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Shinichi's aching head rested against the warmest softest pillow he had felt in his life. Beneath his ear was a rabbiting thump-thumping, echoing through his skull and chasing away any stray thoughts —leaving his mind in blissful silence. Strong warm arms wrapped around him, gently keeping him secure and ensuring he wouldn't roll off his amazing pillow.
Yes, Shinichi would gladly spend the rest of his life here in this warmth.
"Enjoying yourself there, Meitantei?" KID's voice lithely danced above him and rumbled beneath him. Shinichi was fully encompassed by the thief like he was the heist item of the night, stolen away and safely nestled in his grasp.
"It's finished now. Let me rest."
Shinichi's own voice felt so far away. His head was filled with cotton and KID's heartbeats. It would be so easy to let them lull him away, surrender himself to this gentle darkness.
The arms around Shinichi gently nudged him. "Falling asleep on me? Never thought the Heisei Holmes would be so rude to leave his partner behind."
Shinichi would have huffed if he wasn't feeling so drained — but he tried to muster at least some words. "Presumptuous of you to call yourself my partner."
"Of course! After everything you've dragged me into, we're long past the point of partners." Shinichi would never admit it out loud, but he loved how KID's voice remained so playful and bright even like this.
"Oh, so it's all my fault then?" Shinichi could barely rally the energy for their regular banter but he owed KID at least that much.
"I'd say it was a group effort. Your little men in black never do things in halves." While KID's voice was steady as ever, there was no disguising the stutter in his heartbeat.
"They're done for now. We've more than made sure of that, partner."
Shinichi's breaths became deep and steady, a slow rhythm like a funeral march. If his eyes weren't already closed, his eyelids would weigh heavily, insisting that the day was done and just to let sleep take him.
KID jolted him again, this time more forcefully but still so gentle. "Am I that poor of company?"
Shinichi was too tired to open his eyes but he could at least try to stay awake while they still had time together. He owed KID that much.
"Don't you call yourself a magician? Your job is to keep your company entertained."
KID gave a mock offended gasp. "I don't call myself a magician, I am a magician."
"Then Magician-san, work your magic." KID's heartbeat stuttered again. Shinichi quickly pivoted. "I'm sure you know a story or two."
"Bedtime stories are the last thing you need." KID said, voice betraying nothing of his heart.
"Then captivate me—a good story always keeps me awake."
KID hummed contemplatively as his heartbeat steadied yet still thumping too rapidly for a resting pace. Shinichi buried his face further into KID's pillowy pecs, chasing after those lovely vibrations.
"Did you know philosophers talk about love when drunk? Quite famously so."
"I haven't heard of it." Not the angle Shinichi was expecting KID to take. He would admit to himself that he loved that, how this unpredictable thief kept him on kept his detective mind sharp. Steel sharpening steel.
"Well maybe you should expand your reading material beyond Victorian England." KID teased. "You'll find the Greek classics quite enlightening."
A hint to the mystery behind KID, what motivated him, what he chased. If only Shinichi had the time to properly delve into it. Unfortunately, that time would never come. Instead, he asked, "Because they wax poetics about love?"
"Poetic, maybe—but I wouldn't call it waxing. They're all about their dialogues and discussions, conversations that you just had to be there for because the written record pales in comparison."
Even though KID's voice was filled with fake annoyance, Shinichi could hear the smile his eyes were too tired to see. "Annoyingly inquisitive bunch, always searching for the origins of everything—trying to boiling all of existence down to its core truths."
Shinichi couldn't help but smile into KID's chest. "The detectives of days long past."
"And as competitive as when you and your fellow meddling teen detectives are all on the same case. Just as many clashing egos as well."
"Says the man with the ego the size of the moon." Shinichi weakly snorted. "What do philosophers have to do with love?"
"They philosophise on it of course!" If KID's hands weren't wrapped around him, Shinichi could easily imagine their elegant flourishes and wide gesturing. The illusory thief was in constant motion, always threatening to disappear into moonlight in a blink, yet here he was pinned down by Shinichi. Warm, solid, real. "Luckily they hadn't discovered brain chemistry so couldn't boil love down to something as dull as hormones and chemical reactions. What they came up with instead was much more entertaining."
