Work Text:
“what do you want from me?”
The man on screen whispers it in a fit of desperation, hands curled on the bar counter. The view pans to a different angle. To Shinichi, he looks very small.
Hattori is pressed into his side, hand paused over the bowl of popcorn balanced on Shinichi’s thighs. “Pro’ly a better script-writer, for starters,” he whispers quietly, and Shinichi snorts, shoving his shoulder.
It’s true that the film’s dialogue has been more than wanting, but this moment strikes Shinichi as oddly poignant, watching the woman at the bar bite her lip, worry a strand of her hair. He can’t remember what she replies, later. Just the held breath in between dialogue lines, notes of mournful piano forming interlude in a moment which was clearly about to make or break their tenuous relationship.
It’s an action movie, so its grasp of romance is as cheesy and flawed as they come, but there is something to be said for the actors themselves. The quiet despairing on the man’s face as the unnatural question wrenches from his lips is something he’s seen before, in many circumstances besides.
The piano tune returns in warmer, major overture during the credits, after tearful reconciliation between one-dimensional characters, when Hattori has inevitably fallen asleep against him, steady breaths against Shinichi’s pyjama clad shoulder, popcorn-greased hand laying relaxed in his own lap. Shinichi drops the volume, settling back into the couch.
He breathes out, and it flutters through Hattori’s hair.
“why are you with me?”
The woman says it harshly, but the fists at her sides don’t seem to clench properly, and her voice wobbles something dangerous, something vulnerable, something like taut fishing line, most easily cutting yet most easily cut.
For all that he can do, Shinichi has witnessed trains wrecking over and over in his life, and he stands frozen as he watches this one. Straining iron tracks squealing when the accused turns as much as she is able in the grip of a beat cop, whistling alarm in the cold glare of her eyes. She’s a murderer, Shinichi knows. She will not hesitate, Shinichi knows. She has nothing to lose and only spite to satisfy.
“I fucking wonder,” she states calmly. “Didn’t do me much good, did it, snitch?”
The train crashes, falls upon the other woman like a blow to the face, like the swing of the brick that made this case. He looks, almost instinctively to Hattori, whose face is twisting like he can see the rails shooting sparks in the aftermath, and he advances, and Shinichi still doesn’t move, can already think-hear a right-handed slap across a deserving woman’s cheek.
He blinks, and instead Hattori is knelt by the asker, the not-quite case victim, hand heavy on her hunched shoulder and murmuring comfort at a volume higher than anyone might choose. Constant, repetitive, blunt, “ma’am, c’mon, you can stand, tha’s it, let’s move, ma’am, she’ll go, c’mon,” over and over and meaningful.
Clink of handcuffs when the woman moves to speak again, and this is Shinichi’s part, to clear the wreck, and he leans in close to her. He knows his glare has learned to burn since he was seventeen. Quietly says, “That’s about enough out of you.”
She glances at him, swallows and doesn’t flinch, hisses a “fuck you,” and with his nod to the officer holding her she disappears into the waiting police car.
He turns around and sees Hattori still standing over the woman, now in a folding chair, and she’s telling him something. It must be unrelated because Hattori’s smiling has no hunch behind it, just placid yet focused attention. He nods every so often. The officers are glancing at them as they quietly bag evidence for trial. Hattori never lies, not really, but his hands are trembling very slightly in tightly packed and forced composure, and Shinichi knows them, approaches him. Carefully drops a hand on his shoulder and says “Hattori.”
Hattori reaches up for his fingers, pressing the tips of his own into the cracks between Shinichi’s, not pushing them to interlock. And then drops it, and his breathing is alright again.
“Prosecution will wanna know if ya’d be willing to testify ‘bout this under oath,” he says, turning his attention back to the woman, and it’s not their moment anymore, but Shinichi stays. He watches tension ease, listens to low, reassuring tones as the woman slowly nods, and he stays.
will you------------?
