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“Alright, Kudou.” Kuroba says, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his living room, zipping up a suitcase absolutely overflowing with clothing. The zipper, unsurprisingly, gets caught about every two inches before Kuroba has to poke a loose sleeve or sock or—something lacy back into the bloated thing. “It’s most important that she has fresh hay and water available. She only gets one handful of pellets each day, don’t let her bully you into any more than that.”
“I doubt a rabbit will be able to bully me, Kuroba.” Shinichi says.
Kuroba looks up from his struggle with the contents of his suitcase with that familiar smug, shit-eating grin. “Famous last words, Kudou. Famous last words,” he says. “Also, she has a name.”
“Yeah, yeah. Cream, got it.”
“Crème de la Crème. You can call her Crème, but her name is not cream, dude.” Kuroba says, pronouncing “cream” with a nasally, exaggerated American accent.
Shinichi deadpans at him and drawls “Crème,” in the worst approximation of a French accent he can muster. Kuroba beams and gives him a satisfied nod of approval, ignoring Shinichi’s snark.
“I’m not sure why you’re so worried about any of this in the first place.” Shinichi says. “It’s a rabbit. Don’t they just… sit there?” He looks over to the white rabbit, who is laying down in a corner of the living room, doing absolutely nothing of note, just as it has been the entire time Kuroba’s been whirling around the house doing his last-minute packing.
“Your phone chargers will wish she would ‘just sit there,’ and I will not be paying for any replacements for you.” Kuroba says, zipping his suitcase the rest of the way with some finality. “I wouldn’t have asked you if Aoko was available, since she already knows how to care for Crème, but you’re the next best thing, so.” he shrugs.
“Hey, what does—”
“I’ll only be gone for a week.” Kuroba continues, standing and dragging the suitcase to the door with him unceremoniously. A pair of strawberry-shaped sunglasses appears out of nowhere and settles itself high on Kuroba’s head, complimenting the rest of his pink, excruciatingly touristy outfit. “Try to keep the both of you alive until then, yeah?”
Shinichi sighs. “I don’t know, Kuroba, the rabbit might eat me alive. It looks so devious. Vicious, even,” he says, dry as a desert.
“You scoff now, but you know who raised her! She’s been a phantom thief even longer than me,” Kuroba winks.
Shinichi only huffs and rolls his eyes in response. Over the last couple years, Kuroba has become a master at exploiting Shinichi’s competitive nature. He’s been weaseled into agreeing to more of Kuroba’s harebrained schemes-framed-as-challenges than he can count. There’s just something about the electricity in the air when Kuroba latches onto his shoulder with a Hey, Kudou, eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Well, I’m off then!” Kuroba says. “If you have any questions, comments, concerns, text me! Ciao~”
The door swings shut, and Shinichi is left alone in Kuroba’s house. With a rabbit.
He looks over, and the rabbit—Crème, he reminds himself—is still laying down in the same corner of the living room, doing the same nothing it’s been doing since Shinichi got here. The same nothing that it has done every time Shinichi has ever been here.
He sighs and flops onto the couch, making himself comfortable. It’s going to be a long week, isn’t it?
The rabbit, Shinichi concedes, is cute.
It’s been a couple hours, and Crème has apparently become comfortable enough to give herself a little rabbit bath in Shinichi’s presence. He puts down his laptop to watch as she sits up on her hind legs, grudgingly enraptured in the way her tiny pink tongue darts out to lick her paws before pulling her ear down to clean it.
The way the fur on her face sticks up after the bath is… cute.
Shinichi huffs and pulls out his phone, taking a short video of Crème to send to Kuroba. He should be waiting at the gate for his flight, still, and Shinichi is proven right when Kuroba replies immediately.
oh my god there’s my precious baby ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´ω`ﾟ)ﾟ｡daddy misses you already sweetie!!
Gross, Kuroba.
u kno u love it when i say daddy
Shinichi’s mind stutters to a halt. Is this… Is Kuroba flirting with him? Kuroba does usually flirt with him, true, but—
Shinichi’s phone pings with several new messages, one after the other.
im so sorry
uhhhhh please ignore that?
i owe you coffee?
idk how good the coffee is in italy, i know they make grapes and junk but if they have fancy coffee i promise i will get you some if you don’t block me?
Kuroba. It’s fine.
are you sure? what if i get you coffee anyway
Kaito, I’m not upset. You just caught me off guard.
Congratulations.
Shinichi can practically hear Kuroba’s grin with the next message.
I caught the Great Detective off guard? with a little flirting? :3c should i be flirting with you more often~?
You’re supposed to be boarding right now, idiot.
shit ur rihy omg ttyl shincihi
Shinichi leans back on the couch. He can feel his cheeks heating, and he wills the blush away even though no one is around to call him on it. This is the first time he’s called Kuroba by his given name. It happened so casually, and Kuroba reciprocated just as easily. Is he trying to kill Shinichi? Alone in Kuroba’s house surrounded by all his animals. All his-
Shinichi bolts upright.
Wait
Kuroba, you have doves. You never told me how to take care of them.
Oi. Kuroba.
There’s no response. Kuroba has probably already boarded the all day flight to Europe.
“Shit.” Shinichi says, lowering his face into his hands. He’s alone in a house with a rabbit and an indeterminate number of doves, and only the faintest idea of how to care for any of them.
Crème has snuck her way closer to Shinichi, and has decided to start nosing against his foot. Shinichi wonders if she saw his pain and decided to try comforting him. Then she bites his toe.
“Why?” Shinichi yelps, only a little betrayed. She starts nosing at his foot again, and Shinichi jerks his legs up onto the couch and away from the tiny jaws of death. “I thought we were doing okay, what gives?” he grumbles.