"Don't keep me in suspense. We don't have forever."
Another stutter in KID's heartbeat, but he continued casually, "Apparently one particular drunken philosopher, or better put—philosophising drunk, thought that ancient humans were fleshy balls."
"Balls?" Shinichi's incredulousness roused energy he didn't think he had left.
"Yes! Absolutely rotund creatures with two heads, four arms and four legs—rolling around all over the place like living bowling balls."
"Absolutely ridiculous."
"Aren't the greatest minds of a generation equal parts genius and mad?" KID said with all the gall that was equally directed to himself as much as it was Shinichi. "The thing is with two heads is that it came with two brains. A pair perfectly matched from the moment they were born. They couldn't imagine a world without their literal other half."
"But clearly humans now aren't conjoined creatures."
"Unfortunately, classic human hubris can be thanked for our current halved forms. Humans thought themselves better than the gods and the gods struck back—splitting every human in two. Can't go challenging the divine if you're too busy searching and yearning for the missing piece of yourself." KID's voice dropped to a more sombre tone. "Love becomes a reminder for what was lost, a warning that to defy fate again would leave humanity quartered. Rather nasty thought, since there's only one head left. Would our two-limbed successors be whittled down to half a brain? Or would only one half get to keep the head while the other is left without?"
Shinichi immediately thought of Conan—of how he was rendered to half-a-man. Even now, having just been restored to his adult form, there still was the lingering fear of losing himself again.
"You think humanity would get itself split a second time?" Shinichi asked instead, pushing Conan back into the mental box never to be unpacked.
KID gave a sardonic chuckle. "We're a prideful arrogant bunch, it's only a matter of time before the powers that be get pissed off again."
"Some of them may be merciful. Yue Lao is hard at work binding couples together with his red thread. He could be stitching up the mess left by his western counterparts, making the two halves one once again."
"That's awfully optimistic of you, Meitantei," KID said with genuine surprise slipping into his voice. "Surprisingly romantic from a logic driven detective."
Against all odds, Shinichi still had enough blood to feel his face heating up in a blush. "Barou, I'm following the logic of your story. If love was brought into existence from two halves being torn apart, then love in action comes from when the halves are reunites — and naturally there had to be a myth to match."
"That's why I love—love competing against you. You have a love of the spectacle and performance the other detectives lack. That's why I love…to call you my favourite detective."
Sweet Kanon grant him mercy from this idiot thief. KID barely covered up his first slip up behind his flimsy suave act and he thought Shinichi would write off the second? His current state hadn't deprived him of all his mental faculties.
"I love you." Shinichi said.
Plain, simple, a basic fact of reality. To this it would take their current circumstances for Shinichi to say it aloud.
KID began to tremble beneath him, his heartbeat pounding like a taiko drum and his rapid breath finally betraying the panting exhaustion he was trying to hide.
"…don't do this, Meitantei." The untouchable thief, the living mirage, the peerless legend was gone. Shattered with just three words. "Not now of all times."
"There's no better time otherwise." Though Shinichi regretted that this had left them with no other time. "I love you." He said again instead of 'I'm sorry.'
When the drowning silence of KID's frantic heartbeat and rapid breaths threatened to stretch on again, Shinichi weakly nudged him. "You owe me a response."
"I would gladly be the other half of your fleshy human ball, sewn back together with the red thread of fate—"
Shinichi weakly slapped at the stupid thief's chest to stop his panicked rambling. "You're making it too complicated. Just say 'I love you too' and be done with it."
"…I love you, Meitantei. Kudou Shinichi." KID's voice was soft and trembling, wet with tears he refused to shed. "Greatest detective since Holmes and unrivalled for decades to come. The most reckless idiot with the biggest heart and a mind like no other."
"I love you too, stupid thief. If only we had—"
Then Shinichi felt something wet and sticky beneath him.
"Is that yours or—"
"Fuck. Meitanei—"
"Oh, just mine again. That's fine."
Shinichi kept his eyes closed because he knew too well what he would see. At least in the darkness, he could focus on KID's warmth and not the pain throbbing through his body or the iron that filled his nose. He didn't have to see how thoroughly his blood had stained KID's white suit red.
Well, better his blood than KID's. Shinichi had made peace with death.
