Archive of Our Own

Patch Job

Sullen. That was the only word Rei could come up with for the look on the face of Edogawa Conan—or rather, Kudou Shinichi—as he hunched under a reindeer-print fleece blanket with a thick white bandage wrapped around his head, entrenched on the couch in the Kudous’ living room like he was preparing to fend off a hostile force. Not Rei with mini oranges and a couple of children’s Tylenol.

The last light of a December evening poured through the Kudous’ oversized windows. Outside, Rei could pick out the glitter of Christmas lights strung from garlands stapled to the eaves. Akai had done the actual stapling, though Rei and Conan had done everything else. They’d even decorated the bushy nine-foot pine tree in the corner, which would have been a lot easier if Conan were taller.

Getting Akai to assist with Christmas decorating was such an arduous process Rei was surprised he hadn’t been forced to get a few diplomatic agencies involved. But he was determined to maintain their cover and come off like a totally normal suburban family. Or as normal as it got, subletting a movie star’s fourteen-bedroom mansion with a smug FBI agent he still half despised and a brilliant high school detective stuck in a seven-year-old’s body.

There was the whole limping-out-of-the-car-covered-in-blood-and-gunpowder thing, too. But he hoped the neighbors had missed that.

Maintaining his cover was easier when he kept things simple. Rei mostly thought of himself by his given name, though officially it was Amuro Tohru who lived in the Kudou mansion. Akai was Akai, because it was impossible to think of him as anything else. And the boy on the couch was Conan in public, but at home he was always Shinichi. Even when he was glaring up at Rei from the nest of Christmas blankets he’d dug out of the hall closet, looking extraordinarily prickly about being given medicine from a bottle stamped with a cartoon dinosaur.

“I know where the medicine cabinet is. If I wanted it, I could get it.”

Shinichi wasn’t usually so surly. Rei reminded himself it was mostly the concussion talking. The bandage tucked under his dark hair was clean and white, the bleeding long stopped. But looking at it still gave his stomach a sharp twist.

Rei knelt beside the couch. “You’ll feel better,” he pointed out, shaking the Tylenol.

Shinichi gave him a withering look, all the more potent now that Rei was at eye level. “You don’t have to hover,” he groused. “It’s not my first concussion.”

“Aha.” Rei put on his best café waiter smile. “And since chronic traumatic encephalopathy is so common after compound head trauma, the fact that you’ve had concussions before should honestly make me even more concerned. Was that roughly your point?”

Shinichi spluttered a little. Burrowed down into his blankets. Then huffed a sigh that sounded suspiciously like if it’ll get you off my back. But his hand snaked out for the pills, so Rei was taking the win.

He stood, dropping the oranges on the coffee table. “Hot chocolate?”

“…Why not,” the blanket lump mumbled. Rei bit down on his smile and headed for the kitchen.

There were times Rei had no problem remembering Shinichi was actually seventeen. When he was expertly solving murders, certainly. When he was glued to his phone at the dinner table. When he was tagging along to the gun range and picking up Akai’s fancy double tap, though Akai did have to steady his small hands on the grip.

When he was debating the finer points of the statute of limitations with Rei at the kitchen island while Rei rolled and cut a frankly exhausting seven batches of sugar cookies for the neighborhood bake swap. (People do these things, Akai, Rei had insisted, smashing the sprinkle canister into Akai’s chest when the FBI agent slouched into the kitchen for coffee and dared to give him a look.)

And of course when he was very smugly observing from the backseat that Rei had missed his turn, because he was maybe just a tiny bit distracted arguing with Akai about whose job it was to attend the HOA meeting on Saturday. (Obviously Akai’s, since Rei had done the baking.)

A lot of the time, being seventeen just oozed off of Shinichi. But this wasn’t one of those times. Rei couldn’t help chuckling at the sight of him cocooned inside the scarlet fleece and his oversize hoodie, grumpily peeling orange slices.

It was a lot better than the last image in his head: Conan splayed out on the grime-slick floor of the warehouse, bleeding from the temple.

Rei put his head down and concentrated on whisking the milk and sugar in the saucepan, forcing the small sounds of the house to replace the ones in his head. Refrigerator, not revving motor. Chugging dishwasher, not automatic gunfire. The clink of chocolate chips instead of empty bullet casings.

It had started like any other Thursday. He woke up, stared at the cathedral ceiling wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into, then dragged himself up and cooked breakfast, packed Conan’s lunch (and Akai’s, since he was doing it anyway), and sat down to discuss a few details of his latest case over morning coffee.

That was where he’d gone wrong, he realized now—because Shinichi was just too good at it, untangling criminal threads, connecting Rei’s smuggling case with the last known sighting of a missing longshoreman Akai was investigating, cross-referencing that with the morning news or the paper or maybe just the gossip in Class 1-B. Honestly, Rei would kill for his sources. The next thing he knew, Akai was on the phone asking why the tracking dot on Conan’s glasses would be speeding toward the section of the docks controlled by the local gunrunners, and then Rei was doing 160 in his Mazda again, hoping if he had to blow by a police car that at least it wouldn’t be Akai’s future sister-in-law behind the wheel.

Shinichi was right, of course—about the missing dockworkers, and the shipping container number, which guard was on the take and what grade of fentanyl was being smuggled in through Port 81C. Shinichi was always right. But he wasn’t always careful.

