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"I solved it before ya did, Shin'chi" Heiji pants, out of breathe from chasing the culprit. "6th time this month now.”
They laugh. “The bet, whoever solves it first asks anythin’.”
"Alright, you win. Stop gloating already damn it!” Shinichi exhales, “What do you want?"
A pause. Shinichi raises an eyebrow.
Heiji swallows down his heart that attempts to rise into his throat."Take me there. To Tropical Land."
The moment Heiji makes the request, he sees the blood drain from Shinichi's face and its heavy silence that chokes them both. "Let's discuss it on the road?" Heiji cautiously asks.
Shinichi only nods slightly and goes ahead, mind racing a hundred miles an hour.
They walk farther and farther from the crime scene for 10 minutes. The speed of the cars and the commute cannot compare to the thumping of both their nerves. Heiji breaks the silence.
“Shin--”
"Heij, you know why we can't go there-- why I can't go back there. Again ." Shinichi gasps out, almost seemingly out of breath. It scalds Heiji.
Heiji expected this reaction, anticipated it even. But he sees the toll the place has taken on Shinichi. He's seen it since the moment he found out about Conan, and he's seeing it right now. It's torturous for Heiji. Even more so for Shinichi. Heiji can’t even begin to imagine how he’s been able to bear it all this time. But then again, he probably isn’t. The image of Shinichi so torn and so scattered while explaining the beginning of Conan to everyone… It burns the Detective of the West worse than any of the arson cases he had just handled.
"I know, believe me I do but--come on, Shin--Kudo!" The other exasperatedly turns around to stop listening and pace. Heiji holds Shinichi’s wrist firm and Shinichi doesn’t run, he refuses to and never does anymore. Shinichi is tired.
Heiji swears this will be the last time he tries to force Shinichi into this.
He all but pulls him into his bubble, resting his head forward onto the groove in between Shinichi’s neck and shoulder. Not quite an embrace but it's enough to envelope and comfort Shinichi for him to take a breath. This too, he knows, has always calmed the Detective of the East since the Syndicate’s fall. The city fades around them and in that moment they are tired, held up only by the limbs of one another.
"Shin'chi, I know it's unnervin’ to ya to even think about the last time ya got in that park but this time I'll be here. I'll always will now. We won’t stay there fer long if ya don’t want to..."
Shinichi completes the embrace and Heiji feels the gathering of his jacket into clammy fists and he doesn't mind. He raises his palms at Shinichi’s nape and at a small part of his spine and hushes the man in his arms that he knows as Shinichi Kudo and presses ever so slightly. To Shinichi, it smelled of clean detergent and Heiji and it was nearly enough to drive them to melt into the pavement and remain. They would if they could. They wouldn't even have to think about it.
"They're not goin’ to get a hold of you ever again. They're gone." He feels the shaky sag in Shinichi's shoulders at a breath with the shake of the fists at his back and he holds the East’s detective with the assurance of staying even when all else fails.
He knows Shinichi Kudo, even like this. And he stays.
"I'm here, but I need ya to let me in. Please, ya can't keep carryin’ all this alone. Let me in, Shinichi."
After a few moments, Shinichi pulls away and doesn't quite meet Heiji’s eyes. With a small voice he agrees, "Next week. Your treat."
It didn't matter to Heiji, he just wanted to free his best friend from these confines already.
"Next week it is."
-----
They met at the bus stop in the afternoon just before the park and Shinichi is apprehensive about the entire ordeal, Heiji can tell even before arriving that Shinichi despises this idea. They get their tickets stamped and immediately get lost in the growing crowd. “Which ride?” Shinichi asks.
“Huh?”
“Ride. Which one do you wanna try?”
“Oh. Uh,” Heiji stammers. He’d been pondering which rides would be alright and he hasn’t really progressed with his list since he didn’t know anything about the place. “I… don’t know?” He smiles under his baseball cap, sheepishly admitting that he hadn’t planned it through.
Shinichi huffs, “Seriously, you’re the one who wanted to go here in the first place.”
