Chapter Text
By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying-
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
“I can kill you,” Zero says. Under the full moon. His hand hovering on his phone. White gloves, sliver moon.
Blistering white.
His glasses view the target, observes. Green lines appear to cross Zero’s face, as the target track of his detector beeps. That’s what his glasses do to Edogawa. It categorizes people to the right range for pursuit. His smile doesn’t falter, and his teeth drags down on his bottom lip.
Catching. Running.
Isn’t it always?
There’s a pause before he reaches his belt to create his football. A toy, a thing that Zero used to wonder. A toy to lure the mouse.
“Who,” Edogawa grins, his lips still caught in his teeth. Dragging. “Says you can’t?”
And so, lying ends, unexpectedly, with Zero.
Lying has always been easy, he just isn’t good at it.
Edogawa has known cases before. Of people lying. Of witnesses lying. Of corpses lying and twist their bodies there and there to make it difficult for clues. Lying is half of the job. Finding that lie is the other.
Truth, after all, is never simple. It can never be reduced to one, simple, plain truth, for everyone to see. Being a detective is in itself Faustian; giving in your soul for some abstract, objective truth. He didn’t understood it as Kudou: too rash and arrogant and rich boy, but it was so clear to him as Edogawa that he wants to bang his old self’s head on the counter and make him realize. How truth has never been a sole pursuit.
But—look, part of the lie is to make yourself believe the lie. Being a detective is also to be better at lying through and pretend you don’t know the witnesses or the victim or whatever setting are lying at you.
There are patterns for that, and different degrees of it. Doesn’t take a doctorate for it (though Father might contradicts him for that part). Here is a debrief:
- Lie for the well-being of others.
- Lie for your own self.
- Lie for the sake of lying.
And the result may varies in scope but never in the essence: Someone gets hurt.
At that, Edogawa might say, ah-re-re, is that not strange? (and, more often than not, adds with a finality, it needs investigating.) Because for all his old, past life as a distinguished teenage detective with a celebrity-mother and author-father, he never lied. Not in a way that mattered. Not for the three reasons above.
Never before Ran. Women like this, what Kudou would never think but Edogawa realized (he realized a lot, for a child) after Gin had made him swallow that pill; women like this must be feared, not protected.
Pride goes before the fall. And the fall always after damaged pride. Like a peacock, feathers bright in fear of imminent danger.
The sandwich in his small hands is too soft, he ponders. The man with the fake smile too. Pride, Edogawa thinks when he brings the sandwich to his mouth, is for the rich and for the fools.
“Amuro-san,” Edogawa says, his accent full of the sweet innocence of childhood; snapping away from thoughts too big for his head, “how did you make that sandwich? It’s delicious!”
Zero bends down with his hands on his two knees. “Ah,” he smiles, “that’s a secret on the house. It would sush away the costumers if I utter a word. Sorry, Conan-kun.” He finishes, his eyes trailing on his cut cheeks and the bandages that are tingling his skin ever so often. His fingers tap against his knees; as if he’s eager to touch them.
“Conan-kun,” he starts with another smile. “How are your wounds holding up?”
Edogawa is Conan. His mind supplies that he will never, ever, be able to let go of that name. Conan as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan as a small child with the brain of a genius. Conan as a liar, telling another liar how his wounds are holding up.
“It’s okay! Nothing too serious.” He says. “That’s because Amuro-san protected me!”
He means to say it as another childish reply, but his eyes caught the several bandages that covered Zero’s chin and cheeks. He slushes his orange juice, and pokes the ice cubes with his straw. He lowers his voice, “Ne, ne, Amuro-san...”
Zero makes a non-committal voice. Bending, his hands behind him, he acts exactly like a Western painting, of ladies smiling but not quite, their eyes coming alive under strokes of colors.
His eyes are blue. “Thank you,” he says, “Really.”
The blue startles like birds flapping their way to freedom. And because Edogawa is half-certain that he will never have the courage to ask about Zero’s injuries, half-knowing that he will never get an answer anyway, he grabs the chance to scrutinize the face of the man before him, checking for any damage.
There are nothing more other than the bandages. A small cut behind his ears, maybe. The blond curls hide it pretty well. Enchanted by whatever sight that is, he reaches his hands and touch the outline of his left ear.
