t quite sure what had woken him up, and already felt himself beginning to drift back to sleep when he heard a strange clicking sound that instantly got his attention.

He sat up a little, shivering as the cold air hit his bare skin, and started looking for what on earth could be making that noise. It sounded like it was close to him, and slowly Shinichi started to turn until he was looking straight at where Kid was lying. He cocked his head, confused about the sound until it died down and started up again but faster.

Were Kid’s teeth chattering? Shinichi scooted a little closer to him, concerned, and laid a hand on the thief’s shoulder. He immediately registered how badly Kid was shaking and withdrew his hand to cup his own chin, settling back under the blankets for what remained of the warmth.

It makes sense; Shinichi hadn’t thought he’d found enough blankets to sufficiently keep them warm in this weather. The only thing helping keep Shinichi warm was his pelt, and Kid didn’t have anything like that.

Still groggy from just waking up, Shinichi came to a decision rather easily, and decided to ignore the spark of embarrassment he felt as he scooted closer to Kid and slowly wrapped his arm and part of his pelt around the other teen.

The thief almost immediately responded to the new source of warmth, turning around and curling up more beneath the pelt, his face pressed against Shinichi’s neck. The blush Shinichi had tried to fight off appeared in full force as Kid’s leg hooked around his and his arm curled around his waist. Kid’s breath washed over his neck as he nuzzled closer and Shinichi was beginning to regret helping the other teen stay warm.

Sighing quietly to himself, Shinichi closed his eyes and tried to drift off, Kid’s squirming dying off as he finally grew comfortable.

It felt like only seconds had passed before Shinichi awoke with an aborted gasp as pain ricocheted through his body. The antidote was wearing off, he realized with a jolt of horror. He tried to shift away but it was impossible; Kid had nearly wrapped himself around Shinichi at this point. He was bound to wake up if Shinichi made too much noise.

So Shinichi buried his face into a pillow and tightened his grip on Kid as he did his absolute best to stay silent while his bones began to melt back into their child sized form.

By the time the agonizing transformation was done Kid was stirring, his own grip on Shinichi growing tighter as he tried to parse what exactly was happening. Shinichi quickly shushed him as he heard the thief make a confused noise, and drew his hands through Kid’s hair, startling himself with the action. Kid quieted again and remained mostly asleep, shifting somewhat so that he could curl around Shinichi’s new form.

Shinichi blinked as he was suddenly moved to be tucked to Kid’s chest but didn’t say anything and simply placed his head so that his ear could rest over the unfaltering rhythm of Kid’s heart. As he did so he couldn’t help but find the other’s cuddling rather endearing.

He hadn’t realized how gone he was for the other until right that moment.

When Kaito awoke the next day it was to an empty bed, much to his disappointment. His phone was vibrating violently and he took a second to groan before rolling over and pawing at the device. Jii, it said as the caller, and Kaito answered with a sleepy yawn. “What’s up, Jii?”

“Young Master, you’ve finally answered! Are you well? Where are you?!” His father’s friend sounded frantic.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, Jii. I’m perfectly fine, I think my phone wasn’t connecting your calls since it took a dip in the lake last night...” He shifted up a bit and shivered at the cold air hitting his skin, grasping reflexively on the lower blanket to pull up with him.

Something surprisingly soft and sturdy met his fingers, and Kaito tugged at the blanket to see it was the strange utility fabric Kudou had been using last night that was now draped over him. He was distracted from his immediate surprise by Jii, however, who demanded to know his location to pick him up and what on earth he meant by “a dip in the lake”.

Four hours later saw him back at home, warmed by a hot shower, and staring at the fabric he’d laid out on his bed. He...had no idea what to do now. With Kudou having mysteriously vanished come morning (his way out must have arrived, and while Kaito appreciated him not bringing anyone in or bringing attention to Kaito’s presence, he couldn’t help but feel disappointed), Kaito had no way of getting this fabric back to him.

He could just leave it at the Kudou manor, Kaito considered. It would be child’s play to find their address, then all Kaito would have to do is break in and leave it behind with a note of thanks, Kid-style.

But that felt...impersonal. Kaito wanted to hand him back the fabric, see Kudou light up at receiving it back, and maybe invite him to lunch or something as he did so.

Leaving the fabric at Kudou’s house would let whatever was hovering between them end, and that was the last thing Kaito wanted.

So instead he left it on his bed, running his hand over it one last time before he went out for lunch with Aoko.

Shinichi didn’t look up as the door that led to the lab slammed open and Haibara walked out, nor did he look up as he felt the heat of her glare try to scorch through him. Instead, he pointedly flipped a page of his book (“Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar”, because karma was a bitch and he was aiming it directly at his friend) and continued to read.

“You realize you may now build a resistance to these antidotes,” she said.

He hummed. “I do.”

“You no longer can transform into the other half of your being,” she stressed.

“Puts quite a damper on parties,” he jibed, ignoring the way the hair at the back of his neck rose up at the reminder.

“Kaitou Kid stole your cloak.” She sounded...torn. Furious, confused, uncertain.

“I gave it to him,” Shinichi corrected, and turned a page.

The silence began to grow between them, as stilted and uncomfortable as it was when she first helped get him from the cabin and saw his pelt wasn’t anywhere to be found. Finally, the tension broke as she quietly admitted, “I don’t understand why that matters.”

Shinichi closed the book and looked at her, letting his fingers fidget along the cover. “For one, I want you to understand that I had no way of knowing when Kid’s help would arrive, and we both managed to ascertain the blankets we found were not enough to keep us warm in the cabin. When you let me know you were here I calculated the odds of Kid’s help arriving in a timely manner and when the cold would start to adversely affect Kid and concluded he may not have long before the cold started to get to him. It was an easy choice to make, my comfort for his ensured safety.”

“Very well,” Haibara agreed tersely. “But why isn’t this panicking you more,” and she gestured at the entire room as she said that, referring to the entire situation Shinichi had gotten himself into. “You’re bound to this man against your will now.”

He coughed. “Not entirely against my will, I should probably mention.” At her look he elaborated. “A lot of fae and fae-associated creatures work in a manner that twists metaphors and realities, right?” he asked. She nodded, so he continued on. “So think of a Selkie’s pelt as a representation of their heart. So long as it is healthy we can be at our happiest, and in a way it represents the duality of who we are.”

He softly began to beat the book against his leg, forming a steady tempo. “That metaphor also extends to a lot of our tales. If you steal a Selkie’s pelt she is bound to you and becomes your wife. But when it’s returned to her she disappears and never returns.”

“Because she suddenly has back the heart you stole from her,” Haibara realized and Shinichi nodded.

“Yup, but it does go a bit deeper than that. It also ties into the fact that you stole it. Even if a Selkie grows to love the person that steals their pelt, they will always run if it’s returned to them, because they know they can’t trust you with it. You stole it once, who’s to say you won’t steal it again?”

“So, because you willingly gave him your pelt…” Haibara started, her eyes growing wider and she realized what he was saying.

“...I essentially gave him my heart, yes,” Shinichi finished with faux ease, the tempo of his book speeding up for a moment at the mere reminder. He tried to ignore the creeping chill in his bones and cleared his throat awkwardly. “Let’s hope this all works out, huh?”

Chapter Text

Kaito thinks he might be going crazy, and it’s entirely due to the weird fabric that’s laying on his bed.

He just...he just liked touching it. When he got home from school he checked on it. When he got back from heists he checked on it. He touched it when he fell asleep under it. He’s fallen asleep on it.