“Sorry, man. I don’t live around here come on,” Heiji pouts. But before he can even suggest to perhaps go another time, Shinichi interjects, “Fine. Maybe we can go for that Mystery Tunnel Ran and I went last time. It’s the only one I really ever got to try before the entire Conan affair.”
Heiji tenses up with this and alarms go off inside him. “Are ya sure about that?”
A shrug, “Sure. Maybe, I don’t know.” … “I did get distracted halfway through the ride so this could be a good opportunity to try it again.”
“Ya were distracted because of yer perverted ass, weren't ya?" Heiji sighs in an attempt for lighthearted banter
"No, you asshat!" Shinichi shoves a laughing Heiji. His chest feels like it has welcomed air for the first time that day at the sound. "There was a girl who beheaded her ex during the ride. Not fun."
"Okay okay! Just trying to make this trip at least worthwhile for ya, babe."
"It already was worthwhile, asshole. No need to make it worse.” Shinichi bumps his shoulder with Heiji’s and huffs, "At least now I won't have to get blood spraying in the middle of the ride."
"Okay, don't jinx it now." Heiji scolds but still permits a blush permeate on the sides of his grin.
Heiji is hyper aware of the caution in Shinichi's step and the tenseness of his shoulders and it weighs heavy and too loud in its silence in the midst of all the noise in the park. After stepping into the line in silence, Heiji slips a hand into one of Shinichi’s pocketed ones, “Walk me through that first time? What happened?” I’m here, not the Syndicate. Not anymore. Shinichi releases an exhale
“God, if only I deduced that case earlier we could be on a different date instead. You shouldn't be given this much power over me.” At that, Heiji chuckles but with a heavy heart and squeezes slightly, waiting. The more frequent that he won a bet is another reminder that Shinichi isn’t the same as before that last encounter with the Syndicate. Somehow, it feels wrong for Shinichi to be winning less. Heiji shouldn’t winning like this.
Shinichi leans into their intertwined hands and tells the story as the line moves for the ride; from the pseudo-date with Ran at the aquarium where a promise was made to be broken, to Conan being found in a heap of bloodied and battered clothes by the police and their disbelief.
When Shinichi finishes, they’re fitted into the seats and it all comes back to him as other seats are being filled up, nearly vivid.
"They were just behind us then, Vodka and Gin." Shinichi had to force his voice up to mention the codenames. He can still feel the threat of an unwanted transformation prickling his spine, like he could become Conan again at any given moment. Almost as if he's haunted by the ghost of his second life. A phantom of what he could have ended up as.
He unknowingly squeezes the hand on his, tethering himself. Heiji squeezes back.
Heiji grinds his teeth in anger, in ache for the person beside him. It’s no use to whine of unfairness, Shinichi taught him that much. But at that moment he cares not. Shinichi lost something when he, of all people, became Conan, it was beyond unfair .
"Then they'll stay behind us," Heiji says as they brace themselves. “They’re not here anymore.”
The ride starts before Shinichi could reply.
There’s screams and caution thrown into the wind, but it’s not the same with what is nestled into the crevices of Shinichi’s mind.
It’s different, in the way that there's no sounds of gunshots and no taste of fear and iron on his tongue. Different in the way that there is sugar infused into the electricity in the air and in the way that Heiji is present. Heiji, whose eyes are wild open and hair messier than ever with his hat kept away in his pocket, hand in Shinichi’s for the whole of the ride. Shinichi thinks that if he can't let go then maybe he can start to like this. It may be the adrenaline talking. Yet he does. He loosens his grip on the seat’s locked bars and throws his hands as they’re thrown into the clouds of the sky. He’s still holding onto Heiji’s hand, who looks at him in turn with all the admiration he could muster at the moment.
He lets the wind push against his eyes and shouts, cackling. Heiji thinks that Shinichi is the only person who can laugh so perfectly freely like that. His chest bursts at the release and shouts with. The tears at Shinichi’s eyes are loose and flying.