So, not a cut, he muses while he remains deep in thought. Shadows? There is a small freckle on the lobule.
“Conan-kun.”
He freezes. The ear is getting warm under his touch. He snatches his hand away, cursing himself in the process. “Sorry.” Number two: lie for your own self. He is getting good at this.
The man doesn’t answer. His eyes flicker. “You have come here alone,” he remarks.
He nods, his façade dissipating a little as he watches him smile anew. “In the early morning, so that nobody’s here,” Zero thinks aloud. “What would you need me so badly for, little detective?”
He looks at Zero’s thin, tight line around his mouth. He can’t help but notice the edges around it too, the black underneath his frightening blue eyes. Edogawa has never liked blue. He prefers black, or brown. It reflects better the light.
Like lies, they are better hidden behind pits of darkness, not the clear, infinite blue.
He laughs. How can we be liars if everything shone through?
Zero is unfazed. “Conan-kun?” He says, reaching out to refill his empty glass.
He huffs. Hands him the plastic bag he’s been holding ever since. “Here.”
The man’s hand freezes in the air. He blinks. “I don’t understand,” he says. Number three: lie for the sake of lying.
He glares, all pretense forgotten in view of Zero’s slightly widened mouth and that thin lips. “For your injuries. Nothing impressive. Some bandaids and first aids kit— take this with you when you’ll need to. Didn’t you burn yourself the last time you made that chocolate cake for the kids?”
It is ridiculous; member of the police force that equals the FBI and spy for the most feared organization outside and inside of Japan would hurt himself with a hot oven. Even more ridiculous: he noticed it.
Gently, he grabs his still frozen hands. “Look,” he says with evidence. The slight burn on his fingertips. Because detectives are all about evidence. “Amuro-san, really,” he smiles, “really cares about this, huh.”
A blink, again, then his wrist is seized. Zero’s cooking tools just near. He can very well kill him with the knife or fork or hell, with his bare hands. Something about the thudding of his heart that makes Edogawa fearless. Their gazes meet.
This time, somehow, both with a smile on their face.
“You’re not on your guard,” Zero points out. His dark fingers warm around his wrist. “What’s new?”
And Edogawa knows. He knows how this feeling spreads; it happens once or twice in his short life: the trust that comes easily with Hattori, the teasing hint in Haibara, the shared warmth with— Ran. The thought stops, halts, and does not dare to venture in that direction again.
(Number one: lie for the well-being of others.)
Edogawa snorts; Zero lifts an eyebrow. “Of course I am not,” he says, lets himself be guided to a corner with his wrist still wrapped around that hand. “I am safe with you, liar-san.”
Ah, ah, he thinks, to find comfort in each other’s lies. What a special feeling. And that hand on his wrist trails lower, to his smaller, childish, boneless hand. It’s soft, even with the rough patches and the uneven edges from cuts and burns. It’s soft, to be able to touch someone without the need to see everything through. Zero does not need to be known through and through; like Pandora, like mirrors. No one wants to look too much at oneself.
The little corner has a sofa. Poirot is a lovely restaurant, and the staff even more. Zero gestures him to sit, as he settles beside him, their hands still tightly linked.
“You’ve no right to say this to me, Conan,” Zero says, just like the first time. His eyes closed and relaxed, his head thrown back to the cushion. There is a pause, then, “Conan-kun?”
“What, Amuro-san?”
“What’s like, to lie to your ‘important people’ everyday?”
The weight of Zero’s hand is steady and lets him remember that this is not a dream. They could very well be listened in, right now, not to speak of the fact that he is talking to a Black Org member in a cosy restaurant hand in hand. He has noticed Zero’s stare when he is near, but it never felt threatening lately; he is right, he has let his guard down.
And so, he suspects, willingly. And even then, he can’t stop looking at this dark-skinned blond, with too many bruises and smiles and dark circles under his eyes.
So the truth, for once not at a crime scene or deduction show, comes out of his mouth: “Terrible,” he says slowly. “Nothing I can’t manage,” Edogawa hesitates, then, “It must be hard for Amuro-san too.”
Zero hums, a tilt on his smile peacefully enough to not be bitter. He shakes his head, “They died.”
“...all of them?”
Zero opens one eye, stares at him lazily. “Maa, maa,” his thumb rubbing circles on the back of his hand, “maybe there’s one or two left, I guess.”