It’s been two weeks and Kaito nearly lost it when Aoko mentioned holding a study session at his house and inviting Akako and Hakuba along. “Why did you offer my house?” Kaito asked in irritation, arms crossed over his chest as he started thinking about where he would hide the fabric. And any Kid stuff he left lying around where a nosy detective could find it.

“Kaito’s house has more room,” Aoko argued. “And Aoko doesn’t have any snacks at her house right now and doesn’t want to look like a bad host.”

“Oh so you want me to look like a bad host,” Kaito huffed back and Aoko didn’t look the least bit apologetic.

“Yes,” she agreed before shrugging her backpack on. “I’m waiting for Hakuba-kun and Akako-chan, you have a few minutes to get home and clean your filthy room,” she sniffed, and he had never been more grateful to have her think he was a slob in his house until now.

But he wouldn’t breathe a word of that to her. “Thanks, I guess,” he sniffed back, put on his own backpack, made a point of flipping her skirt in revenge, and disappeared in a puff of smoke as she screeched in anger.

He all but sprinted to his house, not bothering to open the front door and instead scaling the wall outside to reach his bedroom window. As he slipped in he locked eyes on the fur and carefully rolled it up to place behind all of his pillows before flitting around and tossing any of the Kid gear he had laying around into a basket he then unceremoniously tossed through the secret entrance to the Kid Cave.

After that he only had to make it look like he’d tried to frantically pick up a messy room and threw some of his clothes into a corner and left a magazine with a woman in skimpy clothing on the cover peeking out from his bedside drawer and another barely hidden under his bed.

By the time he’d finished he heard Aoko unlocking his front door and calling that they were all coming in. He called out an annoyed affirmative and walked out of his room, giving them all a disgruntled look.

Akako looked amused, but Hakuba looked like a kid in a candy store, checking all of the nooks and crannies like Kaito would just put a Kid top hat on a random piece of furniture. “Nervous to have me in your house, Kuroba?” He asked, and Kaito snorted and leaned on the banister.

“I just don’t like having a pest problem,” he said, and they locked glares for a minute before Aoko nudged Hakuba and started walking up the stairs.

“Kaito, don’t be rude,” she chastised.

“You’re right. Next time I’ll just invite people to your house, since that’s clearly the polite thing to do,” he snipped back, and this time she had the grace to look sheepish as she passed by him and went into his room, Akako and Hakuba close behind her.

The first thing Kaito hears, before he even enters the room, is Hakuba poking around and an enraged shriek from Aoko. “Bakaito! What’s this trash you’re hiding under your bed!?”

“I was hiding it for a reason, Ahoko!” he yelled back, easily slipping into the room and avoiding her irritated swipes. “I’m a teenager, what do you want from me?”

“You could at least throw it out when you have visitors!” she raged and he cocked his head to Hakuba mockingly.

“Like I believe for one second he wouldn’t go through my trash if it meant maybe finding “evidence” that I was Kid,” he said, throwing in air quotes for good measure, and Hakuba sputtered in protest, the magazine lying on the ground next to him where he’d likely dropped it being more than enough evidence as far as Kaito was concerned.

After a few more minutes of this, the group finally managed to calm down enough to get their study materials out and start going over things, Kaito barely maintaining interest as the session dragged on.

An hour in, Aoko looked up. “What was that?” she asked, and Kaito looked around.

“What was what?”

“I thought I smelled a sea breeze or something,” she said.

Kaito sniffed the air but didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Are you calling Aoko a liar?” she asked, irritated, and he shot her an annoyed look back.

“I think you’re so bored from this study session your mind’s playing tricks on you!”

Akako, who’d been watching their brewing argument alongside Hakuba like it was some sort of tennis match, suddenly chimed in. “Actually, your room does feel as if it’s saturated in sea folk magic, Kuroba-kun. However did you get such a blessing?”

She sounded genuinely interested, but that only confused Kaito more. “Um, I didn’t? I haven’t done anything out of the ordinary for weeks.” He shifted his books to the side to lean a little closer to the group. “What’s in the blessing?”

“Rather mundane things,” Akako sniffed, disinterested in the blessing itself. “You’ll never get lost, you’ll never get cold, water will never spill in your house, all of them nearly parlor tricks compared to...others.” Her eyes narrowed for a second. “It also feels as though a...predator of some sort lurks in your house; it would keep away any unwanted sea creatures.” That last part seemed to baffle the witch, who closed her eyes for a few minutes while they watched her in curiosity.

Or rather, Kaito watched her after throwing a nervous look at the pillows on his bed that were neatly hiding the fabric that may help turn Kudou into a seal from view.

Was the thing magic? Did Kudou know that? Given the fact he’d helped Kaito not freeze to death without any expected reward, he could at least be considered the most accepting detective Kaito knew; maybe that extended to magic?

Her eyes eventually snapped back open, and she looked confused, suspicious, and angry. She shot Kaito a Look as she waved away the others’ question and got back to the book she had out, and Kaito felt his hair rise at the feeling of foreboding he suddenly got.

Well at least his feeling was right, Kaito frantically thought a few hours later as he ducked beneath a scythe, Akako slipping through his window to float on air inside his room. “What the hell, Akako?!” He half-shouted, glaring up at her.

She matched the look with furious eyes, which swept the room once before returning to him. “It took me hours of research to figure out what blessed your house,” she hissed, and Kaito yelped as she swiped the scythe at him again. “Where is it, Kuroba?”

“Where’s what?” he asked back, giving up the illusion of not being Kid in favor of firing his card gun at her in a bid to keep her busy.

She waved her hand and a forcefield of red energy sprung into existence, the cards thumping against it as if it were stone. “Where is the Selkie pelt you stole?” she yelled, and if anything her own words incensed her and she swung her scythe again.

Kaito bounced off his desk and fired two cards quickly at her, one at her head and one at her feet, and lunged for the window. Maybe he could lead her away, he thought. “I haven’t stolen anything!” he called back, and she made a sound like a cat that’s had its tail stepped on.

“You steal things regularly,” she hissed out, her hand drifting down. The window thunked closed and Kaito swore and used the window sill to backflip away from another scythe swipe.

“Yeah but I’ve never stolen a pelt,” he pointed out, and squawked as she sent back the cards that had failed to pierce her shield and they dug into the wood uncomfortably close to his face.

“Oh really?” she asked, the sweetness in her voice dripping like poison. “You’ve never stolen what looks like a sheet of fur? Then how do you explain this?” She gestured to his bed, and Kaito felt his face grow pale as he saw the pillows had all been moved while he was trying to avoid Akako’s attacks and the utility fabric Kudou had given him was laying out for all the world to see. “Found you,” she breathed, and Kaito would have paused at the relief he heard there if this were any other situation.

Instead, he felt himself growing angry and defensive as she lowered herself to the ground and reached out for the fabric. “Don’t touch that!” he near-shouted, throwing down two smoke bombs to make his way to the bed without her able to take aim at him.

He wrapped his arms around the roll of fabric (fur? Didn’t Akako call it a pelt?) and pulled it back with him as he made a break for his bedroom door, firing a card at his window to make her think he was aiming to leave through it again.

He reached his bedroom door only for his hand to close around an unmoving doorknob.

The smoke was swept away and Akako stared at him, utterly unamused, with her scythe on her shoulder.

Kaito cleared his throat awkwardly and curled up more around the fur in his arms. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” He said.