Unaffected by the petty human concept of guilt, Crème hops off, leaving Shinichi alone with his anxieties about also having to care for a room full of birds. He has no idea where the birds would even be kept. He’s never taken care of something with tiny, hollow, breakable bones.
Some minutes later, in the middle of a frantic Glegle search spiral, while Shinichi is looking at the results page for “are pigeons and doves the same thing”, he hears a clonk at his feet. It’s Crème, and she has dragged her small ceramic food bowl over to Shinichi’s ankles.
“Are… Are you hungry?” Shinichi asks the rabbit, who simply sits there and eyes him. “Kuroba said you get fed in the morning, and he did that just before he left today. I think you need to wait until tomorrow for more pellets.”
Crème is unmoved. She picks up the ceramic dish and clonks it down again, this time right on Shinichi's foot.
Shinichi sucks in a sharp breath, and it releases from his lungs as a low, pained groan. The food dish is heavier than it appears, as his foot has just learned.
Tears prickling in the corners of his eyes, Shinichi reminds himself that he will not be bullied by a rabbit. “Do you have a kennel or something? Because that’s where you’re going,” he says, scooping the little terror up right around her middle the same way he would a cat.
Crème lets her disagreement with the situation become known by immediately clawing the everliving shit out of everything on Shinichi that is within clawing distance. The only thing on Shinichi’s mind as he lowers her back to the ground—other than the sharp pain and indignation—is “If I drop her I will die and then Kuroba will kill me.”
Once she gains purchase on the carpet, Crème flees to her favored corner of the room and slams her hind feet onto the ground in a sharp thump.
Shinichi blinks. “I’m assuming that means you’re mad at me,” he says, arms stinging.
Crème answers with another disgruntled thump.
Completely done with the day before it’s even hit noon, Shinichi throws his hands up in the air. “Fine!” he says. “I’m going to go find Kuroba’s doves, and I’m going to find out how to not kill them, and you can stay mad at me and it’s going to be fine.”
Shinichi has experienced the longest day of his life by the time Kuroba has landed in Europe for his layover. He found the dovecote with ease—it was kind of hard to miss—but the doves themselves were nowhere to be found. Did Kuroba give the doves to someone else to take care of? That wouldn’t make any sense; why have Shinichi stay at his house to watch Crème if he was going to have someone else care for the doves? Shinichi didn’t see Kaito take the doves with him. Did they all just decide to leave? Did they all get sucked up into a freak tornado? Shinichi will be so dead if he’s somehow lost all of Kaito’s doves.
Shinichi’s phone pings with a message from Kuroba, knocking him out of his panic spiral.
oh, i took the doves with me
You what.
yeah the doves were on the plane with me
Kakigoori says hi!
A picture of Kuroba with every single one of his doves perched around his head and shoulders pops up in the chat. In the background, Shinichi can see an airport security person making their way over to Kuroba, presumably because carrying around loose birds is bad manners in an airport terminal.
I would ask how, but I’m guessing you’d just give me some cliché about magicians never revealing their secrets.
oh I snuck them on in my clothes nbd
Shinichi closes his eyes and briefly entertains a vivid fantasy of throwing his phone across the room. Instead, he packs all that into a nice little box and messages Kuroba back,
PLEASE don’t leave out information like that next time, you ass. I thought I’d somehow lost 26 doves.
sorry!! i thought you’d like, detective it out
and i only have like 12 doves dude, there’s no way i’d have room for 26 that’d be nuts
Oh, I’m sorry. You have room to smuggle 12 doves through airport security and onto an 11 hour long flight in your clothes, but keeping 26 in your house is out of the question. Obviously.
Kuroba Kaito has set your nickname to 26 doves in a trenchcoat
Kuroba you are on thin ice
oop, my connecting flight to rome is boarding! g2g shinichi byee 😘
Shinichi doesn’t have the chance to respond before Kuroba goes offline. He squints at the kiss emoji on his screen. He’s absolutely sure Kuroba is trying to kill him.
Shinichi sighs, scrubbing at his eyelids with the heels of his palms. It’s late, and he’s too exhausted to even begin to process any of this right now. He’ll deal with everything tomorrow. He hunkers down on the couch, still in his clothes from the day, plugs in his phone, and falls into a fitful sleep.
Shinichi rouses slowly, groaning, and blindly slaps around for his phone. He finds it on the floor next to the couch and unlocks it, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. A “Low Battery” message blinks across the screen before it goes dark entirely and stops responding.
“What…” he mumbles blearily, pulling at the charge cable. He doesn’t find the resistance he expects when he tugs, and is instead met with the severed end of the cable, freely dangling from his phone. The cut looks surprisingly clean, except for one extraneous mark made by tiny, blunt teeth.
Crème.
Shinichi sits up and finds the little rabbit sitting right at his feet, beady eyes staring straight at him. Like a challenge.
Shinichi sighs. “Yeah, yeah. Time for pellets. Fine,” he grouses, foisting himself up. It’s time for him to get up and run some errands, anyway. At the very least, he has a charge cable to replace.
Shinichi sits back down on Kuroba’s couch a half hour later, eating his konbini egg sandwich. He bought three charge cables for his phone while he was out, and he desperately hopes he won’t be needing them. He plugs in his phone and waits until it blinks to life. There are only a few messages to catch up on, a couple of which are pictures from Kuroba, posing and smiling widely in front of various street cats. He’d landed in Rome while Shinichi was asleep, and appears to have done some sightseeing already. As Shinichi is closely examining the freckle on Kuroba’s upper lip, barely noticeable under his honeyed lip gloss, a message pops up from Haibara, and Shinichi almost jumps out of his skin in surprise.
Kudou-kun, don’t forget that your checkup is coming up soon.