His hands are wrapped in blue latex as he searches through the bedroom, looking for something, anything that could connect to the murderer (he knows it, just needs to prove it). It’s a quiet couple’s room, the walls are pale cream and it doesn’t look like anyone has stepped in here in days. There’s nail polish bottles strewn around the dressing table and never put away, like someone was called away from them and never came back to clean up.
He’s searching in a small bin of men’s socks, tucked in the corner of the dresser, when something firm knocks his knuckles in a way that is unmistakably not fabric. His heart leaps (could it be a clue?) and he pulls it out only for something in his chest to crash very suddenly to earth.
It’s a small, suede box, perhaps three centimetres on each side. Clipped shut in its jaws is a post-it note, the bookmark kind, fluorescent yellow, and he tugs it free and
don’t chicken out!!
He doesn’t need to confirm it, but at the same time he does, and the yawning pit in his stomach ignores his better sense and pries the box open.
In it, is a. Well.
“Kudo?”
He looks up, blinking, and Hattori is in the doorway of the bedroom, gloved finger scratching the side of his nose. “Find anything?” He asks.
It’s a confusing question until he realises that he’s partially hidden behind the closet door, that Hattori can’t see the ring box sitting open in his hand in a parody of how it should have been used. And he briefly contemplates not bringing it up at all - surely it isn’t relevant to the case directly, perhaps this is one pain he can spare the poor witness. But he doesn’t need his inner voice to shift and tell him it’s wrong and he’s waving Hattori over before he can even think.
Hattori sees, Hattori says, “oh shit.”
“Yeah,” Shinichi agrees
Hattori crouches down next to him to look at the victim’s sock drawer. “So he was gonna-“
“Yes.”
“And she hasn’-“
“Yep.”
“She pro’ly doesn’-“
“Nope, she probably doesn’t.”
As one, they both look to the engagement ring in Shinichi’s hand. It’s tiny, a white jewel smaller than a fingernail inlaid in a silver band. It’s bigger than Shinichi has ever been.
Hattori slumps against him, slight weight pressed into his shoulder, and Shinichi blinks, and pushes back, and he maybe feels better.
“Shit, dude,” Hattori says again, and the profanity is an understatement. “What do we,” Shinichi feels him tense, “how do we even bring something like this up?”
“I don’t. Know?”
“Maybe we can. Uh. Tell her sister, or somethin’, ask her to pass it on.”
“That sounds like a shit idea, Hattori.”
“Really does, doesn’ it.”
Shinichi nods. The ring is clean and polished, but it’s tilted a little to one side, like the last person who opened it had stuffed it hastily back. He tucks the note, which had at some point fluttered to the ground, back behind it. He doesn’t comment when Hattori’s breath hitches at the sight of it.
“I’m thinking,” says Shinichi, and he has to say it slowly, because words are having some trouble cooperating at that moment. “I’m thinking, that maybe we should both tell her?”
“Uh.”
He slips his gaze towards his partner, watching Hattori’s lips purse. “Bad idea?”
“Not-” and now Hattori is irritated, but he’s missing the glare that would tell Shinichi it’s his fault. “Not exactly, I jus’ dunno if it’s a good one.”
Shinichi highly doubts there is any good way to do this and he’s about to tell Hattori exactly that when he sees his face fall, just a little more, eyes not on him. He follows his gaze to the note, and once again the messy scribble feels more damning than bold text.
don’t chicken out spoke of nervousness, of excitement. And this could be a masochistic streak, reading so deeply into a note that’s only going to dig out the scabbed wounds of the case, but excitement spoke of an hope of the future, of. An expectation to life.
A right to life, he corrects himself. Hattori would be furious if Shinichi were thinking aloud. Not that Shinichi isn’t already-
Hattori’s shoulder presses slightly harder into his. The tension startles from Shinichi’s body. He breathes out, turns, gratitude already on his lips, but he isn’t looking back at him. Eyes slightly glazed, Hattori is his open book, and Shinichi can read all his own whirling thoughts.
“Whatever,” he turns away before saying, feeling Hattori’s gaze on him nonetheless. “So, we both tell her.”
“Righ’.” is the reply.