Akako was watching him over a cup of tea that appeared out of nowhere as Kaito sat in a chair across from her, still holding on to the fur nervously. “Let me get this straight,” she said slowly, sipping from the cup before putting it flat on the thin air. It remained hovering as she rested her hands on her lap. “You woke up one morning during your skiing trip to find this pelt draped over you.” She gestured at the fur and Kaito clutched it closer, making her roll her eyes. “And you didn’t think to question that?” she asked, and Kaito bristled a little.

“Why would I? Someone who helped me out while I was skiing was wearing it, and when we were sharing a cabin he might’ve left it with me by accident.” He said, definitely not wanting to go into what exactly they were doing when they were “sharing a cabin” together.

She scoffed and swung one leg over the other. “Please, no Selkie would ever just forget their pelt. That would be like me forgetting my magic somewhere, or you forgetting where your doves are.”

He made a face at the mere thought before refocusing on her words. “You mentioned that word before, ‘Selkie’. What is that?”

She took a moment to take a sip of her tea, just to prolong telling him Kaito thought uncharitably, before looking up again. “They’re native to more Western seas,” she started, putting the cup down as a teapot appeared to pour more tea into it. “They’re similar to Swan Maidens, except that they transform into seals by use of a pelt rather than a swan via a cloak of feathers.”

“...Oh,” he finally said after a long pause, his voice small. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the fur - pelt - in his arms, trying to find anything that would have indicated that this was the thing Kudou used to save his life more than once.

Probably the fact he’s had it even in Kaito’s first memories of him, he thought ruefully. And the fact he thought it was some kind of shifting cloth like his glider.

“Yes, oh,” Akako concurred, a pot appearing next to her cup to transfer some sugar into it. “You can understand my haste to remove it from you and return it to whoever is missing it.”

“I mean, sort of,” Kaito said, finally tearing his eyes away from the pelt to look at the witch again. His hands moved over it gently, following the direction of the fur. “I don’t really get why you, in particular, care though.”

“I don’t care in the manner that one does if they are specifically invested in another person’s health or happiness,” she said, her eyes falling down to the pelt before rising back to him. She was a far sight from the girl he’d seen earlier that was prepared to kill him to get her hands on the fur, even if it meant going through him. “I care because it is a fellow member of the magical community, and what Selkies and Swan Maidens go through is deplorable.” She said all of this in a matter-of-fact manner, but her eyes lit up for a moment, the magic within her stirring with her anger.

Kaito watched her warily, not wanting to get into another fight with her. “But now you know,” he said, Poker Face fully in place as he smiled at her. “I definitely didn’t take this pelt, I woke up one day and it was on me.”

She watched him for another moment, her teacup floating serenely beside her, as if she were trying to figure out if he was telling the truth. Suddenly, she waved her hand and Kaito suddenly found that he couldn’t move, his arms locked in place as a wisp of red extended toward him.

“Wha-? Hey! Akako, what the hell?!” he snapped, trying to struggle out of her grip, but she didn’t even look at him while the magic stretched out and carefully touched the pelt.

It glowed blue, the same shade as Kudou’s eyes Kaito realized with a weird twist in his stomach, before fading as Akako’s magic retreated.

Finally she smiled at him, looking amused and ignoring the way Kaito scrambled out of his chair to try and put more distance between them. “I believe you now,” she said.

“And what, you couldn’t just do that earlier?” He asked with genuine irritation, checking over the pelt to see if it was affected by her magic.

He couldn’t tell, and that only frustrated him further.

She shrugged and took a sip of her tea. “I couldn’t be sure you were telling the truth, I know how you are Kuroba-kun. You could sell sand to a man in the desert. I wanted to see what you had to say for yourself. And you did manage to sway me, I must say; instead of taking the pelt from you to return to its Selkie regardless of your words, I merely checked that the pelt was indeed freely given to you. And I must say, congratulations.” She sarcastically applauded him from where she’d remained sitting. “I hope you don’t mess things up when the time to reciprocate approaches.”

Kaito didn’t know what to say to that and so said nothing, holding the pelt close to his chest as she stood and left out the front door.

Chapter Text

Having gone even a month and a half without his pelt was wrong. Shinichi felt like he was crawling out of his skin. He’d never really put much stock into the stories of old, told by his parents’ parents to his parents, and then by his parents to him, about how to lose your pelt was to tie yourself to the holder, but every day would be like looking out the front door and knowing you can’t simply leave.

He always attributed that up to exaggeration, and his parents couldn’t ever disprove this opinion; despite their constant teasing and jabs to one another about people that could steal their pelts, his parents had never actually lost their pelts before.

He now knew that such stories, such comparisons, were without exaggeration.

He groaned when he heard a knock on the bathroom door. “Are you decent?” Haibara asked, voice muffled.

“In swim trunks,” he called back, before submerging half of his face beneath the water. The door creaked open, and he opened one of his eyes to confirm that it was indeed his half-fae friend. “Thanks for being the fall guy when I need to get out of the Mouri house,” he said, and she waved him off.

“Don’t mention it,” she dismissed easily, and he took a moment to hazily appreciate that he doesn’t have to watch his words as much around her these days before he registered the concern she was levelling at him. “Are you alright?” she asked then, and he drew himself out of the water a little.

“Not really,” he told her. “I...don’t think I knew exactly what I was signing up for.” He drew a hand over his face and wondered how bad the shadows under his eyes were for her to be looking so avidly.

“At least the water helps,” she said, sitting at the edge of the tub, and he made a distasteful noise back.

“This water is as alive as the old man’s marriage, and can provide just as much comfort to those in need,” he said darkly, and she winced a little at his phrasing.

“The Detective Boys are coming over soon; we can probably steer them towards the pool,” she offered, likely the fifth time since this entire debacle happened.

He sighed and kicked to watch the way the water rippled around him. “There’s no point,” he said again, before adding, “It’s not like I can swim in it. I’ll just...sink.” The last part was said miserably, and he shivered as a cold prickling went down his spine.

“What do you mean?” Haibara asked. She looked interested now, a scientist with a new thing to dissect as he got out of the tub and started draining the water. She handed him a towel and he nodded his thanks.

“Oh we can swim, to some extent,” he reassured her. His limbs shook as he began to dry off. “But if the tales are true, then to not have your pelt in your possession was like swimming with weights on, or with your feet cut off. Everything feels slower, harder, you’ll run out of breath faster. Water can’t see we belong there, and so doesn’t treat us as such. And I suddenly find myself more willing to believe old tales,” he admitted bitterly.

Haibara only watched him. She didn’t offer condolences or condescension, wasn’t smug in her previous assertions that he would come to regret this.

Maybe because, even now, he couldn’t say that he did.

Instead she just turned and left the room, calling out, “I’ll tell the kids you’re sick; try and get some sleep.”

He blinked at her retreating figure and smiled, calling back a thanks as he hunted down the sleep clothes he kept in his house.

He ignored the way his fingers shook as his soul cried out to his pelt only to receive nothing back.

Kaito sighed as he put the successfully stolen gem - another failure - on his desk before flopping onto his bed, the pelt warm beneath him. He stewed for a moment, frustrated at yet another dead end, and curled his fingers before the texture of the pelt made him let go in an instant.

After Akako had seen herself out of the house Kaito had gone on a researching spree for Selkies and other Animal Brides. They had all had different forms and abilities but most stories followed similar circumstances: human finds pelt, human steals pelt, Animal Bride is now bound to the human until they get their pelts back and disappear regardless of whether they loved the human or not.

It made Kaito feel...conflicted. On one hand he was now technically married to the boy he’d been in love with for years, so that was a plus. On the other hand the marriage was done in an attempt to keep him from freezing to death on a mountain and he hasn’t seen the other boy since. And while none of the stuff he looked up said anything about not having the pelt being painful, it certainly couldn’t be pleasant.