Also, please let me know if you will have time to visit outside of the checkup this week. The Shounen Tantei miss you.
Shinichi settles a hand on his racing heart to reign it in before typing out his reply.
I’m pet-sitting for Kuroba this week. The train ride’s a little long and I’m not sure how much time I’ll have outside work, but I should have enough time today for the checkup, if you’re free.
Oh? Jumping at the chance to sleep in Kuroba-kun’s bed, are we?
I never said that!
😏
Shinichi groans out loud.
I’m sleeping on the couch. It’s fine.
Too embarrassed to sleep in your crush’s bed?
It’s not like that!
If you say so, Kudou-kun.
Be here in an hour, then. I have plans this afternoon.
Shinichi doesn’t have the chance to reply before a message pings from Hattori.
heard ur sleepin in that boytoy of urs’s bed
I swear to god, Hattori
I’m just rabbit-sitting for Kuroba.
so u admit hes ur boytoy?
I WILL block you. For real, this time.
wait kudou wait wait wait
pics of the bunny before u do
No.
Shinichi mutes his conversation with Hattori and slides his phone into his pocket. He’s got an appointment with Haibara to get to. Hattori will live, probably, but Shinichi won’t if he misses another checkup.
Before leaving, Shinichi looks over to Crème, who is laying in the exact same spot on the floor that she usually seems to. He nods to her, immediately feels ridiculous for nodding to a rabbit, and hurries out the door.
When Shinichi gets back to Kuroba’s house that afternoon, Hattori is sitting on the stoop, fanning himself with a folded up newspaper. His short sleeves are rolled up over his shoulders, he’s not wearing his trademark hat, and a fine sheen of sweat reflects the afternoon sun off his cheekbones. Hm. Put that into the “consider for later” folder.
“Why.” Shinchi says.
“Why what?” Hattori asks, standing to meet him.
“Why are you here.”
“I wanted to see the bunny. You didn’t send pics. Which, by the way, rude.”
Shinichi stares flatly at Hattori. “You took a shinkansen all the way from Osaka… to look at Kuroba’s rabbit? Because I didn’t send you a photo?”
“Yeah, dude, I fuckin’ love bunnies. Kazuha used to have one, y’know, so I know a thing or two about handlin’ em. Thought I’d give ya a hand!” Hattori says, grinning at Shinichi like a puppy that’s just done him the favor of pissing in his shoe instead of on the carpet.
Shinichi raises an eyebrow at him. “If you say so,” he says, pushing past Hattori to unlock the door.
They take their shoes off and round the corner into the living room, and Hattori immediately gasps and starts cooing as soon as he lays eyes on Crème.
“You just have her runnin’ around the house like this?” Hattori asks, both hands already occupied by petting Crème as much as physically possible. Shinichi wrestles down a fond smile, unsuccessfully, he’s sure.
“Yeah, Kuroba says rabbits are naturally inclined to do their business in one spot, so apparently she was pretty easy to litter train, and he has the living room rabbit-proofed, so she just hangs out here, I guess.”
Hattori raises an eyebrow, reaches over, and picks something up off the floor. It’s the TV remote, which doesn’t look quite like it did this morning, on account of all its buttons having been chewed off. “Rabbit-proofed, huh?” he says.
“Shit,” Shinichi hisses under his breath. “That was supposed to go back in the side-table drawer once I was done.”
“See, Kudou? You need my help!” Hattori grins.
“I have yet to see you do anything helpful.”
“Bullshit!” Hattori says. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Shinichi is waffling between either pointing out how that response is not at all a refutation of his point or diving at Hattori’s neck to give it a nice, gentle wringing, but he sees Hattori move to pick Crème up, and almost, almost says something to stop him. Instead, he watches as Hattori scoops Crème up under her front paws, just as he had so foolishly done the day before, and stands idly by as Crème squirms and kicks like a creature possessed, easily clawing up Hattori’s bare arms in the process.
Once Crème is back in her comfy corner, thumping her displeasure into the carpet, Shinichi crouches down to assess the damage that’s been done to Hattori. He’s curled up on the floor, and Shinichi can see him tumbling through all five stages of grief at a breakneck pace.
“You alright?” he asks, poking Hattori in the shoulder.
“No,” groans the lump.
“Yeah, uh. I probably should’ve stopped you,” Shinichi says, absently scratching his cheek.
“Ya think?”
“On the train ride back here today, I read that rabbits can injure their spines when they’re kicking like that. It was dangerous for Crème.” Shinichi informs him helpfully.
“Oh! Of course!” Hattori says, sarcasm muffled by the carpet. “Thanks for the concern for your ol’ pal, Kudou. Always knew we were close. Like badgers from the same hole. Badgers who watch as their buddy gets mauled by a small woodland creature.”
While Hattori goes on to bemoan his own questionable taste in friends, Shinichi watches as Crème haltingly makes her way closer to himself. She takes small steps at first, sticking her head forward as if to test the distance. Once she creeps within arm’s reach, Shinichi hesitates, then holds his hand out to meet her halfway. Shinichi watches as her small, twitching nose draws close to his fingers and briefly remembers how cleanly his phone cable was sliced through this morning, but the thought falls away when Crème gently presses her nose to Shinichi’s hand.
Slowly, timidly, he runs a thumb from her nose to her forehead. She presses closer, and Shinichi can feel his heart liquifying in his chest. He begins running his fingers back and forth through the soft fur between her ears, and then, gently, he rubs above her velvety nose. She is unimaginably soft. Soft like how Shinichi had thought cotton candy would feel, before grabbing a handful as a child and realizing it was just a sticky mess.
“Haha, cute. I’m totally sendin’ this to Kuroba,” Hattori says, cheek mashed into the floor. Shinichi’s head snaps up, and he sees Hattori tapping out a message on his phone.