Which was how Rei found himself crouched in an abandoned warehouse behind the rusted-out shell of a pickup, one hand forcing Conan’s head down and the other desperately reloading as the truck’s windows exploded over them in a shower of broken glass and bullet fragments. It felt like a low parenting moment. Not for the first time in his life, he was grateful that no matter where he was or who was shooting at him, Akai Shuichi was always fifty feet away with a pump-action shotgun.

All he could think about was getting Conan out of there. It made him careless. Careless enough to miss the man with the tire iron until it crunched into his cheek and he went down hard on the greasy floor.

Things were sort of a blur after that. His hands grappling for the tire iron. Akai’s face lit by muzzle flash. Conan tearing away from him into the crossfire, throwing himself at one of the gunmen just as he fired at Akai on the upper balcony. The high-definition image of Conan’s small body flung across the room and cracked against a metal pole.

Rei pressed one hand gingerly to his cheek, checking his reflection in the Kudous’ chrome microwave. He was going to have a shiner, but he’d gotten off the easiest. He was positive Conan had a concussion, and Akai had taken a shot to the chest, which just grazed the bulletproof vest and tore into his shoulder on its way past him. Since they were all off-book, Rei had heaved them into the Mazda and peeled out, leaving Kazami a voicemail to clean up the mess at the warehouse in between dodging armored SUVs.

Akai. Is he…? Rei had choked on the question, jerking the wheel to swerve around the dockyard gate.

He’ll be fine. Drive, Akai replied through his teeth.

So he drove. But it was hard to keep his eyes on the road instead of the rearview mirror—on Akai’s face tight with pain, one hand clamped to his shoulder and the other on Conan’s head, staunching the cut over his eye with the ragged cuff of his sleeve.

With effort, Rei shook it off, stirring in the cocoa powder and cinnamon before the milk curdled. Everyone was alive and non-critical. Everything else he could triage, one problem at a time. And his most immediate problem was that Shinichi needed hot chocolate.

The cabinet above the sink was stuffed with Christmas mugs, every one tackier than the last. Rei chose one with a pair of snowshoeing polar bears on it, poured in the steaming hot chocolate and topped it off with just a splash of espresso. Ideally, concussion home care meant avoiding all stimulants, but Shinichi wouldn’t drink it without coffee. It surprised him, all these little things he’d started to memorize about the boy on the couch.

When he slipped back into the living room, he found the orange peels heaped on the coffee table next to Conan’s cracked glasses and Shinichi squinting hard at the bright screen of his cell phone. A sure sign he was fighting a headache. Rei stretched over the back of the couch and plucked the phone out of his hand.

“Ah—hey!” Shinichi protested.

Rei shook it at him. “No phone. No books. Nothing that’s hard on your eyes.” He tossed the remote into Shinichi’s lap. “Here. Watch some TV for a change. Otherwise, where will you get all those clever little tidbits of knowledge to impress Detective Takagi on your next murder case?”

Shinichi shot him a dirty look. Rei chuckled, resisting the urge to ruffle his hair.

Shinichi had a six-year-old’s body and a teenager’s squishy prefrontal cortex, and that was a deadly combination. But as much as it killed Rei sometimes, Shinichi was a detective. The danger, and the trespassing, and the sticking his nose into places where it might get cut off—that was just part of the job. So Rei just had to get better at his part: catching up with his troublesome little detective before everyone had drawn their semiautomatics.

He hadn’t been at all sure what he was doing, moving into the Kudou house—taking responsibility for a kid, any kid, even one who’d been practically raising himself. But Shinichi had grown on him, more than he’d expected. Maybe more than part of him was really ready for.

Despite all of his reservations, Rei just liked him. He liked finally having a worthy opponent at chess again. He liked how useful Conan was for getting bumped up in line or scoring free samples at the mall. He liked what a good liar he was (as long as he was lying to other people). And the fact that he was very portable right now, which made him easy to scoop up when a case went bad and it was time to sprint for the car.

Rei wasn’t just fond of him anymore. He was sort of…attached. Not necessarily a good idea, in his line of work.

“Are you going to say anything?”

Rei glanced down. Shinichi was throwing him little looks through his bangs—guilty looks, if Rei was reading that right.

He raised an eyebrow, holding out the hot chocolate. “What do you think I might have to say?”

Shinichi took it with a wince. “Maybe something about…not rushing blindly into situations where I could get myself killed?”

“Sounds like you’ve gotten this speech before.” He kept his voice light as he leaned down and pinched Shinichi’s nose, just hard enough to make him look up. “We had a deal, remember? The next time you uncover a criminal conspiracy that’s going to end like a Die Hard movie…”

“…I’ll call first,” Shinichi agreed, reluctantly.

Rei tweaked his nose and straightened. “That’s all I’m asking.” He slipped the slim red smartphone into his back pocket, since there was nowhere else in the house Shinichi couldn’t get into. “I should check on Akai. Make sure he didn’t bleed out while patching up that shoulder.”

He was passing the couch when he heard Shinichi mutter, “It was a stupid way to get hurt.”

Rei paused. Shinichi was staring down into his hot chocolate, gripping the polar bear mug too tight. When he spoke again, his voice was soft, so soft Rei almost missed it.

“I just wanted to copy the intake files and the day’s shipping manifests before they deleted the evidence. I thought I could handle it.”