But, if he gave him back his pelt...he would disappear. Kaito would never see him again, never have the chance to really tell him what he felt. When he first learned all of this he’d been mad at Kudou for taking away his chance to be with him.

But then he continued his research, and he thought about everything around them more. Kudou hadn’t vanished for seven years after saving him as a child (unless he simply had to disappear from Kaito’s life, and not just from being a human?) and Shinichi gave him the pelt to save Kaito’s life. He can’t fault him for that.

And hey, that had to mean something right? He had to trust that Kaito wasn’t going to damage his pelt to make him stay in his human form or anything like that.

And maybe it meant something that the pelt was given to him and he hadn’t stolen it. In every story Kaito had found about Selkies their pelts had been taken and kept away from them. And Kaito…wouldn’t do that. Not to Kudou.

Getting anxious, Kaito turned to bury his head into the pelt, the scent of sea breeze and what was most likely Kudou calming him somewhat. He’d return the pelt, he decided. He’d return it and hope for the best.

In the meantime, he had a heist to prepare. Old Man Suzuki had sent him another challenge letter and Kaito could admit to himself that he was kind of looking forward to facing off against his littlest critic once again, especially since he hadn’t seen the boy since the Mountain Villa Heist.

“Well,” Haibara said delicately, and Shinichi blearily cracked an eye open to see her looking at him with a strange kind of hesitance on her face. “At least your lack of a pelt means you could test more prototype cures. Considering you’re now running a constant low-grade fever.”

Shinichi groaned a little and tried to make it sound thankful when she replaced the cloth on his forehead with a fresh one. “This should be the worst of it,” he rasped. “It wouldn’t make sense for all of the stories to be so wrong about losing your pelt that you’re constantly sick and have no one talk about it.”

She hummed a little and checked her phone. “You said Mouri-chan and Sera-san went out to spend the day together and Mouri-san went out gambling for the day, right?” When he murmured agreement she looked conflicted for a second before it smoothed away. “I think I’m incredibly close to cracking the cure to the Apotoxin; this should hopefully be the last prototype you need to take for me to lock down the formula I need.”

“Awesome,” he said, sitting up and ignoring the wave of dizziness that followed him. He grabbed the water bottle by the bed and held out his hand. “Give it over.”

She did so with a frown and watched him pop the pill into his mouth and chase it down with water. “Once you feel good enough to be up and about, call your parents and begin planning how you want Conan to ‘go back home’.” He murmured another agreement and she cracked a small smile even as she pushed him back down on the bed and put the damp cloth back in place. “At least when you’re like this you’re actually willing to follow my instructions.”

“How dare you insinuate I’m anything but well behaved,” he slurred, and she laughed a little at that.

“Try and go back to sleep, Kudou-kun. I can’t imagine this is going to feel good.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Well the heist was quite fun, Kaito would admit, but it was a bit easier to get the gem than he’d expected with Edogawa attending. He made it to the roof in little time and checked the gem, letting out a breath of frustration at the way the light filtered through it with ease. Another failure. He tucked the gem away and turned to face the door as it was slammed open, and frowned at the way Edogawa was leaning against the frame and breathing, clearly out of breath. “Alright there, Tantei-kun?” he asked lightly. “You were off your game tonight.”

The normally prickly child just sighed and rubbed at his face, making an agreeing sound to what he’d said. Kaito frowned a little and rocked on his feet, wanting to check the child’s forehead to see if he was sick. “Should you even be out right now?” He demanded, somewhat angry at the child’s sister for letting him run around when he was obviously not feeling well.

That made the child bristle and snap at him. “Of course I should!” he exclaimed, sounding defensive, but Kaito just crossed his arms in doubt. Edogawa made a face at him, clearly reading his body language, and elaborated. “I just recovered from a bad illness and wanted to be here.” He said it strangely, and Kaito hid both how flattered he felt and the skepticism that wound its way through him.

Not that he’d ever admit to being flattered. Instead he frowned at the boy and asked, “How bad? You look like an utter mess.”

Even in the dim light Kaito could tell the child was trying to figure out what to say, by the way he paused and shifted his weight. Finally, he admitted, “It lasted a week and I couldn’t move for the last few days.”

“What?” Kaito demanded, flashing over to the child’s side and taking off a glove to check his forehead. He hissed. “You’re still sick,” he accused, and the child made an irritated sound but didn’t try to fight him.

“I’m within the range safe enough to go to school,” Edogawa said, and Kaito made a sound that he hoped summed up just how much he didn’t care for that reasoning. “Besides, this has been my lowest temperature for a month and a half; I’m fine.”

“No, you’re really not,” Kaito argued, concerned for his littlest critic. “You belong in a hospital.”

The child moved just out of his reach finally and shrugged, his arms coming up to cradling his elbows. “We went there; the temperature has nothing to do with being sick last week.” He shivered like he was cold, despite his fever, and for some reason it reminded him of the fur coat Edogawa was wearing at his previous heist.

A fur coat that had a similar look to the pelt now laying on his bed.

And he got sick a month and a half ago, probably after the heist when Kudou gave Kaito his pelt.

A strange, crazy suspicion began to take root in Kaito’s mind and he did the best he could to prevent it from showing up on his face. “Then what is causing you to be feverish?” he asked, and Edogawa shrugged again and looked away.

“I don’t know,” he said, and that was the biggest lie Kaito had heard in some time.

Kaito hummed and moved away, his brain throwing ideas back and forth frantically. Was Edogawa a Selkie too? He was supposedly Kudou’s cousin from what Kaito’s heard; it wouldn’t be that surprising. But where was his pelt and why was he so sick? Was he feverish because his own pelt was gone? Had someone stolen a child Selkie’s pelt? The mere thought made Kaito feel ill. Or was there something else at play here? “You know you can trust me, Tantei-kun,” he said lightly, and the child made a sound low in his throat.

“I do know that, Kid, but I...don’t want you in danger,” Edogawa admitted, and it looks like he had come to some conclusion Kaito couldn’t follow to admit something like that. “If those people found out we were connected…” he trailed off and Kaito felt his own wave a fear at both the other’s words and the cough that escaped him. He spun around to face Edogawa again, and he must have looked like quite the sight as Edogawa took a step back.

“What people?” He demanded, and Edogawa looks like he hadn’t even realized what he’d said.

“None of your business,” he snapped, defensive.

But Kaito wasn’t having any of that, not when an innocent child felt so endangered he didn’t think he could tell Kaito what was even happening. “It is my business when one of my favorite critics feels threatened,” he snapped back, incensed, and Edogawa looked ready to bolt.

Naturally, that’s when the guns started firing at them.

Chapter Text

Kaito swore and dove to the side, pulling out his card gun and squinting as he tried to get an eye on the shooters. It was too dark, the moon being the only reliable source of light at this point, and Kaito spent a moment cursing himself for forgetting his night vision goggles before he registered the small body pressed alongside his.

Edogawa had apparently lunged in the same direction he had and was now also peeking over their cover to look at the sudden threat, his glasses lit up with the tech he’d seen the boy show up every once in a while. He tugged the child back into cover and ignored the dirty look he was shot in response. “Do you have your phone?” he asked. He was willing to use his, but he would rather have his hands free in case the shooters got closer.

Edogawa’s face dropped from irritated to surprised and then rapidly to hopeful as he made a sound of confirmation and start patting his pockets down. “Can you keep an eye on them while I make this call?” The boy asked, and Kaito grimaced in frustration.