They haven’t let go of each other’s hands when the ride’s safety bars are lifted and they stand next to the ride’s exit panting against the wall, giddy, basking in the park’s atmosphere. Thank you was never enough words for what he feels for Heiji so Shinichi turns his head over to Heiji and looks, searching for something, anything, that will prove that this boy is omnipotent. He finds in Heiji, human, and it was every bit better. He lifts their joined hands and rests it on his lips and kisses at the area where they meet. He encloses Heiji’s hand with both of his, tight, and Heiji looks at him. He just looks at him and he moves to kiss the top of his lover's head. They remain.
Shinichi chokes on emotion, and he understands how Holmes considers them a burden. But if the overflowing surplus of what he's feeling for Heiji is considered a burden then he decides that he will take up that cross through storm and fire and brimstone.
Suddenly Heiji’s hat is shoved down to his eyes, “I’ll race you to the takoyaki stall!”
“Shinichi! Ya damn brat, I’m already payin’ fer both of us!” Shinichi just laughs and it's louder than any music or announcement in the park’s speakers to Heiji. He chases after the great detective, veins made of fluid competition.
Their day continues with them jumping from ride to ride and trying out all the different stalls and it's come to a point of them just strolling around, souvenirs and food in their arms. Booths and games where they played and harassed each other until they broke sweat and Heiji’s wallet at the brink of emptiness.
It was nearing dusk when they started to walk back to where they entered to go home. They pass a booth with lined up plates at the back and is covered ceiling to floor with giant stuffed animals.
“Three plates," The guy manning the booth enthusiastically pulled up his hand to reveal a box with three battered balls. "Throw a ball at any plate to break one and if you got three of them then ya can have any of these plushies.”
“Even a giant shark?” Heiji points up to a whole row of large sharks that range across hues of green and blue.
“Even those,” The personnel confirms.
Heiji reaches for his wallet, “A’ight, Kudo. Get a ball.”
“Why am I playing? You’re paying,” Shinichi counters but otherwise accepts a ball.
“I'm paying for this whole date, remember?" Heiji says as he pays for a round.
"Touché."
Shinichi launches the ball towards the plates and only almost breaks one in half.
“Yikes,” Heiji snickers. “Ya suck at this.”
“Shut up, we were supposed to be going home right now!”
Heiji laughs. “Fine, okay, I’ll throw the next one fer ya.”
Shinichi huffs and hands over the next ball. Heiji takes a swing and the ball splits a plate in three with ease.
“Nice form.” Shinichi whistles.
Heiji scoffs. “As if ya know a thing about form in baseball.”
“I don’t but you forgot that I’m our school’s star soccer athlete,” Shinchi points out. “So I do know about sports forms but that’s not my point.
“What’s yer point then?” Heiji moves to get the 3rd ball but is stopped by Shinichi grabbing it first.
Shinichi answers by facing away from Heiji and tossing the ball high in the air before kicking it into the booth and crashing into the plates. Passersby, concessionaires, and Heiji stare in shock.
“How’s my form, Hattori-kun?” Shinichi smirks.
Heiji sputters and turns bright in the ears, conscious and redirecting his eyes. “It’s uh, i-it’s good. Nice. Yeah.”
Shinichi laughs as he goes to claim a large stuffed shark. Blue-green in color.
This is how Heiji wants to win with Shinichi, unbridled by anything and with their focus on nothing but each other.
“Let’s go home?” Heiji offers his unoccupied hand.
Shinichi stays silent, his head turned at the space behind Heiji of tall grass and shady grounds.
“Ya okay?” Heiji turns to the space, already sensing the site of a crime scene. He looks back at Shinichi who was trying to steady his breathing, hand on his chest clutching at a pain that had embedded in him even after it was long gone.
“I-I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s over now, I know that.” He repeats. A mantra. A prayer against the past year.
"It's over." Heiji offers the confirmation delicately, like it's upon a platter made of glass. He watches his lover and approaches him, incredibly human in that exact moment. No sign of the shark-like detective that rushes at the stench of blood, just so god-fearingly human that trembles at the sight of it. He loves him. He aches for him.
Shinichi simply takes a breath. Solemn.
"Thank you, Heiji." Light. "For everything."
Heiji gives a small smile and kisses the scalp at the top of Shinichi's bangs before placing his hat on it like he has done multiple times before. An acceptance.
"Let's go home."
"Yeah."