“No, Hattori, wait,” he says, frantically scrambling for the phone.
“Hey! Hands off! I’m just lettin’ him know that things’re goin’ good!” Hattori says, holding his phone an arm’s length away.
“It’s fine! You don’t need to, I’ll tell him myself!” Shinichi says as their cheeks press together, legs in a tangle on the floor as Shinichi scrabbles at Hattori’s arms and Hattori’s elbow boxes Shinichi’s ear.
“Why’re you fightin’ me on this! I’m tryna help you two idiots get together!”
“And I’m telling you it’s fine! I have everything handled!”
“You’re sleepin’ on the guy’s couch ‘cause you’re that embarrassed about your big gay crush, Kudou! You need a wingmaugh—” Hattori garbles as Shinichi digs his knees into Hattori’s rib cage, effectively pinning him.
Shinichi finally snatches the phone from Hattori and hastily scrolls to the most recent message to Kuroba. It’s a short video of Shinichi petting Crème, accompanied by a completely embarrassing message:
hey dude what do u think kudou’s shirt is made out of?
i’m thinkin it’s husband material just sayin
Shinichi watches with wide eyes as the dots that indicate that Kuroba is typing appear and disappear several times. Eventually, a full, agonizing minute later, Kuroba’s response arrives.
lol
Shinichi blankly stares at the screen. “… Is that it?” he asks no one in particular. “What does that mean? Is… is that good?”
“What is it? What’d he say?” Hattori asks, snatching the phone back. “Just ‘lol’?” There’s a fetching shade of red dusting his cheeks, for some reason. The exertion, maybe?
Abruptly, something else occurs to Shinichi.
“Hattori,”
“C’mon Kuroba, gimme somethin’ to work with here.” Hattori grumbles, focused on his ill-advised matchmaking attempt.
“Hattori,” Shinichi says again, lightly slapping at his arm. “Hattori have you seen Crème?”
“Crème? Wasn’t she sittin’ over there?” Hattori points behind Shinichi to an empty living room.
“Shit,” Shinichi says, pushing and scrambling off of Hattori’s rib cage as he stands. Hattori wheezes and complains, something about his bones and lungs, which Shinichi ignores in favor of the much more pressing issue of Crème’s disappearance. “Crème? Here… little rabbit? Crème?” Shinichi calls out, walking out of the living room and into the hallway. He spies the front door and hisses out another curse under his breath. “I didn’t close the door all the way.”
“Shit, dude.” Hattori says, now standing behind him. “Do you think she got out?”
“I don’t know. Hattori, you stay here and look for her in the house. I’ll head out and see if I can find any sign of her outside,” Shinichi says, pulling his shoes on with one hand while grabbing at the front door with the other.
“Got it. I’ll text ya if I find her!” Hattori says, giving a small salute. Shinichi nods back at him and nearly trips out the door in his haste.
“Crème!” Shinichi calls out to Kuroba’s front yard, before remembering that he’s looking for a rabbit, not a dog or a cat. Do rabbits respond to their names? Kuroba did seem pretty confident in Crème’s intelligence, and he’d probably had her trained pretty well.
To hell with it. It can’t hurt to call for the rabbit.
“Crème!” Shinichi calls again, rounding the corner of the house. He searches through Kuroba’s rose bushes and the rest of his garden, finding nothing out of place, and no Crème. After trawling through the rest of the yard, Shinichi messages Hattori to let him know the disappointing results, and that he’ll be off to search the street and surrounding houses. Hattori responds back with some finger guns, and adds that there’s been no sign of Crème in the house, either.
“Crème…” Shinichi half-heartedly calls, closing the useless barred gate to Kuroba’s house. “Crè—”
The damn rabbit is standing there, in the middle of the street, eyes trained on Shinichi.
“Crème,” Shinichi says, holding his hands out like he’s bargaining with a wild stallion. “It’s okay, just—”
Like a bullet, Creme tears away and disappears into a neighbor’s yard. Shinichi hisses in frustration and sprints after her, clumsily vaulting over the gate. He corners Crème up against the neighbor’s garden wall, and slowly begins inching forward.
“Shh, shhh,” he says, holding his hands out at the ready. Crème’s ears twitch with her quick breathing. She looks like a coiled spring—a furry ball of raw potential energy. Shinichi feints out to one side, hoping to snag Crème when she runs away from his outstretched hand. She darts left and Shinichi follows, but Crème is lighter on her four feet than Shinichi is on his two, and she quickly doubles back and feints him right back. He had overcommitted; the change in direction is too quick and his balance fails. As his feet slip out from underneath him, he finds himself with a good view of the sky, wondering if he should’ve kept playing soccer after all.
While he lies in the grass, wind knocked out of his lungs, Shinichi catches an entirely too familiar feeling blur of white escaping out of the corner of his eye, and Kuroba’s cheeky words float back into his mind.
She’s been a Phantom Thief even longer than me!
Shinichi groans, indignation draining out of him. He’d never seen a rabbit during a Kaitou KID heist, so he thought it was reasonable to assume Kuroba was joking as usual. He supposes that’s his own fault.
“Is everything okay, dear? You look a little like an abandoned popsicle left to melt in the sun.”
Shinichi cranes his neck back to see Kuroba’s elderly neighbor standing over him. He doesn’t recall her name, as Kuroba only ever introduced her as “the curry-pan grandma”. He never elaborated on the nickname, but Shinichi later managed to infer that it’s because she has a habit of making “more curry-pan than a lonely old lady can eat” and bringing it all over for Kaito. The freezer is half-filled with the stuff, and Shinichi catches Kaito having it for breakfast more often than not.