“Not with how dark it is,” he admitted, before blinking as the boy shoved his glasses into Kaito’s gloved hands, the night vision mode already on. “Are you sure? You don’t need these?” He asked, surprised, but the kid just snorted and started dialing a number.

“My eyesight isn’t that bad,” he said and, while it didn’t exactly feel like a lie, there was something off about the way he said that which stuck out to Kaito. But he didn’t say anything about it, just put the glasses on and turned to start firing back at the - likely - Organization members firing at them.

Kaito doesn’t know how long they were up there, the police already gone from following a false trail and Kaito torn between firing at the shooters and keeping himself and Edogawa safe, but it all abruptly came to an end as the firing on the other side suddenly changed targets from the sounds of things, and Kaito heard a relieved sigh from where the child had been kept. “Looks like my friends made it,” he said, and Kaito couldn’t help the amused Kid grin that spread across his face.

“You have frightening friends from the sound of things, Tantei-kun,” he teased, and the boy hummed back in agreement.

“They share my interests in seeing those who seek to harm others put away. I like to think we get along.”

Kaito laughed. “I should hope so,” he said, before turning back to the boy and feeling for second like he was staring into a ten year old memory.

Edogawa looked exactly like Kudou. Beyond even what cousins could safely claim, he was a mirror of what the boy who’d saved his life years ago looked like, piercing blue eyes and all.

Kaito kept his smile in place even as his mind whirled, trying to parse what this could mean. Did Edogawa - Kudou - actually remember who he was? Was his separation to his pelt what caused this - this - whatever this was? No, he reminded himself swiftly, Kudou only gave him the pelt recently; Edogawa has been around before then.

They were the same person, right? The glasses helped hide the resemblance, but without them it was clear as day that Edogawa looked too much like Kudou for it to ever be natural.

Then again, a part of his mind argued, Kudou wasn’t a natural creature; he was, technically, supernatural. Maybe those tied to the fae had strange occurrences with family lines and physical traits.

There was only one way to find out, he decided, and plucked the glasses off of his own face to offer to the tiny detective, gentling his grin to a small but very real smile. “Thanks for the glasses, Kudou. I needed them.”

The child, whose hand had only been inches from Kaito’s as he reached out for his glasses, froze, and Kaito had the dubious honor of seeing a similar debate to his own take place in the child’s features, every micro twitch betraying a change in argument. Finally, he saw him close his eyes and, when they reopened, it was like a completely different person stood in front of Kaito. Different, but utterly beloved. “You’re welcome, Kid. I’m glad I could help.”

All of the air left Kaito in a rush at that simple acknowledgement and he stared hard at Kudou, the other boy not bothering to hide the way his eyes drifted over Kaito before he took the glasses from him and slipped them back on. Now that the illusion had been broken Kaito can’t imagine how he’d ever been fooled by it; the glasses did nothing beyond take focus off of his eyes. “What happened to you, Meitantei?” He asked, his now free hand moving to wave over all of the shrunken teen.

Kudou’s following sound was frustrated, his eyes cutting away with embarrassment. “I got lax and someone caught me off guard,” he said, clearly more upset with himself than anyone else in that scenario. He shook his head. “We’ll talk about it later. Someone may be looking for me,” he decided, and Kaito nodded in hurried agreement.

“I’ll find you this weekend,” Kaito said, and he made sure Kudou could hear that this was not a suggestion. The shrunken teen’s quiet head tilt and nod was all Kaito needed before he activated his glider and flew away, his mind racing.

The weekend couldn’t come fast enough.

“Do I even have to say that I don’t approve of your clandestine meeting with Kid?” Haibara asked him the next day as they ate lunch, the other Detective Boys too busy discussing a case that had been dropped in Genta’s shoe locker to pay them much attention.

“You don’t, but I appreciate hearing it anyway,” Shinichi told her with a tiny smile, and she rolled her eyes back and stabbed her chopsticks into her rice. He read the subtle lines on her face and carefully bumped her should with his. “I trust him.”

“I don’t,” she admitted, no longer pretending to eat the food and instead stabbing at it. “He’s a human, they don’t usually get any of this. Hell half the time I don’t think you get any of this.”

“I know what I’m doing,” he said defensively, and the look she shot him made his shoulders rise up out of instinct.

“And yet you continue to do it,” she pointed out, and he grunted a little in irritated admission and they went back to their food. After a few more minutes she hummed and he looked back up at her. “Does he know what it means when a Selkie willingly gives up their cloak?” she asked, and he felt his apprehension stir a little.

“No, I’m going to have to explain it to him,” Shinichi admitted, and didn’t try to defend himself when she heaved a sigh and half-heartedly kicked at him. “What did you expect? No one talks about it. Who would dare admit that they’re a Selkie to a bunch of humans and that they gave up their cloak of their own free will? Who knows how the world would take that.”

“Well, you’re about to find out how one particular human will take that,” she pointed out, and he made a sound of resignation. She watched him for a moment as he stewed and asked, faux-bored, “Is it worth all of this?”

He barely had to think about it before he answered. “Yes. He was worth giving up my cloak; he deserves an explanation too.”

She hummed with a trace of doubt but didn’t say anything else for the time being, and they returned to class with their friends calling out to them.

As they were heading home a few hours later she looked at him in the middle of chatting with Ayumi, and he paused in his conversation with Mitsuhiko and Genta to look back. “I heard the teacher talking to your parents,” she said, brutal in her honesty as the kids’ faces creased with distress. He silently cursed her for reminding them. “You’ll be going back to America soon?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, flinching a little at the sorrow he could all but feel emanating from the kids at the reminder that he would be leaving in a matter of weeks. “End of the month.”

With the FBI having caught a few shooters from the night before – who appeared to be tied to the Organization – there was even less reason for Shinichi to remain shrunk. The Organization was on the defensive now, and they’d be too busy covering their own tails to care about or notice a detective returning from abroad.

That didn’t stop him from feeling like the worst when he took in just how distraught the Detective Boys were at the thought of him leaving. As Ayumi started pestering him into promising to email them and the other two backed her up by saying he shouldn’t be mean and forget to, Shinichi locked eyes with Haibara and purposefully nodded his head towards the kids.

The long-suffering look she sent him back wasn’t an immediate no, so Shinichi tabled the conversation for later even as he promised to send an email when he could.

It was little more than a game of voice mimicry to get the Mouri father and daughter out of the house that weekend, convincing both of them that the other would watch “Conan” and encouraging them to spend the evening out with friends. By eight they were both gone and Kaito was loitering outside of their house in plain clothes and a cap to obscure his features. In his bag was Kudou’s pelt, carefully rolled up and covered to hide it from immediate sight and keep it safe. Once he’d insured they were both gone he slipped in and made him way up to their home.

Kaito felt like he was barely breathing as he stared at their front door, fist held aloft to knock. This was going to be a frighteningly honest conversation, Kaito knew, and as much as he wanted to understand what was happening with Kudou – why he was tiny, why he knew people that would help out with Kaito’s unwanted participants in his heists – he was terrified of what he’d have to reveal in return.

But what was he going to reveal, really? Kudou knew him, has known him for years. He’s bound to have realized that Kaito’s old man had been the previous Kaitou Kid, that Kaito was doing this for a good reason considering the shooters during his last heist. And he wouldn’t push too hard, not if Kaito didn’t want to talk about it.

Above all else, they were a team with this; they had to be a team about this – whatever the hell ‘this’ included.