Shinichi’s face was tight, his lips twisted into a frown. Not at all like the cheeky brat who’d told Rei while grocery shopping just yesterday that he could stop worrying so much about their cover, because he and Akai had mastered the art of marital bickering. (Just for that, he’d let the old lady in the produce aisle pinch his cheek and call him adorable.)

Underneath the sullenness, he looked…wounded. Frustrated. Rei realized he wasn’t staring at the hot chocolate after all; he was staring at his hands, his small fingers barely long enough to wrap around the red porcelain mug. Aggravated by the limitations of his body. Rei wondered suddenly if Shinichi was fixated on the same moment that was stuck in his head on repeat: his small form hoisted off the ground, struggling against thick callused fingers in the seconds before he hit the pole.

Rei dropped his hands onto Shinichi’s warm shoulders. Shinichi’s head tipped back, eyes clouded. Rei gave him a quick squeeze.

“I think the man in the next room would say you handled it very well. Since he’s still alive to have an opinion.” He flipped Shinichi’s hoodie up over his head. “I’ll send him out to keep you company. Find something good on TV.”

“That’s a contradiction in terms,” Shinichi called at his back. He still sounded sullen, unconvinced. But Rei would have to deal with that later, after he’d taken care of his more impossible patient.

He found Akai in the first-floor guest bedroom, unofficially the house infirmary because it was closest to the garage. Akai was backlit by the window, sitting shirtless on the edge of the bed cradling a cigarette and a curved suturing needle, like he was modeling for an edgy FBI calendar. They’d have to photoshop out the long gash in his upper left shoulder, where the bullet had grazed him.

Rei’s chest gave a sort of unsteady creak at the sight of it, like a boat hitting a rough wave. He snatched Akai’s cigarette and stubbed it out in the porcelain ashtray.

“I told you no smoking in the house. It’s bad for children’s lungs.”

Akai blinked up at him in that languid, unbothered way that always trampled Rei’s nerves. “He’s seventeen.”

“But his lungs are seven. And you don’t need help killing yourself any faster than you already are.”

The words came out a little sharper than he intended. But it was hard to keep an even keel looking down at the torn open mess of Akai’s shoulder, bloody at the top and raw and cauterized along the muscle. Black and purple bruises rippled down his bare chest. The joint was fine—they’d tested that while he helped Akai get his shredded shirt off—but he’d be shooting a handgun instead of a rifle for a few weeks. At least the laceration that needed stitches was only an inch long. On the nightstand, piles of red-streaked gauze surrounded an uncapped bottle of bourbon. Akai’s version of pain meds, apparently.

Rei grabbed the hooked needle trailing a long monocryl thread—braced his knee on the bed in between Akai’s legs and rested a hand on his collar bone as he bent and started stitching. Akai sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t flinch.

“If this scars, I take no responsibility,” Rei warned him. “Your fault for refusing the hospital.”

Akai shook his head. “Bullet wounds and hospitals. Besides, I want to keep an eye on him. Since it’s my fault he’s hurt.”

It was his fault. Rei had been intending to chew him out for that. It was harder, when he already looked so guilty. Well, he’d just chew him out for something else. Rei shifted closer, breathing in the scent of cigarettes and whiskey, the movement of the needle so automatic he barely felt it.

“What kind of amateur,” he growled, “pops his head up in a gunfight without checking if he’s in someone’s line of fire?”

Akai’s mouth bent into a crooked smile. “The kind who thinks he’s about to watch his partner’s head blown off.”

Rei frowned, twisting the suture thread and tying it off with a square knot. He didn’t remember signing up to be Akai’s partner. But then, what else was he supposed to call someone who lived with him, washed the dishes next to him, and occasionally got shot for him?

In the warehouse, head throbbing as he wrestled for the tire iron, he’d lost track of the sixth man. Rei rolled up from subduing the gunrunner who’d clubbed him in the cheek and got one glimpse of the barrel of a shiny black Walther pointed right between his eyes before the man was thrown back by a shotgun blast, his body crumpling into a stack of crates. Without looking, he knew Akai couldn’t have made that shot without standing, leaning over the second-floor railing. He’d jerked his head up just in time to watch the bullet rip across Akai’s shoulder—only realized in the seconds after that Conan had grabbed the shooter’s arm, knocked him off target just enough to stop a head shot.

That was why Shinichi’s concussion was Akai’s fault. But mostly, why it was Rei’s fault, because he never should have needed rescuing in the first place.

Akai’s hand had drifted to his waist. Just steadying him, probably. Rei was going with that. He smoothed a few straggles of dark hair down against Akai’s neck so he could feel his pulse, slow and strong under his hand. His skin felt cold enough to shiver. Rei cut the trailing thread and pressed a long strip of gauze over the new stitches, tearing a piece of medical tape with his teeth.

“If Shinichi hadn’t thrown the shooter’s aim, you’d be dead. That has penetrated your abnormally thick skull, right?”

Akai offered him a wry smile. “Guess I have to get him something really good for Christmas.”

And in spite of everything, somehow Rei couldn’t help chuckling, thinking of this strange thing they were doing together, parenting and not parenting a boy who didn’t really need parents at this point. But he needed somebody.