“Ah, no, I’m okay,” Shinichi says, sitting up and brushing his head free of any grass clippings that may have clung to him. “Kuroba’s rabbit got out, and she happened to run into your yard. I’m sorry, ma’am. I tried catching her, but…”
She laughs. “Oh, Crème is no trouble at all. Touichi used to be here just about every weekend, running after her and apologizing. She just likes the challenge, I think.”
Shinichi squints. Something about that sounds awfully familiar, but… “Touichi? That would mean that Crème is over a decade old. Do rabbits really live that long?”
“Well, she’s still around isn’t she?” Curry-pan grandma says, a twinkle in her eye. “Here’s a tip: she may be smart, but everyone’s got to eat sometime!” she gives Shinichi a playful slap on the shoulder with her knobbly hand, just hard enough to actually sting. “Good luck, kiddo!”
Shinichi rubs at his arm. “Th-thanks,” he says, watching as the old lady waddles back into her house.
“Attempt One: Drop Trap!”
“Hattori. Do you have to do this.”
“C’mon Kudou, live a little! I’ve never been on a bunny-catching stakeout before, lemme have my fun!”
Shinichi squints at him, then dives at Hattori’s face and pulls at his cheeks.
“OW, Kudou, what the hell!” Hattori wails, slapping Shinichi away and rubbing at his abused face.
“You were sounding an awful lot like Kuroba. I had to check.” Shinichi says, shrugging.
“You know I’m not Kuroba! You just did that to piss me off!” says Hattori, indignant, and Shinichi shushes him loudly.
“The point of a trap is to catch the victim off guard, which we can’t do if you’re yelling loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, Hattori.”
“You were the one who yanked at mMPH—!” Hattori says, cut off by Shinichi slapping a hand over his mouth.
“Shh! She’s here!” Shinichi hisses.
Just then, Crème hops into the yard and begins to creep up to the peeled banana that Hattori and Shinichi have unceremoniously left laying in the grass, under a cardboard box propped up by a stick. Through the bushes where the pair are hiding, they watch as she noses closer to the banana, slowly inching her full body under the box.
“Yes!” Hattori prematurely celebrates, jerking the string attached to the stick holding the box up. “Got ‘er!”
The box thumps to the ground, and Hattori jogs up to hold it down so Crème can’t squeeze under and escape.
“Okay,” Shinichi says, making his way over. “Now what?”
“Whaddya mean ‘now what’?”
“How do we get her back inside without her escaping as soon as we lift the box up?” Shinichi asks. As they’ve now both learned, picking Crème up seems to be a no-go, provided they would even be able to get their hands on her.
“Oh. Hmm.” Heiji says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “We could… slide another folded up cardboard box under it, and carry the whole thing inside that way?”
“What, like she’s some kind of spider we just caught under a cup?”
“... Yes?”
Shinichi holds his chin as he considers the options. They don’t really have too many. “Yeah,” he says finally, “sounds good. I’ll go grab another box.”
A couple minutes later, Shinichi emerges from Kuroba’s house with a flattened box, and gently slides it under the one containing their runaway rabbit. The two work together to lift the apparatus into the house and gently set it on the floor of the living room, and manage it with only mild bickering. Once they’ve made double sure the front door is closed, Hattori lifts up the top box, only to find… nothing.
“Hattori.” Shinichi says. He knew it felt too light.
“Where is she?” Hattori gawks at the empty air. “She was in there, I swear!” He turns the box upside-down in his hands and peers inside, seemingly to check if the rabbit was sticking to the roof of it like some kind of ninja. Or phantom thief.
“Hattori,” says Shinichi again, sighing, “she must’ve squeezed under the box before you managed to push it down. The cardboard is too light, and the grass must’ve held it up enough for her to see a way out.”
Hattori puts the box down and runs his hand down his cheek. “Well, darn.” he says. “Now what?”
“Attempt Two: Drop Trap but with Extra Steps!”
Shinichi sighs and pointedly does not acknowledge Hattori. “Right. Okay. So, this time we have a clear tub we can see Crème through, so we can be sure she’s actually in the trap, and the books on top should act as a decent enough weight to make sure she can’t squeeze under. Are we missing anything?”
“Sounds like a plan to me!” Hattori says, clapping and rubbing his hands together like an overeager car salesman.
They sit behind the bush back to back and wait, Hattori silently pestering Shinichi with memes on his phone every so often, until the sky just begins to turn golden with the encroaching sunset before Shinichi speaks up.
“Hey Hattori, don’t you think she should’ve come back around by now?”
He feels Hattori shrug. “Dunno. If you’re gettin’ worried though, I can go take a look around the neighborhood, see if I can find her runnin’ around?”
“That might be a good idea. We don’t need both of us here to set off the trap, anyway.” Shinichi says, and Hattori is already up and on his way out of the yard. “Thanks, Hattori.”
“No sweat, Kudou!” Hattori grins back at him, and disappears around the corner.
The shadows stretch most of the way across the yard before Shinichi can no longer contain his restlessness and he shuffles out of the yard in search of Hattori. He wanders around the block for a bit, half-heartedly calling out Hattori’s name, until he hears a familiar voice drifting over from someone’s backyard.
“Okay, now just hold that, right there!”
Shinichi holds back the everpresent urge to sigh and waltzes into yet another stranger’s yard. He hears Hattori giggling to himself as he rounds the corner, and finds his absolute idiot of a companion crouched down, taking pictures of Crème, who is leisurely perched atop some kid’s skateboard.
“Kuroba’s gonna get such a kick outta these,” Hattori snickers to himself.
“Kickflip.” Shinichi says, right next to Hattori’s ear. Hattori yelps and falls over, and Crème startles and bolts out of the yard.