With that thought, Kaito took a fortifying breath and knocked on the door.

It took a little less than a minute for Kudou to get the door, and from the somewhat displeased look he’d been shot Kaito was willing to bet the detective had been in the middle of a book or some other hobby he had to rein in normally when around the Mouris. “Can I help you…” his question trailed off as he took in Kaito’s disguise and, despite the situation, his detective’s face brightening up upon recognizing him helped settle Kaito more than he’d ever admit.

They didn’t say anything, Kudou retreating back into the house with the door ajar for Kaito to slip in, until they made their way to the kitchen. “Do you want anything to drink?” Kudou asked, and Kaito actually thought about it for a moment before he took a seat at the kitchen table.

“Do they have any soda?” He asked back, and the look Kudou shot him back would have been intimidating if he were still a teenager; instead it looked rather hilarious on his younger features.

“Only juice,” Kudou said, irritated. Kaito could only imagine how often he was plied with juice while in this shrunk form if he asked for anything to drink at all, and snorted a little.

At Kudou’s deepening frown he regained his composure and nodded before placing his bag on the table. “Juice sounds good,” he said back mildly, and Kudou grumbled before going quiet. When he passed it over to him Kaito smiled his thanks and waited for him settled on the other side of the table beginning the interrogation.

"So, what? Were you cursed into this form? If so, how'd you transform back at the cabin?" He asked, waving his hand to gesture at all of Shinichi's currently shrunk body, and the other teen scowled again. What followed was what would have been one of the most ridiculous stories Kaito had ever heard if he wasn't a magician thief stealing gems looking for a magical one that granted eternal life and the story wasn't being told by a teen who could turn into a seal whenever he put on a pelt. He listened quietly to the entire story, only interrupt to ask a question from time to time, and the more he heard about the Organization the more dread crawled up his spine like a spine beneath his skin. That group sounded a lot like the ones after Pandora, but Kaito couldn't jump to conclusions, not right then. He'd have to do some more digging on his own.

When the story came to a close Kaito looked over the glass of juice he'd been given earlier to peer at Kudou. He looked tired right then, like everything he'd said had just hit him, and he'd realized he had been waging a war against a criminal organization with few allies and little intel. Kaito could empathize. Rather than say that, however, he instead cleared his throat before opening his bag and pulling out the other teen’s pelt. There was nothing he could say to the other's story, not right then, so it was just better to move on to something more uplifting.

It was like watching some strange metamorphosis, the way Kudou’s eyes turned brighter and color began to fill his cheeks with renewed health as he gently ran his hands along the fur. But something looked off, the pelt didn’t in turn come alive at its owner’s touch, and Kudou only confirmed it when he shut his eyes and withdrew his hand even as it looked like the action pained him. Kaito watched all of it as he sipped on the juice and tried to ignore the way the taste soured in the back of his throat. “Something wrong?” He asked lightly, and Kudou let out a breath filled with exhaustion and frustration.

“You could say that,” he said, before running his hand through his hair and opening his eyes again. “What do you know about Selkies?” Kudou asked in return, and Kaito thought about feigning ignorance before scrapping that idea entirely. It would just make his detective waste time explaining something that Kaito already knew enough about when he could just get to the point of the question.

“I did some research,” he admitted, and Kudou hummed at that.

“Online sources can be a mixed bag,” he started, taking a sip of water and clearing his throat before continuing. “The basics are true, a Selkie’s pelt is considered a piece of themselves, so the stealing or giving of it tends to have rather big implications for the Selkie and the person now in possession of the pelt. But something that isn’t really talked about as I understand it is that the intention behind the transfer of ownership is equally important.”

“How do you mean?” Kaito asked, and Kudou went silent, likely organizing his mind to try and answer succinctly.

After a moment he let out what could’ve been a pained sigh and rubbed the space between his eyes. “Let’s say someone stole my pelt,” he said, having apparently decided to best demonstrate his point with comparing stories. “The only thing that matters, the only thing the person intended, was to gain possession of my pelt. Therefore, it doesn’t matter how I get my pelt back; it’ll fully be mine again. They could give me back the pelt, I could locate it on my own and steal it, even a random third party can give it back to me and my pelt will be mine again.”

“But it’ll always be your pelt,” Kaito tried to argue, mentally tucking the example way and better understanding what exactly Akako had been trying to do when she’d attacked him. “Just because someone else has it doesn’t stop it from being your Selkie pelt.”

Kudou’s smile warmed significantly at how offended he sounded and Kaito did his best to fight back the embarrassed heat climbing up his neck. “While that’s true, the Fae and creatures who share court with them work on different rules; words can be as binding as law, actions as powerful as a signed contract. And that’s the issue that we’re getting to right now.” He waved a hand as if to dismiss the rest of Kaito’s arguments before placing it on the pelt. Again the pelt did nothing. “If a Selkie gives you its pelt, then the intention behind the action basically becomes…a kind of price, I suppose.”

“A price on you or me?” Kaito asked, and Kudou’s answering laugh was as dry as kindling.

“A price on the pelt. Now, if you want to give the pelt to someone else, be it returning it to me or giving it to someone else entirely, you have to do so with the same intention it was given to you. This all stops being an issue once you successfully return it to the Selkie, but until then…” he trailed off, but Kaito was staring at the fur in puzzlement.

“Then what’s the issue? You gave it to me to keep me warm; that’s shouldn’t be hard to match.”

Kudou abruptly looked like he was sucking on a lemon as he stared at his glass of water. Kaito took a sip of his juice and decided to wait him out. After about a minute of silence Kudou finally looked up but kept his eyes away from Kaito. “I did not give you the pelt with the intention of keeping you warm, strictly speaking.” He looked furious, but Kaito was beginning to suspect that it was all self-directed. “I was uncertain when you would be able to get out of there and the temperature was dropping further when my rescue arrived. I gave you the pelt with the intention of keeping you alive.”

Kaito stared at Kudou, at his nervousness and irritation and frustrated vulnerability, and said the first thing to come to mind. “Well that puts a damper on things but, considering the life you lead, it won’t be that long before I can give it back to you with matching intention.”

That startled a laugh out of his detective, and Kaito felt his chest grow tight at the grateful look he was shot. “I don’t think I appreciate how confident you are in that.”

Kaito grinned and took another sip of the juice. “You should be.” He saw Kudou shake his head in exasperation but they both went silent, enjoying their drinks and the understanding between them. Once Kaito finished his juice he checked the time and stood up from the table, Kudou mirroring him. “Looks like I should head out; one of your caretakers is bound to come back any moment.” He put the pelt back in his bag and did his best not to wince at the way Kudou seemed to wilt like a flower removed from the sun. Instead he swallowed and ignored the ashen taste of failure the action left behind. This was just another obstacle, and Kaito excelled in getting over those. “It was good to see you, Kudou.” He mimed tipping his hat at the shrunken teen and headed for the door.

“Kid,” Kudou called out and Kaito froze, his hand hovering over the doorknob. “Call me Shinichi; Kudou’s a bit too formal now, don’t you think?” He sounded wryly amused, and Kaito cursed himself for slipping up in the first place.

For a moment Kaito thought about offering his name back, offering his detective another piece of himself, another thread to bind them both together, but he refrained. Later, he decided; when the other has his body back and his pelt in his possession once again, Kaito would tell him. Until then – “I don’t know,” he said, trailing off theatrically as he mimed consideration, “I think I prefer Meitantei to be honest.”

Shinichi’s laughter followed him out, but he found he didn’t really mind.