It might be good for you. That’s what Akai had said, when they discussed the prospect of moving in with Conan, a clandestine meeting at sunset on a bridge overlooking the Sumida River. Akai leaned into the rust-spotted railing in a haze of cigarette smoke, and then had the audacity to look right at Rei with those piercing eyes as he said, You seem very alone.

How could I possibly be alone, with you constantly breathing down my neck? Rei had snapped back. But it stung, how easily Akai always saw right through him.

He wasn’t alone anymore. Wasn’t sure, yet, how to feel about that.

Akai tipped his head back and looked up at him, green eyes half-lidded. From the pain, obviously. His fingers ghosted against Rei’s cheek where it was swollen and achy.

“Rei,” he murmured, that name so low and soft the way he said it. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

Rei huffed. “Next time, worry less about me and more about yourself.” Then he stood up, out of range, and turned for the living room, certainly not preoccupied by the feeling of Akai’s hand on his cheek.

He’d left Shinichi alone long enough. And he wasn’t about to get soppy over long, lingering looks from Akai Shuichi of all people.

*

Rei was fussing. That was the only word for it. Since Akai had wandered into the living room, still working his unbuttoned shirt up over his sore shoulder, Rei had been in and out of the room four times, fiddling with the gas fireplace, piling snacks and medicine on the coffee table, and micromanaging the arrangement of blankets around Shinichi on the couch. If they got any higher, he was in serious danger of suffocating.

The TV was tuned to some forgettable crime drama. Akai craned his head to figure out what, and then regretted that as the pain spiraled down his arm and across his chest. His skin was tender around the new sutures. In the absence of more whiskey, he’d at least need ice. He ducked a low-hanging garland and made for the freezer, careful to scuff his feet, after the first time he snuck up on Rei in the kitchen and almost got a paring knife in his throat.

All Rei was wielding right now was a snowman-printed rubber spatula. But Akai assumed he could kill with that too, in a pinch.

Rei had taken the Christmas thing a little too far. Akai didn’t do Christmas, but even an unbiased observer would agree the Kudou house was dangerously overdecorated. Shinichi kept losing his phone under the avalanche of snowmen in the living room, and every time Akai walked through the house carrying his rifle case, he assassinated at least three nutcrackers. He was starting to wonder if Rei had never decorated a home for Christmas before, was just making an educated guess from what he’d seen in Hallmark movies.

By unspoken agreement, Akai and Shinichi had been sneaking things back into the boxes, whatever they thought he wouldn’t notice. Next year, though, Akai was going to stop him before it got this bad.

He froze in the act of wrapping the ice pack into a dishtowel. Why had he assumed they’d still be doing this next year? That felt…shortsighted. Or gravely sentimental.

Rei shot him a strange look and shooed him out of the kitchen, then went back to his task of making gingerbread by hand. Akai doubted anyone needed that right now, Rei included. But he was learning to pick his battles.

Gingerly, he eased himself down on the couch beside Shinichi, pressing the ice pack to his shoulder just below the gauze. The low drone of the TV washed over him. He kept his gaze trained on the screen, but out of the corner of his eye, he catalogued what he could decipher of the boy to his right: the tense line of his mouth, the twitch of his fingers worrying a loose thread, the distance in his glassy blue eyes.

Akai knew that expression. It’d just been staring back at him from the bathroom mirror as he dug shirt fibers out of his shoulder with tweezers and his off hand, reliving the nineteen seconds when he thought he was about to come home with two body bags.

Last night, at dinner, Rei had accused Akai and Shinichi of practically being the same person. Rei tended to exaggerate when he was annoyed, which was most of the time. But there was a synchronicity between them—something Akai had recognized in Shinichi from the beginning. The ways their minds worked almost in parallel.

Most of the time, he enjoyed that. With one look, Akai could tell when he and Shinichi were thinking the same thing—whether it was sharing a theory of the crime, or deciding to skip elementary school for another take-your-little-detective-to-work day at the unofficial FBI field office in Jodie’s apartment. Or just guessing exactly how many minutes the casserole was overbaked because Rei had gotten distracted, pacing in front of the oven arguing with Kazami over the phone. So he couldn’t stop himself from trading smirks with the boy across the dinner table, even though Rei leaned over and smacked his arm with a spatula.

But this was the downside. The distinction between analyzing a situation and obsessing over it was measured in millimeters. He could see Shinichi reeling with the memory of the warehouse, playing and replaying every mistake in his head. Though none of the mistakes tonight had been his.

Shinichi was brilliant, but he was still just a kid. And he was supposed to be safe here, with them. Akai was supposed to be good enough to keep them both safe.

Something socked him in the back of the head. Akai turned. Rei had pegged him with a holly print dish towel. He waved a flour-covered hand at Shinichi, scowling in a way that just screamed Communicate! Akai stared after him for a moment, wondering if that was just luck, or if Rei actually knew him that well. Well enough to know he was about start obsessing, just like the boy next to him.

Still, there was a finesse to these things, where Shinichi was concerned, that Rei hadn’t necessarily mastered yet. Akai glanced over at him, pushing the ice pack higher up his shoulder.

“What are we watching?” he asked.

Shinichi blinked, like he’d forgotten the TV was even on. “Oh. It’s The Young Adventures of Detective Samonji. I like the original, but the writing in the spin-off’s just embarrassing.” He propped his chin on one hand, the other snagging a cookie off the teetering stack on the table. “The stepson did it.”

Akai raised an eyebrow. “You’ve seen this one.”