“What the hell, Kudou!” Hattori frowns up at him, propping himself up on his elbows.
Shinchi looks down to meet Hattori’s glare, nonplussed. “When you send it to him you should say ‘Hey, Kuroba, thought you’d get a kickflip outta these.’”
Hattori looks at Shinichi with the same weariness he used to see on Megure’s face every time Mouri would pop up at a crime scene. Shinichi doesn’t know how to feel about that. “Kudou,” Hattori says, “that’s the worst thing that’s ever come outta your yap.”
“Kuroba would like it,” Shinichi defends, somewhat successfully reeling in a pout.
“That was worse than havin’ to hear your drunk yowling at karaoke.”
“Hey!”
“What! That’s a compliment! Your singin’ is better than whatever the hell that was!”
Shinichi crosses his arms and scuffs his shoe in the grass. “Kuroba would like it…” he mumbles.
A strange look flickers over Hattori’s face before he heaves a sigh and pushes himself to his feet. “Yeah, well. He ain’t here for you to drool over now, and his bunny just ran off again. Which was your fault, by the way.” he says, dusting some loose grass off the seat of his pants. He begins to shamble out of the stranger’s yard, and Shinichi follows.
“What were you going to do, Hattori?” Shinichi says. “Pick her up again? Since that went so well last time?”
Hattori makes a garbled noise of affront. “I—I had a plan!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!”
“What was the plan, Hattori?”
“The plan, Kudou,” Hattori says, rounding on Shinichi and shoving a finger at his chest, “is to get you and Kuroba to admit your feelings to each other so you two idiots can stop circling around each other like dead fish in a toilet bowl already!”
Shinichi bristles. “Why do you care so much, Hattori?” he snaps. “What does it matter to you if Kuroba and I stay friends or if we d—if we do something else?”
“I care because if I can’t have either of you, then you two should at least be happy together!”
Hattori looks like he’s realized what he’s said about a moment too late and clamps his jaw shut, red high in his cheeks.
Shinichi’s mind whirls. “You—?”
“Forget I said that!” Hattori squeaks out, shoulders drawn up to his ears. “Forget all of it! You and Kuroba can keep pining forever for all I care, I—”
“Do you like Kuroba and I?”
Hattori blushes an even deeper red. “W-well if you don’t—”
“No! No, it’s not that.” Shinichi says, instinctively reaching for Hattori’s arm before hesitating and pulling his hand back. He’s had the beginnings of a crush on Hattori for longer than he’d even known Kaitou KID existed, but he’d never even thought Hattori could be an option. “It’s just that… I thought you and Kazuha...?”
Hattori huffs out a tense breath. “Yeah,” he says, “you and me both.”
Shinichi winces in sympathy. “Do you want to talk about it some more at the house?” As worried as he is about Crème, the last dregs of light are already disappearing from the sky. They have little chance of finding her like this, and if he doesn’t get Hattori to talk now, he’s not sure how successfully he’ll be able to bring up the topic later. “We can leave some food out for Crème. We’ll get her tomorrow.”
Hattori sucks a breath in through his teeth and rubs a hand down the side of his face. “Yeah, okay.” he says, and at that moment, Shinichi’s phone rings.
It’s Kuroba.
Shinichi feels the blood drain from his face, and shoves the phone up to his ear before he can think too hard. If he starts thinking, he knows he’ll get sucked into whirling, anxious thoughts about how everything in his life is happening all at the same time and how he cannot let Kuroba know how much of a mess he is and then he’ll never surface from those thoughts again. And so he doesn’t think.
“Hey Ku—” Shinichi’s vocal cords are pulled too tight with stress, and his voice breaks spectacularly, like the shuddering of a clown horn getting the air stomped out of it all at once. Wonderful. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hey Kuroba, what’s up? How’s Rome? Did you sleep well? Everything’s completely fine here.” He winces. Smooth as ever.
“...Yeah?” Kuroba says slowly, suspiciously. “Crème hasn’t eaten your face off yet?”
Shinichi holds back the desperate noise threatening to claw its way out of his throat. “Nope! She’s doing great! Everything’s fine! … You are going to need a new TV remote, though.”
Kuroba laughs, sing-song and beautiful. Traitorously, Shinichi’s heart flutters. “Don’t worry about that, there should be another one in the closet. She loves chewing on those buttons, something about the texture, I think?”
Shinichi lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Yeah, I noticed. Any reason for the call? I thought you’d be too busy seeing the sights.”
“Oh, no reason in particular!” Kuroba says. Shinichi hears a very obvious smile in Kuroba’s voice, layered over a strange tension. “I’m just going to be a little busy tonight, around the time you’d be waking up next, and I just wanted to check in, I guess, see how things were going?”
Shinichi’s brow furrows. There’s no way Kuroba hadn’t noticed Shinichi tripping over himself… but Kuroba is also being cagey about something. Is he letting Shinichi slide to get himself off the hook for… something?
“Well,” he hedges, “if you’re good, then we’re good here too.”
“Yep! All good.” Kuroba replies brightly. Hmm.
“… Alright, then.” Shinichi says. “It was good to hear your—you.” Damnit. “Talking, to you?” He can hear Kuroba fighting down a laugh. “It was—goodnight!” Shinichi squeezes out, fingers scrabbling for the End Call button.
Shinichi looks up, face superheated, and Hattori is staring at him with a tired, pitying look as he holds the door to Kuroba’s house open for them both. Shinichi groans, covers his face, and shuffles through the doorway.
“Can’t believe I like both of you disasters,” Hattori mumbles to himself, locking the door behind them.
“Yeah, well, I—” Shinichi begins, shucking his shoes off. He doesn’t finish the thought, though, because as soon as they flip on the hallway light, Shinichi sees Crème sitting there in the hall, staring up at them like nothing ever happened.