Edogawa tries not to break the seriousness, fails. “Amuro-san is surprisingly careless about these kind of things.”
He shrugs, “I try not to think too much about this, it makes one realize things that they don’t want to be reminded of. Like how cakes cannot bring back the dead,” he turns to him. “Do you want cakes? There’re some left.”
The tone of despair hangs too heavy between them, that even when Zero has brought back his smile and eyes vague and opaque as always, he couldn’t help thinking about it. His mind swirling as he brings a piece of cake to his lips, just as he misses the warmth coming from Zero’s fingertips.
Mostly, he remembers rule numero two. And he applies to it as blindly as he follows the warmth from that dark-skinned, bruised hand.
Edogawa remembers being attracted to men.
It is a memory that comes in his Kudou-brain, as distant and untouchable as he’d like to hope. He has always liked Ran. He likes Ran because she is Ran, and he likes women because they are women. It’s different. His brain works with separate categories when it comes to attraction: Ran, and then genders.
So when he tries to remember again when he did not find men attractive, he convinces that it is lost somewhere in the memory that belonged solely to Kudou Shinichi, and not in this body that carries homework with questions like 3 + 13 and why do the birds fly to hot places every winter?
Remember numero two? Well, let’s say it can only work for so long.
Rei cannot, do not want to believe this boy.
He had thought it was something concerning the Organization or his work until now, or worse, about his progress. He knows the boy; too trusting, too loose. If someone shows him any sort of misplaced or polite kindness, he would be able to rip his heart out without a blink and offer it to the first comer.
And today shows that that boy truly, really, doesn’t bat an eye.
That boy has left him immediately when another costumer entered the place. Left with a first aids kit that will undoubtedly be used, if he is lucky and doesn’t waste too much, during his next mission. It’s not like he doesn’t have a mountain of them in his closet.
“Amuro-san?”
A high-schooler waves her hand with a curious gaze. “Amuro-san, are you okay?”
“I’m sorry, just a little tired,” he says with an easy-going smile, his hand taking her menu. “I’ll come back with your order, miss.”
That girl looks torn, she eventually whispers something to a person beside her. A child, perhaps her sibling, cries out. “Ne, ne, onii-chan, can I ask you a question? My sister wouldn’t ask for me!”
The girl crosses her arms, huffs, “It’s not like it’s my business, Akiko. You’ll need to seize the chance yourself!”
The child pouts, but turns to him with pleading eyes. “Please?”
“Of course,” Rei says, his hands on both his knees, and looking at her evenly. “What is it?”
The little girl crawls to her sister’s lap, and covers her words with one hand, as if it is some great secret. It makes Rei misses the little jokes his friend used to tell him just like that: Rei! You can’t believe what I—
“You know Conan, right?” She says with a blush.
The menu drops to the ground with hopefully a small amount of noise. He can’t stop being surprised by children, these days.
“Why would you say that?”
“B-Because I always see you with him!” She fiddles with her sweater. “Say, say, onii-chan, can you make me meet him?”
Ridiculous, he thinks, looking at the girl’s open and sweet face. Ridiculous, and then he thinks about his life, that boy’s life, and nothing has been more ridiculous.
To feel—
“Ah,” Rei smiles, “I’m sorry, little miss, but you’ll have to ask that boy yourself, don’t you think? It’s top-secret, to give away customers private information.” For better effect, he winks, then ruffles her hair.
She’s too young for him. He’ll need someone experienced, knowing. Someone that matches his age. Someone like—
“Sorry,” Rei tilts his head aside, looking at her big sister, “I’ll come back with your orders. A bonus milkshake for the little miss. It”s on the house.”
A liar.
“I said it, right? That I can kill you,” he says, his hands in his pocket, head towards the sunset.
The boy stares at his pocket, looking disappointed. What he is looking at? There’s no gun; only his hands. “And did you hear me? I said that you absolutely can.”
The amusement park is too old for him. It seems to be too old for the boy too. “And yet, you’re still here.”
“When you’re betting your life on the line every day, it suddenly doesn’t feel like a threat anymore,” the boy lies, and Rei lets himself to drown in it a little.