Shinichi shrugged. “Not this one specifically. But they’re all so derivative, it’s not even a challenge to guess the murderer,” he explained, vindictively biting the leg off his sugar cookie reindeer. Rei would be one short for his bake swap.

Akai leaned back into the couch, considering the figures on screen. Then he smiled.

“A Scandal in Bohemia.”

Shinichi’s eyebrows pinched together. “No. It’s Samonji, not Sherlock Holmes.”

Akai stretched his throbbing arm long across the back. “I meant, A Scandal in Bohemia is what they’re ripping off. Before the halfway mark, they’ll introduce the Irene Adler character. Wait for it.”

Shinichi looked skeptical. But five minutes later, when an enigmatic madam sashayed into the episode, he craned his head up, wrinkling his nose. “How’d you know?”

Akai chuckled. “The date on the newspaper. June 25th was the publication date for A Scandal in Bohemia. And the emerald ring on the patriarch’s finger didn’t hurt.” He stretched over and grabbed the remote, skipping to the next episode. “You call the next one.”

The look Shinichi shot him made Akai wonder if the boy knew exactly what he was doing. But he leaned forward regardless, fingers steepled, those intelligent eyes taking apart every detail of the fictional scene like he was actually standing over the body.

It was easy after that—settling into a rhythm, competing to call out the murderer and which old detective story each episode was blatantly plagiarizing. The cold sank deep in his shoulder, and as the pain faded Akai let himself relax into the couch, listening to the clatter of pans and the crunch of Rei chopping candied orange while they debated Agatha Christie novels.

“The Body in the Library,” Shinichi said, almost before Akai even registered the corpse sprawled on the cutthroat businessman’s ornate rug.

Akai hummed low in his throat. “Only if the first murder hangs on an inheritance. Otherwise, it’s—”

“A Murder Is Announced,” Shinichi finished for him, smirking. Akai chuckled, finishing off the last swallow of Shinichi’s lukewarm hot chocolate.

It wasn’t a game he could win—Akai knew most of the classics, but Shinichi had read everything, collateral damage of being a mystery writer’s kid. But he wasn’t playing to win. By the time Rei ambled in to set plates of steaming gingerbread on the coffee table, Shinichi was beating him every time, resting easy against the crook of the couch with a victorious little smile.

Rei paused beside them, a blue and white snowflake fleece forgotten over his arm. “It’s Strangers on a Train,” he said, tossing his bangs out of his eyes. “It’s always Strangers on a Train.”

Shinichi grinned. “But this one’s Strangers on a Train by way of Murder on the Orient Express. Strangers on a Train on a train.”

He’d spent enough time alone in the kitchen. Before Rei could retreat again, Akai caught his wrist, pulled him down to sit on the couch in between them. He could feel Rei’s body wound like a spring, tight enough to snap as he leaned in to murmur against his ear.

“Relax. You’re going to rile him up again.”

Rei bristled, but he stayed where Akai had put him. Probably because Shinichi had kicked his small feet up over Rei’s lap, his eyes innocently fixed on the TV like it was all a big coincidence. Akai smiled. They were on the same page, after all.

Rei huffed out a short, exasperated breath, and then he gave in, angling his shoulders to wedge into the narrow space between them. His elbow dug into Akai’s stomach as he threw the snowflake fleece over their laps, not necessarily on accident. Akai swallowed a chuckle. He could have spread out—it was a big couch—but he liked where he was, with the tattoo of Rei’s body pressed into his arm thrown over the back of the cushions. Close enough to breathe in the warm scent of cinnamon and molasses clinging to his hair.

Rei scowled at him. Or rather, at his unbuttoned shirt and the ice pack on his opposite shoulder. “Twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off, Akai. You’ll give yourself frostbite.”

He was exaggerating again. Akai obliged him anyway, uncurling his arm to snag the ice pack and then pressing it gently to Rei’s cheek. The cold made him flinch.

“It’s not that bad,” Rei insisted.

“You’ll feel it in the morning,” Akai warned him. Already his eye socket was discolored, his cheek puffy and swollen. At least it had been the blunt side of the tire iron.

Rei rolled his eyes. But he reached up to hold the ice pack in place—and if Akai was a little slow pulling away, cupping Rei’s fingers against the dishtowel for a moment before he dropped his hand, well, apparently Rei was willing to let that go without barking at him for once.

Shinichi threw him a flat look. Just this one time, Akai was going to pretend he couldn’t read it.

Something buzzed against his leg. Shinichi’s phone, he realized, tucked in Rei’s pocket.

Shinichi craned his head up. “Can I have my phone yet?”

“Has it been twelve hours yet?” Rei replied sweetly. Then he glanced up, sharing a playful smile Akai only understood when he added, “If it’s that important, I can read your text messages to you—”

“Not a chance,” Shinichi deadpanned, jabbing his heel into Rei’s ribs. Rei laughed, rocking back against Akai’s shoulder, and Akai found he had to breathe in a little carefully, something in him knocked off balance by that sound.

It was a feeling he’d had before, listening to Rei and Shinichi teasing each other as they reorganized the Kudous’ enviable library, or walking into the kitchen to find them up to their elbows in flour, Shinichi wearing one of Rei’s aprons with the cord wrapped around him three times. It dredged up old, old memories—memories of being young with Shukichi, of the way a house sounded when it was full of cheerful noise. Not echoes and dead air.