“Huh.” Hattori says, peering over Shinichi’s shoulder at the rabbit. “Well. Least now you don’t halfta tell Kuroba you lost his bunny.”
Looking at Crème, Shinichi distinctly feels like he has lost, somehow. Like there was a test, and he’d failed. Crème thumps once, surprisingly loud, and then hops into the living room. Grumbling, he shuffles after her, and hears Hattori follow him in.
“What were ya gonna say?” Hattori asks, hands shoved in his pockets. Shinichi just makes a small, confused noise. “In the doorway just now, you kinda trailed off.” Hattori explains.
“Oh. I…” Shinichi begins, and sucks in a breath. Holds it for a second. If there’s a chance… “I can’t believe the feeling’s mutual?”
Hattori turns a handsome shade of red. “Mutual? With… me?”
Shinichi fixes Hattori with a flat look. “No, Hattori. With Crème.”
“Oh…” Hattori says, crestfallen. He’s an idiot, and Shinichi hates how the pathetic look on his friend’s face makes his heart leap into his throat.
“Of course I mean you, stupid! I like Kuroba, but I’ve… always liked you, too, Hattori. You’re kind of a pain in the ass sometimes—”
“Oi,”
“—but I’ve always been able to rely on you. Not many people would drop everything and travel a few hours just to hang out like you do, much less to actually help me. I couldn’t think of better people to be with. I think…” Shinichi bites his lip, “I think if we can work it out between all three of us, that would… I’d be really happy.”
Hattori stands there in stunned silence for a moment. “Y--Yeah. That’d make me super happy, too, Kudou.” he says, so red Shinichi can see the color wash down his neck until it disappears under the collar of his shirt. Shinichi swallows, feeling his face heat in response.
“Should we call Kuroba now? He sounded like he might be busy today.”
Hattori gives the idea a thoughtful hum. “Yeah, ‘m not sure this is somethin’ we should negotiate over the phone while he’s on vacation. When’s he get back?”
Oh, god. “Next Friday.”
“Friday? Kudou, today’s Saturday.”
“Yes.”
“You already lost the bunny once.”
“... And?”
“How are ya gonna make it through a whole week of this?”
Shinichi groans. “I’ll… I’ll think of something.” He supposes he’ll just have to roll with the punches. If he gets really, truly desperate, he might bother Hattori to come back from Osaka to help him again. Speaking of… “Hey Hattori.”
“Yeah?”
“How’re you getting back? The last train back leaves—” he checks the time on his phone, “—just left, actually.”
“Oh. Fuck.” Hattori says, hand scrubbing through the hair at his nape. “... ‘S this floor free?”
A smirk spreads across Shinichi’s face. “Why don’t you take Kuroba’s bed?”
Hattori scoffs and sputters, and Shinichi is absolutely elated to point and exclaim, “Hah! It’s not just me!” at Hattori and squabble playfully with him until the both of them settle in for a night on the floor of their mutual crush’s living room.
In the morning, they wake up forehead to forehead, legs tangled, Crème sleeping in the space between their chests.
As it turns out, Shinichi makes it through the rest of the week with little difficulty. Pre-empting Crème becomes pretty easy once he gets a feel for the textures she’s compelled to stick between her tiny, destructive jaws. He devotes a part of his brain to keeping track of her location at all times while he’s home, too, just in case. There are a couple close calls, but she doesn’t manage to escape the house again during the week, although there is an incident where she manages to destroy Shinichi’s wired headphones. He’d left them on top of a tall bookshelf, like a fool, believing with all the hubris of humanity that it would’ve been too high for her to reach.
Shinichi only wishes that learning from his own mistakes could be slightly less expensive.
Despite everything, Shinichi finds himself becoming attached to Crème and her antics. One night, he sends Hattori a video of Crème making what he assumes is a disgruntled noise, only for Hattori to inform him that she’s actually purring.
After that, he admits that he does actually like her quite a lot.
Kaito is pleased and perhaps a bit surprised to find that his house is still standing by the time he returns. The last phone call with Kudou was… interesting. Kaito had been sure that Crème had managed to start a fire again and that he’d be returning to a withering husk of a building, but Kudou does always manage to surprise him like that.
Also unexpected is that Hattori Heiji is in his home, waiting for him on his couch alongside Kudou. The two are sitting… closer than usual. Kudou usually likes to keep a respectful distance between himself and others, but his thigh is pressed flush with Hattori’s, and he seems unbothered by the way Hattori’s chin rests on his shoulder as he peers at Kudou’s phone.
Curious.
Kaito clears his throat.
Kudou’s shoulders jolt upward, knocking against Hattori’s chin. Hattori yelps, swearing and clutching his mouth as Kudou begins profusely apologizing, hands hovering awkwardly between Hattori’s arms and face.
Hmm.
“Yo, Kudou. Hattori.” Kaito greets, nonchalant.
“Hi! Kuroba, h-hey!” Kudou responds, face lighting up in a sheepish grin. “How was the trip?”
“It was good.” Kaito says. “Busy.”
Crème, completely unaffected by the awkward tension in the room by virtue of being a bunny, hops over to Kaito and sits up on her little haunches, which is her way of letting him know she wants to be held. Kaito gleefully obliges.
She is the most perfect little princess baby in the world, and Kaito would give his left arm and several of his organs for her.
“Yeah?” Hattori pipes up, also unaffected by the awkward tension by virtue of being an idiot. “How’d the heist go?”
“Heist…?” Kudou says, and his eyes almost seem to pop out of his head with the realization. Hattori doesn’t even have the good sense to look abashed at blowing Kaito’s cover like this. “It was a heist! You went to Italy to hold a heist! And you didn’t invite me?” Kudou frowns. Then, like warm honey, that self-assured, achingly handsome smirk spreads across his face. “What, were you scared I’d catch you this time?”