It isn’t them, in the end. Detective Sato finds them still sitting by the closet many moments later, and she’d stared at the ring box with a blank expression before she’d simply said give me that, and they anticlimactically had. Shinichi doesn’t hear about how it goes, doesn’t meet with the witness again until after the trial, after she has presumably composed herself. The ring isn’t on her finger, but there’s a thin necklace chain where there hadn’t been before, and the pendant is hidden under her shirt.
It’s the sort of challenge he’ll have to rise to, at some point, maybe take on Sato’s role and snatch the task out of some unprepared junior’s hands. But he doesn’t really regret delaying it.
and...
Shinichi goes to stifle a yawn, then thinks better of it, letting his jaw stretch and crack under its pressure fully. Blinking the blur out of his eyes, he quietly leaves the records room, stepping down, down the stairs and into the police garage until he’s standing in front of a car that isn’t his. Through the slightly tinted windows he sees Hattori, slumped carefully over the steering wheel. His face is turned towards him, eyes shut. He’s breathing softly, the hair in his face fluttering with every inaudible exhale.
Letting his bag drop from his shoulder to the crook of his elbow, Shinichi stares. He stares and doesn’t see much. It may be for a moment. It may be for much longer. It passes, and he knocks on the window.
Hattori startles, but only just. He lifts his head, eyes alert and his mouth might be forming the syllables of Kudo but Shinichi still doesn’t hear him. Shinichi raises an eyebrow, tilting his head. He only reads the oh syllable now before his partner turns away and there’s the tell-tale click and flash of headlights.
Moving around the car, Shinichi drops himself into the passenger seat and his bag down by his legs, and shuts his eyes.
“Foun’ wha’ we needed?”
Shinichi almost doesn’t hear it at first, still sinking into uncomfortable leather. He opens his eyes, shifts them over. Hattori’s back over the steering wheel, blinking slowly at him, and Shinichi nods.
“Skimmed the-” a yawn interrupts the sentence, and he rubs a tired hand over his jaw. “-testimonies. Lots of questions. All kinds of motives.”
Hattori hums. “Questions?”
“The ones, you know. Very blunt. At the ends of their… well, ones you’d only really hear at something like a crime.”
Hattori falls back into his seat, his hair obscuring green for a moment before they’re back on Shinichi, bright and acidic and leaves and knowing. “S’the romance, ain’t it.”
“The romance,” Shinichi repeats without agreement nor disagreement, testing the word. “Yes, maybe part of it.”
“‘Why din’tcha tell me?’” recites Hattori. Like a joke in poor taste, or maybe it’s just memories falling carelessly from his lips. His gaze is far away enough. “‘Coulda helped you.’”
“‘Was it all a lie?’” Shinichi humours him, stretching out an arm to drum his fingers on the dashboard. “‘Everything?’”
“‘Could’ya have ever loved me?’” continues Hattori, lack of energy making it soft. “‘Monster thatcha are?’”
The drumming stops. “I don’t remember that one.” He does. It doesn’t sound right in Hattori’s inflection.
“Yeah you do.”
Shinichi scrunches his nose. “Okay, maybe. Doesn’t mean I want to.”
Hattori laughs at him, and it’s still like the volume on the world is turned lower, such a quiet thing that nonetheless slips into Shinichi’s ears, attuned to the sound. “Anythin’ like that in there?”
“Nothing quite like that.”
There are gentler questions too. He says only at a crime but it’s really when something confuses them, or maybe pushes them to the end of their rope and he knows that something isn’t something as vague as romance, but vaguer to the point where it’s just love. Plenty of them confuse him too, and he finds himself gnawing idly on them as Hattori shifts in his seat, as he has all day, because ‘what does the future look like’ is anyone’s crisis even before you add the ‘for us’ at the end.
“Anythin’ from you?” He hears. “Questions, I mean.”