He’d struggled at first, being back in the Kudou house but no longer alone. The first few weeks, his old routine was automatic—disappearing for hours into his sniper nest in the attic, patrolling the neighborhood through the rifle scope, until the night Rei stood at the bottom of the stairs tapping his foot, summoning him down to family dinner. But these days, Akai found himself drifting unconsciously into the rooms where they were, risking Rei’s fury by cleaning his guns at the dining room table instead of the garage just so he could listen to them laugh.

Akai thought he’d forgotten what a home felt like. Or a family. But it had come back so easy, and so fast.

Tonight, standing at the bathroom sink wringing out the blood-streaked towel, he couldn’t shake it—the image of the gun aimed at Rei’s head, Conan’s body limp as a ragdoll on the warehouse floor. The white-hot coil of adrenaline that shot through his body then, as he swung the rifle around, half wild with the fear of losing something he didn’t even realize he had.

But they were alive. And he was alive. And he owed somebody for that.

Akai turned his head to look at them. Rei with a plate of gingerbread balanced on his knees, cutting left-handed so he could keep the ice pack against his cheek. And Shinichi’s small body loose and relaxed under the blanket, his bright eyes fixed on the screen, toes wiggling absently in his festive socks.

Akai reached around Rei’s back to drop a hand on Shinichi’s head.

“Hey.” Shinichi blinked, and Akai bent to catch his eye. “Earlier, at the warehouse. I owe you one.” He felt Shinichi tense, but Akai pressed on, his voice steady. “I wasn’t watching my back. Thanks for watching it for me,” he said, ruffling Shinichi’s hair—gently, so as not to jostle him.

Rei was so still he could have been frozen solid. Shinichi let out a long breath, the last of the tension finally easing out of his face. Then he smirked, faking a wince. “Ow. I have a concussion, you know.”

Rei’s hand slapped the back of his, swatting him away. “He has a concussion. Hands off.”

Akai pulled back. He waited for Shinichi to look at him and then very deliberately crooked an eyebrow, and Shinichi burst out laughing, smothering it by coughing into his elbow. Rei didn’t seem to get the joke, but he dug the sharp part of his heel into Akai’s shin, which Akai supposed worked as a comeback.

As the conversation picked up again—Rei and Shinichi pointing out all the forensic evidence Young Samonji was stomping through and discussing whether the cricket leg stuck to the murderer’s sock would really hold up in court—Akai leaned back and let their voices drift over him, breathing shallow against the night and the dull throb below his clavicle. He couldn’t help smiling at the three stockings Rei had hung from the mantel of the gas fireplace.

In a house otherwise decorated within an inch of its life, there was something painfully sincere and precise about it—three stockings for three people. Whatever it was he felt being here with them, Rei felt it too.

They were halfway through the next episode when Akai caught Rei’s eye and pressed a finger to his lips. Shinichi had finally fallen asleep curled up next to them, his knees pressed to Rei’s leg and his chest gently rising and falling under the reindeer fleece. Even knowing exactly who he was, it was hard not to see the seven-year-old in moments like this, with his mouth slightly open and his feet dangling over the edge of the couch.

Rei leaned his head into Akai’s good shoulder.

“Don’t read into this,” he murmured, switching over to a baking show so there would be fewer gunshots.

Akai’s mouth quirked into a dry smile. Don’t read into this was what Rei had warned him their first day in the house, when he set a cup of coffee next to Akai’s cereal bowl. And so many times since then—holding out a boxed lunch from which he’d painstakingly removed the pickles, or reaching into Akai’s coat for the gun in his shoulder holster, or calling Akai up behind him at the stove to stir the bechamel sauce while Rei grated cheese into it, his back to Akai’s chest and their knuckles brushing. Or tonight as he stitched Akai’s shoulder, looking down at him with those sharp and beautiful eyes from only a breath away.

He wasn’t reading into it. But he was starting to wonder what his chances were, whether there’d ever be something he could read into.

In the warmth of the fire and the low murmur of the TV, Akai felt sleep getting the better of him. Before he slumped sideways and pulled his sutures loose, he negotiated himself carefully down onto the couch, his long legs stretched to the floor so he wouldn’t knock into Shinichi. Rei came down with him, breathing soft, his body tucked into the crook of Akai’s arm.

It wasn’t exactly comfortable. Akai dropped his head back against the heap of Christmas throw pillows, trying to work the kinks out of his spine. There was a tightness in his neck and bruised shoulder that meant he’d feel this tomorrow. But he couldn’t move any farther without waking one of them, and he wouldn’t risk that.

Then Rei was shifting against him, tipping his chin to lock eyes and sliding a hand up to the gauze on Akai’s shoulder.

“Straining it?” he murmured.

Akai swallowed. “Just sore.” Listening to the slow, shallow flute of Rei’s breath, he’d been sure he was asleep. But his eyes were clear, his voice soft and close in the dark.

“Here. Lean into me.”

Rei inched back into the groove of the couch. Then he slid his arm under Akai and wrapped it around his chest, pulling him in and taking the pressure off his bad shoulder. The heat of him so close was dizzying. Rei turned off the TV and stretched the snowflake fleece over them, long enough to cover everything but their feet.

“Better?” he asked.