Kaito’s traitorous face heats, ever so slightly. “I just wasn’t sure you’d care for the Italian riviera.” he says, waving his hand dismissively. In actuality, the thought of going to Rome with Kudou, exploring the city and sharing meals, sharing a small hotel room, sharing a week of new experiences together… It had short circuited his brain to even consider, so he didn’t. Also, someone really did need to watch Crème. He didn’t want a repeat of last time, thank you very much.
“You were in Rome, not the Riviera.” Kudou states. “The most water you saw was the Trevi Fountain.”
“Hey, I also saw a river.”
“The River Tiber.” Hattori says, nodding sagely. Kaito shoots a flat look at him, which finally seems to light up the shame and embarrassment centers of Hattori’s brain, at least.
“Anyway, you can keep dreaming, Kudou, because you wouldn’t have caught me in a million years. You or Hattori.” Kaito says, preening at his own skill.
“Well...” Kudou starts, lost in thought. He must realize he’d spoken out loud a moment later, because his jaw clicks shut and he looks like he’s debating the merits of asking that professor of his to build a time machine solely so he can take that word back.
“Well~?” Kaito lilts, hoping to needle Kudou into finishing the thought.
While he deliberates, Kaito simply rests his cheek in his hand, watching the debate play across his features in the gentle flutter of his eyelashes and the river between his eyebrows as he worries at his lower lip.
Ugh. Shinichi has no clue what he does to him.
Kaito schools his look into an appropriate amount of polite interest. He’s got an unfortunate amount of experience keeping himself from looking utterly besotted around Kudou, and if this is headed where he suspects, he can’t afford to have any of that leaking through.
A glance over at Hattori reveals that he’s also zeroed in on Kudou’s lips with a… familiar intensity. Kaito briefly debates the merits of stealing Miss Tooyama’s face again to perhaps have that look spun in his direction again… Does Hattori still turn to mush around her the same way he did a couple years back? Or would he have to disguise as—
“I was just thinking that… there are other ways of catching you.” Kudou says finally, firmly avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room.
Kaito blinks. What?
Hattori sighs and rolls his eyes in such a dramatic fashion that Kaito can’t help but feel a twinge of appreciation. “What this dummy’s tryin’ to say is he likes you, Kuroba.”
Kaito blinks again, staring at Hattori with a blank expression as the statement slowly permeates through his brain.
Wait.
“Me?” he yelps. “But I thought Kudou liked—”
Oh. Oooohhhhh. Well. He’d really misinterpreted that text message from Hattori, hadn’t he.
“… Ran?” Kudou says, looking bewildered. “But I’ve complained to you at length about all the reasons our relationship fell apart.”
“No, I know,” Kaito starts in a rush, “I just thought—! With the message Hattori sent a few days ago about ‘husband material’, and the way you two were sitting so close, and the way you were being all cagey while we texted for the last week, I thought you and him were…” Kaito pauses. Kudou and Hattori are both staring at him with wide-eyed surprise. “Uh… I thought you were… a thing?”
The silence stretches uncomfortably long. Crème begins to fuss in his arms and Kaito sets her down before finally, Hattori breaks out into laughter and Kudou sinks his face into his hands.
“You’re actually… not wrong.” Kudou says from behind his palms.
“Then why’s this idiot laughing?”
“Because I—” Hattori chokes out between gasps of air, “because—!”
“Because he’s been more nervous about this conversation than he’ll admit, and even though you’re not 100 percent right, you having already figured some of this out is a bit of a relief, and he’s laughing as a result of the release of tension.” Kudou says, destroying Hattori’s mood with near clinical precision.
“Aw, c’mon…” Hattori visibly deflates.
Ignoring that, Kaito has even more questions now. “Not 100 percent right?” he repeats.
“Well…” Kudou begins, hesitating again, “we would like to be a thing. We, including… you.”
Kaito goggles. “You and Hattori and… me? All three of us?” He looks between the two on the couch. Both are blushing furiously, all the way to the tips of the ears, but they meet his gaze with that look of single-minded determination that sends a thrill up his spine, and they both nod in confirmation.
Detectives.
Kaito takes a breath and is about to respond, when Hattori bursts like a dam overfilled.
“I know the two of you’ve had your flirt-dance goin’ on for years already ‘n all, and I’ve actually been crushin’ on the both of you for just about as long, but I’m real stupid and I didn’t realize it until not that long ago, and maybe I shoulda said somethin’ sooner but I didn’t know so I get if you don’t want me to—”
“Heiji,” Kudou cuts him off.
“Dude,” Kaito continues, “we made out at that party last month. Why would you think I’m not interested?”
Hattori looks like the floor just disappeared from under him. “We what?”
“You complained about ‘young love’ and ‘regrets’ for an hour and then practically begged to kiss me while loudly calling me Kaitou KID. I obliged, mostly to shut you up, and it did kind of feel like you were trying to drink soup out of my mouth, but… we can work on that~” Kaito smirks, and is immediately gratified by Hattori’s flustered sputtering.
“I could… probably use a few pointers…” Kudou says, gaze firmly pointed at Kaito’s shoes.
“Hey! I can give ya all the pointers you could ever need!” Hattori grouses.
“Soup, Hattori.” Kaito says.
“I was drunk, that doesn’t count! Gimme a redo!”
Kaito smiles ear to ear. “Right now?”
“You’re both too biased.” Kudou sniffs. “I should be the judge.”
Kaito and Hattori share a look that can only ever mean trouble, and lean in to pepper every bit of exposed skin around Kudou’s face and neck with kisses.