Chapter Text

Kaito swung through his bedroom window and threw himself onto his bed with an irritated groan, that night’s heist target dropped next to him. “Who thought it’d be this hard to keep saving Shinichi from near death while involving the cloak?” he whined to himself.

It had been over two months since Shinichi had come back from his “long term case” and, despite him attending every heist Kaito had set up since, and having all of them inevitably end in some kind of dangerous situation for the trouble magnet that was his crush, Kaito had yet to find a way to save him via the use of Shinichi’s pelt. It was getting frustrating.

Honestly, he huffed to himself. A bomb threat, a hostage situation, a fire and an attempted murder via being pushed off the roof, and Shinichi barely looked bothered about it all beyond a few irritated glances at corvids while Kaito was ready to pull his hair out and had taken to carrying the pelt around with him during heists in case it comes in handy.

He turned to grab the night’s heist target and twisted it around, looking at the light sparkling through its faceted edges. He’d wanted to give it to Shinichi but when he’d said as much the detective had laughed and waved him off, his cheeks a faint red. Kaito smiled at the memory and made a note to research what gift giving meant to fae in general.

After a few minutes Kaito finally rolled off the bed and went to his desk, putting the gem away in one of the drawers. He would have to find a day to slip the gem back to the police with a “better luck next time” note along with it. As he snickered at the thought Kaito checked the calendar he kept at his desk and paused in surprise.

It was a little over a week until April Fool’s Day.

He hadn’t thought it was so close.

He bit his lip in thought. Silly as it may be to think, that day was the one that reunited him with his first love, even if neither of them had realized it at the time. He had to celebrate it, and with Shinichi too if he could.

He could hold another heist out at sea – that would certainly be a callback, in his opinion. And Shinichi was bound to be happy to have a reason to be near the ocean again. It would be rather sudden, sure, but honestly that’s what the police get for thinking they could predict Kaitou Kid.

His mind made up, Kaito sat down at his computer and began the research binge he’d need for his new heist, and the riddle that would have to come with it.

He went into school the next day with bags under his eyes and slept through all of his classes, but it was worth it to see Hakuba watching him suspiciously and, the next day, to see the newspaper announce his upcoming heist.

He was already looking forward to it.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Haibara said, her voice flat and arms crossed.

Shinichi turned and met her gaze, pausing in his self-assigned chore to clean the entire house as the places he hadn’t frequented while shrunk had all gained a coating of dust. He shrugged a little but didn’t go back to cleaning just yet. “They’re smart kids, very accepting, and incredibly perceptive. They’re bound to notice something’s off about me if we don’t.”

She hummed in acknowledgement but went silent to think over his proposal more and he went back to dusting the higher shelves in the library. He’d gotten them the first week he’d moved back into his house after being cured, but the dust had already returned. He grumbled to himself; he may be used to it, but keeping a house as large as his clean would always be time-consuming.

“Kaitou Kid has announced a new heist,” she said after a few minutes, putting their original topic of conversation to rest for the time being, and Shinichi smiled at the shelves he was cleaning.

“I saw, and received my own invitation in fact.” It was a rather simple card in design, but the fact Kid had even done that was rather flattering to him.

He moved to another shelf and could all but feel Haibara smirking at him. “Well aren’t you special,” she teased, and he hummed back, grateful that she couldn’t see his face turn a little red in response. “Do you know what the target is?”

“I do, in fact. He seems to be after a rather nice pearl that’s on display on a ship right now. The boat is at port currently and won’t be sailing until the day of the heist.”

“Any reason he’s going after that particular item? It doesn’t really fit with most of his other targets.” She sounded genuinely puzzled and Shinichi had to clear his throat to stop a nervous cough from escaping.

“Not to my knowledge,” he said, his voice strained and face burning hotter.

The silence that followed was very telling, and after a moment Haibara let out a disbelieving, “Sure,” and demanded he get her a book from where he was cleaning, which he was more than happy to do if it meant she would stop asking questions.

After he finished dusting he settled near her with his own book, smiling to himself at the thought of the invitation that had arrived at his doorstep, and the rose it came with.

He was quite excited to match wits on the day they had reunited again.

Kaito was waiting impatiently in the crowd, his disguise and face mask on as he kept a close eye on the clock while everyone around him chatted with one another, excited for the heist that was to come. As he turned to join a conversation near him Kaito spied Shinichi walking around the cordoned off area that displayed the pearl. He was scanning the crowd, clearly looking for Kaito, and the thief quickly turned back to the group he was listening to and made a comment, getting them to laugh in response.

After a few minutes he peaked back over, and saw that Shinichi had turned away, and was instead observing the target of the night. He was frowning at it thoughtfully, and Kaito blinked as a thought occurred to him. Could Shinichi tell if a pearl was fake or not? Was there some kind of resonance between Selkies and other items from the ocean? Akako had mentioned that the pelt was able to repel other creatures from the ocean, but he didn’t know how that affected Shinichi directly.

At the thought of the pelt Kaito’s hands twitched but he squashed down the impulse to check on it, trusting his disguise skills to keep it safely on his person.

And that’s when the intercom chimed, and everyone hushed to listen to the announcement. “We will begin our departure,” the man on the other side said, and Kaito made sure to memorize his voice and speech patterns just in case. “We hope you enjoy sailing with us tonight.”

The intercom clicked off and everyone began talking at once, their excitement returning with the proof that everything would continue as scheduled. Kaito checked his watch to make sure and hummed, satisfied. The departure was right on time. He adjusted his sleeve to cover the watch again and looked up to see where Shinichi was on his patrol route before frowning.

Shinichi wasn’t near the display.

A quick glance at every other location that had members of the police or task force confirmed that his detective was no longer in the room at all, and Kaito had to bite back the worry that rose within him at that.

Instead he turned to another person that was watching the display like a hawk. “Hey,” he said, getting her attention if the annoyed look she threw him was any indication. “Where did that one guy go? The teen that was walking around the pearl?”

“He went outside,” she said, her voice clipped and irritated. “Though why the police even allow that guy near the target when none of us are is beyond me.” She sniffed and returned to watching the target, and didn’t even respond when Kaito offered her a thanks for the information.

He sighed internally. Some fans really were a bit too into it.

He slipped away to one of the exits and made his way outside, hoping he would run into Shinichi on that side and he wouldn’t need to go through the entire crowd again to get to the other side. He perked up as Lady Luck smiled on him and he spied Shinichi leaning on the ship’s railing a few feet away. He snuck closer and was contemplating surprising his detective when Shinichi turned his head to bring Kaito into his line of sight and offered him a slight smile. “Needed some air?” he asked, and Kaito nodded, offering up a polite smile rather than beaming at him like he’d wanted.

“Yeah, it’s getting a bit stuffy in there,” he said back, and Shinichi hummed in agreement before turning back to the water below them. Kaito watched in interest. “You seem lost in thought,” he noted, and Shinichi remained quiet for a moment as he thought.

“A bit,” he admitted. “I haven’t been this far out in the ocean in…months.” He said the last word as if it genuinely surprised him, and Kaito couldn’t help but feel for his love at the lost look that flickered across his face.

“Well hopefully you’ll be able to visit more soon,” Kaito said firmly, and Shinichi laughed a little but didn’t bother turning around again.

“That would be very nice,” Shinichi agreed, before sighing quietly. “You should probably make sure everything is in place, Kid. I’ll be in soon.”

Kaito froze in place out of instinct before letting out a laugh and dropping the voice he’d been mimicking. “Sure thing, Meitantei. Try and keep up.”