The position, a little. But the fact that he could feel Rei’s heart beating, his breath warm and strong against his right ear…that was the first thing all night that blacked out the image repeating inside his head: the gunman above Rei with his finger on the trigger, seconds from a fatal shot.

“Better,” Akai said, studying him in the low firelight. This close, he could see everything—every bruise and scar and worry line, the flicker of his eyelashes and the tiny sparkle of gingerbread sugar caught at the corner of his mouth. His eyes holding Akai’s so steadily, depthless with the shimmer of the lights.

Sometimes, he couldn’t read this man at all. He knew Rei didn’t hate him anymore. But there was a lot of ground between hate and whatever this was.

Rei turned his cheek against Akai’s chest. His fingers traced the lines of the bandages, just a tiny flutter of a touch, fingertips grazing his sensitive skin. The arm around his waist squeezed a little too tight.

“Don’t do that to me again,” he murmured.  “You’re the one I’m not supposed to have to worry about.”

Don’t read into it, Akai reminded himself, as he slid his hand over Rei’s and smoothed the knuckles down.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Rei didn’t answer right away. For a long moment, he just lay quiet, tracing little nothing swirls into the gauze as Akai hovered on the edge of sleep, the heat of Rei’s body soothing the ache in his shoulder. But as he finally slipped under, Akai thought he heard him whisper, “Good.”

*

Clobbered. That was how Shinichi always felt waking up the morning after a concussion. His head pounded with the sunlight pouring in the living room windows, which was definitely brighter than usual, and his mouth was dry like he’d been licking lint fuzz off the bottom of the couch.

Blearily, he looked around. He was still Conan, too short for his feet to reach the floor from the couch. His house still looked like it had been ground zero for some kind of Christmas bomb, which his new guardian insisted was all for the sake of seeming normal. Shinichi had tried to explain that normal for the Kudous was different from normal for everyone else, and that probably nothing was more suspicious to the neighbors than somebody actually decorating the Kudou house for Christmas and dropping in on the community bake swap. But apparently he didn’t get a vote.

Shinichi stretched and sat up. His head gave a warning throb, but he felt better than he’d expected, no nausea or dizziness or lingering blurry vision. Grudgingly, he had to admit that maybe he’d been better off staying away from his phone for a night.

Rei was slumped at the other end of the couch, dead asleep. The snowflake blanket had been tucked carefully around his shoulders, and there was a strange round mark on his cheek, like he’d slept with his face pressed against a button. The decorative throw pillows were buttonless, though.

A soft rap sounded on the wall. Shinichi looked up to find Akai standing in the doorway to the kitchen, a finger against his lips, beckoning.

Shinichi nodded. But before he followed, he dug under the blankets, stealthily slipping his phone out of Rei’s pocket.

The notification light was blinking angrily. A bunch of messages from Hattori asking when he’d be visiting Osaka—ignore. A photo of his parents in some kind of a yurt, vacationing or spying for Interpol or just running from his dad’s deadlines; Shinichi could never tell. And then the text thread he’d been trying to keep up with last night, a handful of unread messages next to the icon of a tiny white top hat. The last one had been sent eight hours ago.

Am I boring you, Meitantei?

He’d deal with that later, Shinichi decided, as Akai looked back at him over the counter. He hadn’t really broached the whole casually texting and hanging out with a gentleman thief thing yet. This didn’t feel like the morning to get into it. He slid down from the couch and padded into the kitchen on his socked feet, taking in at a glance all the stuff heaped on the counter—flour and baking powder, blueberries and whisk and mixing bowl, and a bottle of maple syrup shaped like a beaver.

Shinichi still remembered his mom buying that horrible tacky thing at a ski lodge in Vancouver. They’d been stuck with it forever, since Shinichi wasn’t really a sweets person and his parents were never in Japan long enough to eat breakfast.

“Waffles?” he guessed, scrambling up the stepstool Akai had set against the counter.

“Pancakes,” Akai corrected, holding up his apron. “Be my hands.”

Rei had found a child’s apron tucked away in one of the Christmas boxes. Since it was covered in cartoon Snoopys with Santa hats, Shinichi would honestly rather have stuck with the one that was three sizes too big and hung off him like a bag. Though that one did come with a significant risk of tripping and cracking his head open. He’d almost prefer that, though, than any of the pictures Rei took of him in this monstrosity get back to his mom.

Still, he looped the apron around his neck and let Akai tie it. As he measured everything out, Shinichi studied the man beside him. Akai had his shirt off, his collarbone to his sternum covered in blotchy purple bruises. From the strips of gauze and medical tape clinging to the rim of the trash can, Shinichi figured he’d been changing the bandage on his shoulder. The navy button-down Akai had been wearing last night was thrown over a kitchen chair, rumpled like he’d slept in it, and though he wasn’t really trying, Shinichi couldn’t help noticing the buttons were the same size with the same thread crosshatch as the red mark on Rei’s cheek.

Huh.

Shinichi decided to stop deducing there, since he didn’t really want to think about it.

“How’s your shoulder?” he asked, stirring carefully so he wouldn’t slosh anything out of the bowl.

Akai shrugged. “Fine. Just slept on it wrong.”

Shinichi threw him a flat look. “So it doesn’t have anything to do with the gunshot wound?”

Akai just smiled, steadying Shinichi’s hand as they poured the first blueberry pancake into the frying pan.