There are fingertips pressing on the back of his right hand, tapping his knuckles. He drops his gaze sideways to see Hattori turned fully towards him, leaning sideways against the back of his seat. His expression is curious, and also knowing. His hat is backwards and tilted to one side, fly-away bed head poking out from underneath.The hand that isn’t reaching out is stuffed in his green hoodie pocket. He looks like he’s come out of a project all-nighter after pushing it aside one too many days. He looks like he did this morning, scooping the last of a soft-boiled egg out of its shell. He looks like Hattori, nothing all that special about the sight.
“You got any?” he asks again, where asking is more a step to confirmation.
“Mm,” Shinichi says non-committedly. He thinks, looks for a moment longer. He can memorise a sight within seconds. He takes many more on this one, shrugs. “I can answer them myself.”
“Yeah?” The hand doesn’t move from his own - if anything, Hattori relaxes into the position, fingers going slack over his skin. “With what?”
Shinichi levels him with a flat look at his less-than-curious tone. “I’m not feeding your ego.”
Hattori laughs again at that, only his eyes brighten a little with surprise, maybe something as distant as wonder, and suddenly all Shinichi wants to be is closer.
He turns his hand so it’s palm up, grasping Hattori’s fingers and tugging. Hattori slips easily forward, close enough for their noses to bump before Shinichi closes the last of the distance between their lips. It’s so loose it can barely be called a kiss, but Shinichi sighs into the press of Hattori’s smile, reaches his other hand to pull at Hattori’s shoulder.
Shinichi feels so lazy, kisses with the barest of movements, lets his head slowly drop and his lips trace a path from Hattori’s jaw, neck, down until he’s nuzzled into the machine-tired softness of his hoodie collar. He doesn’t do much from there, just breathes in detergent and coconut body-wash mixed in the smell of a long day. Hattori’s fingers are drawing nonsensical patterns on his scalp, nose tucked against the top of his head.
Shinichi has come close to falling asleep many times tonight, but now that exhaustion isn’t the only motivator, now that peace threatens to envelope all of his senses, he wants to hold on for a bit longer.
He wraps his arm more securely around Hattori’s shoulders, thumb running up, down, up, and reaches forward with his other to press his palm into the loose curve of Hattori’s waist. He feels Hattori grip gently at his hip, finger caught on his belt-loop, his other hand still tangled in Shinichi’s hair. Pushing himself slowly from Hattori’s shoulder, he drags his cheek up the path he’d traced before, skin tingling, and there’s the sound of Hattori’s quiet sigh and he’s been listening for them all night so carefully that this one almost shocks him, warm heat directly by his ear. So close he can hear the hint of a tremble.
Their lips meet again, only marginally more deeply than before, and then there’s the languid trace of a tongue along the seam of his lips. Shinichi groans at the sensation, pulls back but not away, resting his forehead against his partner’s.
He opens his eyes. He’s not sure when he closed them.
Hattori’s eyelids are shut, sleepy, satisfied smile on his face. It’s not a sight Shinichi needs to commit to memory, but he does. “We should probably drive back.”
“Mmhm,” Hattori agrees, and there’s an off-note in his tone.
Shinichi pulls his face away, frowns, examines, unravels his arm very slightly to look at him more carefully. Hattori’s eyes slide open and his smile slips to a smirk, no doubt knowing exactly what he was trying to figure out.
Shinichi’s gaze finds the steering wheel and it clicks. “Hey, Hattori?”
“Yep?”
“Do you know how to drive?”
“A car? Nope.” and he falls away from Shinichi entirely, looking too amused. “Could pro’ly figure it out, if ya wanted me to.”
“No.” Shinichi slumps back in his seat in exasperation and exhaustion. “Move, you absolute cretin.”
He snickers, and instead of exiting the car like a human being he decides, in a feat of athletic chaos, to squirm through the gap in the seats and collapse sideways into the backseat, still laughing. Shinichi climbs over to the driver’s side and falls into place by the wheel. Hattori is cracking up even as he turns the key and the engine rumbles to life, still stretched out across the leather and using Shinichi’s backpack as a pillow.
It’s a joke that’s stupider than it is funny. But Shinichi is tired enough to laugh with him, relaxed enough that laughter is the only thing on his mind.