Rei thinks the first time he has heard of the boy: an explosion that killed Jinpei Matsuda in an amusement park bigger than this; sadder than this. An explosion that came around again three years later: same thing. He has wanted to contact the police, to do something; since if Matsuda could not stop that bomb, then no one can— he couldn’t see the same bomb that killed Matsuda do the same to others. But then—
The boy stopped the bomb, found the next one, and captured its doer, all in one single day.
The sunset somehow colors everything red, that boy’s cheeks too. Who are you? He has heard people, countless, actually, asking this question to the boy. Edogawa Conan, detective. Probably another lie, he thinks, but there’s no denying for it to be a charming one. And there’s all to it, really, finding the charm of being lied to.
“I have always meant to thank you, Conan-kun,” he purrs. The boy hears it as if he has heard it a thousand times, and smiles like it’s the first time that someone has addressed it to him, not to some detective or child, but so much more.
So, so much more.
The boy only smiles, and so he pursues, yearns for it, just a little, “Will you not ask me what it is for?”
The grin lasts, blooming like the red cloud hovering over them. “You’re welcome,” he says.
Rei takes out his hands to put them behind his head. He rarely does this, because it’s dangerous, and offers a move too much when the danger comes. If he’s with this little detective all the time, he probably wouldn’t be able to make it alive, he sighs inwardly.
From the corner of his eye, the boy follows the move of his hands, his small ones twitching with every movement.
“Conan-kun,” he says mindlessly, his eyes on the red-veined leaves behind them. “Sometimes it’s okay to say what you want, yes?”
The boy glares, but when their gazes meet, he looks down. Not from fear, no, he thinks with a leaping heart, that look; it’s because—
The boy mumbles something under his breath.
“What did you say?”
“Agh! Your hands! Hands!” He grits out.
“Hah?”
“Did you actually healed?”
Rei bits his lip. He breaks into giggles anyway.
The boy looks positively thrilled to murder him and hide the corpse in some godforsaken cave. He can do it, he’s sure of it.
He lets out another strangled laugh. Shows his hands. “All healed, Doc.”
The boy doesn’t usually do this, he thinks a second too late. He doesn’t usually care about these kind of wounds: fragile, unworthy for close attention. It makes him feel a tiny, a little bit breathless. Not to the point of falling in love, though.
And if all breath has been knocked off from him, it isn’t because of the small, caring hand on his, neither.
Rei has always dated men. His type is smart, fearless, and bad for him.
Not that he has a healthy dating history, nor that he dated a lot. He usually hate them afterwards. For example: Akai Shuichi can eat gun bullets all he wants while he sets fire to his house.
“Ne,” the boy had asked him, with eyes too big for his face and too bright for his age. “Does Amuro-san has a girlfriend?”
It would sound conspicuous to ask him the same thing. (And wrong, he would usually remind himself after. Wrong, wrong, wrong.)
He has always loved his country above people. It feels cold and distant; the best of all, symbolic. Bleeding for your country sounds much more lovely than for people. So he said it, that night, with all the adrenaline and madness required, that it’s this country that’s he is in love with, and not that other thought that’s been edging in his head and consuming him alive.
Later, when the boy in his arms has his cheek covered in his blood, he thinks that probably wasn’t a lie, for once.
To protect the country and its people, marrying it with white gloves and blood seals to each and every single one of them. The boy opens his mouth slightly, words forming and faltering. The blood drips, gets clean under the wool, then all is forgotten.
“We will part ways eventually, Conan,” he says, frightened a little by the softness of his own voice. “We want different things.”
“We’ll meet again, we pursue the same thing,” he says at the time, and startles, the same blue eyes under the red, red cheeks.
He waits for another reply, but the boy only smiles, both of them eventually turning their backs to each other. To part ways. Rei cannot figure out if they are in that aftermath of the explosion or at that simply sunset in the late afternoon, with red-veined leaves and gentle words.
One of us is lying, he knows. It must be. One of us has put hopes in the wrong places, whether it’s in love or in that blind, godly trust for the other. Too much confidence over another is a fatal flaw in missions.
And for now, as his mind turns around and around, twisting like a delicate branch pinched between his fingers, the truth— the one, single truth— doesn’t seem too important right now.
It’s okay, he thinks. If there’s one single mystery left in his life, he hopes it’s this one. Perched on his soul, slowly and gradually, like the taking of one; never, ever leave.
The boy smells like woods and leaves when Rei lets him take his hands, leading them home.