Shinichi leaned over the stove, watching the pancake sizzle and bubble at the edges. He sneaked a glance at the man on the couch, still sleeping with his face buried in a puffy snowman. Usually Rei did most of the cooking, probably because his standards were sort of exacting. Akai was better at breakfast food, but Rei always had some…Shinichi decided to call it constructive criticism.

He dug the spatula under the pancake and flipped it, wrinkling his nose. His first attempt was conspicuously lopsided.

“I don’t know. Isn’t he just going to complain about them?” Shinichi asked.

Akai chuckled. “Just tell him you made them. Then they’ll be perfect.” His expression softened as he lifted the first pancake onto a plate and poured another, this one in the shape of a lumpy heart. “He took care of us last night. Now it’s his turn. We take care of each other. That’s how it works.”

“How what works?” Shinichi asked.

Akai ruffled his hair. “Family.”

Shinichi considered telling him that the Kudou definition of family was a little different than the one Akai was using. But in the end, he kept it to himself, watching the pancake fry with a little smile.

“You know that’s really corny, right?” he asked instead. And then laughed as Akai mussed a floury handprint into his hair.

Shinichi closed his eyes. He breathed in the steam and the smell of the blueberries bursting, the crackling oil, the sugar cookies and the gingerbread and the cool pine of the Christmas tree. All the things that hadn’t filled this house in a long time, even before he became Conan.

He hadn’t thought he missed it. He hadn’t even been sure he’d fit in with a family, any better than he’d fit in anywhere else. But even in his ridiculous Snoopy apron, Shinichi felt like he fit here, with Rei and Akai. It made him think that if he hadn’t belonged before, maybe it wasn’t because there was something irreparably screwed-up with him. Maybe he just hadn’t found the right place yet.

Akai tried to flip the pancake with his right hand and it hit the edge of the pan, spraying batter across the stove. Shinichi crossed his arms.

“What happened to me being your hands?” he asked, fighting and failing to keep down his grin.

Akai smirked back. “My mistake.” He handed over the spatula, and then stood back watching as Shinichi finally made one perfect pancake—or as perfect as it was going to get, trying to pour a heart with his annoyingly tiny hands.

Akai leaned into the counter, green eyes twinkling. “So. Who was texting you all night?”

It was entirely Akai’s fault that the next pancake landed on the floor.

*

Adorable.

Rei tried never to use that word with Shinichi, because he knew it was a sore spot. But what other word was there for waking up to find Shinichi—or to all appearances, Conan—standing next to the couch in a miniature Santa Snoopy apron, holding a plate of heart-shaped blueberry pancakes.

“Breakfast’s ready,” Shinichi told him when Rei sat up, trying to finger-comb his bedhead into something livable. Over his shoulder, Rei could see Akai setting the table with his off hand, arranging cut fruit and orange juice to the soft strains of classical music from Shinichi’s phone in the Bluetooth speaker. Their daily selection of three local and four national newspapers was stacked on the end of the table.

Akai caught his eye over the silverware. “You might want to eat before looking in the mirror.”

Rei scoffed, hoisting himself up from the couch and moving immediately to the mirror hung over the fireplace. His face was seven colors of purple, his cheek swollen and puffy under the eye. He felt uniquely hideous, all the more so because Akai was still walking around bare-chested like he was in a cologne commercial.

“You could put a shirt on,” he shot back as he slipped past Akai into the dining room.

Akai looked down, as if registering the bruises and bandages for the first time. “Sorry. Lose your appetite?”

That was not exactly the problem, but Rei certainly wasn’t going to clarify.

“I didn’t know pancakes were in your repertoire,” he said instead, sliding into his usual seat. Without ever talking about it, he and Akai had claimed chairs on opposite sides of the dining room table, so they had sightlines of the front and back doors.

“I made them,” Shinichi said brightly, setting the plate of pancakes at his elbow and trading a smirk with Akai over the counter.

“Very convincing,” Rei scoffed. But the words had no bite to them, and he could feel a tiny smile tugging at his lips.

Maybe because the house was spilling over with sunlight, the air thick with the smell of fresh coffee and maple syrup. Maybe because he was tired and achy enough that he didn’t mind letting someone else cook for him, for once. Maybe because it was almost Christmas. Or maybe just because he felt warm in some bone-deep way, watching Shinichi clamber up into his chair while Akai leaned over Rei’s shoulder, setting a perfect frothy Americano at the corner of his plate.

Akai tucked a strand of blond hair back behind his ear. Just so it wouldn’t get in his coffee, Rei decided. That seemed plausible.

“Hey,” Shinichi said, dragging a few pancakes onto his plate. “That thing you did yesterday to get around the SUVs—Tokyo drift. Show me how to do that.”

Rei hadn’t realized Shinichi was still conscious for that part. He smirked, waving a strawberry on the end of his fork. “Ha. Maybe someday, when your feet can reach the pedals.” Shinichi rolled his eyes, and Rei laughed, licking coffee foam off his lip and holding Akai’s gaze across the table.

Rei had learned to be careful, with things he wanted. He’d lost a lot so many people already—people whose loss ripped a hole in him. But this—being here, with them—it felt solid in a way nothing had in a long time. Like something he couldn’t lose so easily. Not just a friendship. A family.

He wasn’t alone anymore. And maybe, just to himself, Rei could admit he didn’t want to be.