And so Kaito went back into the display room with Shinichi laughing behind him.

Shinichi panted for breath as he rounded a corner and continued pursuit of Kid, Inspector Nakamori’s bellowing and Kid’s laughter the only sounds in his ears. He ducked beneath a smoke pellet and kicked off the wall to go above the trip wire he saw gleaming in the dim lighting. He kicked a soccer ball up ahead and smirked as Kid’s laughter cut off in an abrupt yelp.

So far the night had been going well, Kid beginning the chase and Shinichi taking point in pursuit of him. It was all going like the last few heists had, and Shinichi thought back to the map he’d memorized and predicted they would be up on the deck in three floors and Kaito would hold the pearl up to the moonlight in that strange ritual of his. Then Shinichi would make another attempt to get the pearl back and the night would proceed from there.

Just as he’d thought, they exited the maze of hallways and ran onto the deck, Shinichi looking upward while members of the Kid Task Force swung their flashlights around wildly.

When they finally landed on Kid, Shinichi had to admit that it looked rather impressive, the beams looking more like spotlights that made the white of his suit glow. He offered them all a cheeky bow and Shinichi quietly had a soccer ball ready. “They may say that slow and steady wins the race, Inspector, but I don’t think that works if you’re chasing a phantom!” He held the pearl aloft and Shinichi watched as he always did, head cocked to the side to better angle his gaze.

It didn’t do anything, but Shinichi hadn’t really expect it to – it was a pearl, after all. It seems that Kid was of a similar mindset, as he simply shrugged and made it disappear with a flick of his hand. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe this to be –”

The rest of his spiel was interrupted as the crack of a gun suddenly went off and Shinichi dropped to the ground on reflex. When he peaked back up a man was on a higher platform, dressed completely in black, and Shinichi felt his heart lurch at the sight.

Another Organization member! But all of them should have been detained. As his brain whirled Shinichi snatched a flashlight from a nearby Taskforce member and directed it toward the man. He fired a few more shots and Shinichi followed the trajectory to where Kid had previously been standing. A fire heated his veins and Shinichi growled under his breath, his hand moving to narrow the intensity of the beam as he stood up. Then, with careful precision, he aimed it directly at the shooter’s eyes.

Even from this distance Shinichi could hear the man let out a curse as his shot went wide from where Shinichi spied Kid and the man turned to him, his hand up to shield his eyes from some of the glare.

And then Shinichi backed up, doing his best to not give away his movement by keeping the beam of the flashlight steady on the man. A gunshot went off and Shinichi flinched as it dug into the wood directly in front of him. He backed up further, and then three things happened at once.

First, he noticed that the Taskforce were now up and approaching where the shooter was stationed, on the move now that he had been properly distracted.

Second, his back hit against the railing of the ship, startling him into stilling.

Third, pain flared along his arm as a bullet grazed it, causing him to cry out in pain and drop the flashlight. He curled up defensively and turned away, pain flashing red behind his eyelids as the movement caused his head to collide with the railing.

He wobbled, crumpled to the ground, and felt the world spin around him. As he leaned forward, he only had a moment to think fleetingly that the railing was in this direction before gravity took hold of him and fell.

And, with the probably concussion and bullet wound, as he hit the water, he did as he’d told Haibara morosely months ago and sank.

The world around him was dark, the night and lack of his pelt doing him no favors as his sense of direction was lost, the pounding of his head erasing his brain’s frantic chant of I am sinking down, I am sinking down.

He felt his lungs begin to strain as air was leeched away by the water, and kicked weakly to try and straighten out his position.

His legs moved like lead weights were tying them down, and Shinichi could only feel a creeping sense of fear. He didn’t want to die like this, rejected by the ocean as it thoughtlessly killed him.

And then, suddenly, a flood of warmth went through his veins and the ocean around him began to glow with unearthly light, the moon’s radiance magnified in his eyes, and he snapped them closed. Something brushed against his shoulders before wrapping around him and Shinichi gasped, his brain struggling to register what was happening. He felt his breath start to leave again before it was abruptly stopped, and Shinichi blinked his eyes open again, trying to clear up his hazy vision.

Kid had his mouth pressed against Shinichi’s, preventing him from losing air, and when he realized that Shinichi had opened his eyes again he pulled away and smiled at him, his eyes soft and unobstructed by his monocle.

Shinichi smiled back and, with his pelt now reunited with him, transformed into a seal and took them to the surface, Kid’s arms wrapped around him. As he breached the water he transformed back and laughed, treading water without any effort. “I guess that’s one way to give me my pelt back,” he said, and Kid lifted his hand to brush some of Shinichi’s soaked hair out of his face, his gloves still on and waterlogged.

“Honestly, I don’t think a better opportunity will ever present itself,” Kid said, before leaning forward to bump their foreheads together. “And by the way, my name is Kaito.”

Shinichi turned so that their noses would brush together. “Kaito, it’s good to finally make your acquaintance.”

And, in the dead of night, in the middle of an ocean, without the fear of death motivating their actions, the two of them kissed.

*Omake*

“Shinichi, I had a question for you.” Kaito looked at his boyfriend, watching him walk around the library and pick up any misplaced books he found, his pelt draped around his shoulders. He could all but feel Shinichi’s returned health as he hummed to himself, and Kaito smiled to himself as Shinichi put the pile of books he’d accumulated on a table and turned to face him.

“Ask away then.” Shinichi watched with interest as Kaito ran his hands down his shirt to try and gather himself.

“Do you know where Pandora is? It’s the gem I’ve been looking for all this time.”

Shinichi hummed a little and turned his face up to the ceiling, clearly running the name through any gems that he knew. “Nothing comes to mind. Can you describe it?”

Kaito wobbled his hand a little. “Only a bit. Apparently it’s a large gem that has another inside of it. If you hold it up to the moon the inner jewel glows red. It’s believed to grant immortality to anyone that drinks the liquid it releases on the night some big comet appears in our sky.”

The more he described it the more the interest and suspicion on Shinichi’s face grew, and when he stopped Shinichi sat on top of the table he’d been leaning against and rested his chin in his hand, humming so lowly that Kaito could barely hear him. After a minute Shinichi looked up, a glint in his eyes. “I think I know where it is, but it’s kind of unreachable to those who can’t go deep into the ocean.” He smiled at Kaito and jumped back off the table, suddenly a bundle of energy. “Come back in a week and I should have it.”

Kaito barely managed to get out an, “Um, thanks,” before Shinichi disappeared up the stairs. He thought about waiting his boyfriend out to try and get any more information from him, before deciding to take him on his word and see him in a week.

When he came back seven days later, the young girl that Shinichi claimed was a half-fae was there, and frowned at the sight of Kaito. “He got back a few hours ago,” she told him, and he blinked a little in surprise as she went back into the house and followed behind.

“He was gone this entire time?” He asked, and she gave him an irritated look but nodded in confirmation. When they made it to the library they found Shinichi, curled up on the couch with a blanket over him and a large amethyst on the coffee table in front of him. Kaito picked it up gently, a lump forming in his throat, before he cleared it and hoped the look he shot his boyfriend wasn’t as besotted as he suspected it was. The little miss’s amused snort didn’t give him good chances. “Where was it?” He asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

The little miss sighed. “Apparently it sunk with the rest of those idiots on that island nation a few millennia ago, but Kudo-kun remembered hearing a mermaid talking about when he was younger.”

Kaito stared at the gem as he processed that, and slowly turned his head to her. She looked back blankly, before amusement curled at her lips. “It was in Atlantis?” He choked out.

*End Omake*