"Why didn't you tell me that they got you in the front?!" KID yelled, a dramatic overreaction in Shinichi's opinion but another thing he found endearing.
"Because you were too busy fussing over my back." Not that Shinichi wasn't grateful. KID's immediate response was the sole reason why he didn't immediately bleed out.
"Of course I was! They nearly cut you in half. What sort of samurai wannabe carries a sword in this day and age?!"
"Says the thief that tried to steal half a dozen blades." Shinichi would have also corrected that a giant slash from his shoulder down to his opposite hip doesn't technically count as in half but that was likely would do nothing to defuse the situation. "A couple shots in the side pales in comparison."
"Meitantei."
"I'm dying KID. I'll be dead before any help arrives." There was only one truth left in this situation and Shinichi would not shy away from it. "I love you." He would say it until his literal dying breath to make up for the lifetime of pain he was burdening KID with.
KID fell into silence once again. If Shinichi knew it was this effective to shut him up, then maybe he would have tried this sooner—the confessing, not the dying.
Even with no sight or sound, KID's desperation was palpable. How frantically his heart pounded against Shinichi's ear, how tightly he embraced him without worsening his injuries. If Shinichi could reach into KID's mind, no doubt he would hear his frantic thoughts going through every possible solution only to come to the same inevitable end.
Shinichi wondered in a past born from philosophising and drunkenness, if this was what those whole humans felt—if they ever had to deal with the pain of one half dying before the other. Maybe splitting humanity was a cruel mercy, to give half the chance to continue living when the other could not.
"If I shrink again, make sure they bury me as Kudou Shinichi." He could feel his heartbeat slow and steady, nothing like the burning melting pain that came with every transformation—but there was no guarantee that the corpse he left behind would be that of a full grown man.
"So morbid, Meitantei." Shinichi couldn't tell if KID was on the brink of tears or laughter—maybe even both.
"It's practical. There's no one else I would trust this with."
KID fell silent again, both his breath and heart starting to even out.
Shinichi was about to prompt another response when KID suddenly said, "One condition: spend the rest of your life as Kuroba Shinichi."
He knew it.
Shinichi had his suspicions but he didn't need to know who the man behind the monocle was to fall in love with him. The confirmation though brought a greater satisfaction than deducing the culprit of a mystery novel before the reveal, better than bringing down the organisation that robbed him of so much of his life.
"Is that a proposition?" Shinichi teased. If he didn't know better, he would have attributed the warmth in his chest to new blood suddenly filling his body.
"A proposal would be more fitting." It was KID's signature teasing tone but with something more genuine and tender beneath it.
"Presumptuous thief. You didn't even get me a ring."
"Why need a ring when we already have the red thread of fate binding us?" For the first time since KID had made himself Shinichi's pillow, his hands left Shinichi's relatively uninjured lower back and began tracing up the bandaged gash, dressing likely made by shredding his own cape.
"And how am I supposed to show off a giant red scar like an engagement ring?" Shinichi asked, falling into the fantasy of if they could both make it out of here alive.
"Quite easily. Just wear backless shirts — or maybe even just silk wraps, those would be more adjustable." KID's hands left the path of bandaged gash to explore the other contours of Shinichi's back. "And all the possibilities of accessorising — I would drape you in golden necklaces and chains, have them cascade down your back to perfectly frame our red thread. Of course, just plain gold wouldn't be enough for my radiant Meitantei. They would be bejewelled with rubies and diamonds with matching bangles or even a chocker."
Shinichi weakly huffed. "You would dress me up like an imperial concubine."
"Just engaged and you accuse my heart of wandering already?!" KID said with mock hurt. "No, you would be my empress. Why need a harem when you already rule my heart. I would never betray you for as long as your memory lives on."
Wasn't that a beautiful illusion — a pretty dream divorced from reality like how heists gave him freedom from the cage of Conan.
But every show had to come to an end—reality couldn't be outrun forever.
Shinichi forced his eyes open to see KID for one last time. His hat was gone, which wasn't too surprising—but so was his monocle. Shinichi didn't have the strength to check for latex, but the eerily similar yet not identical face was enough to let him know that this was KID's true face—he still wanted to pinch those cheeks though.
"Caught you, my clover phantom thief." It was still to dangerous to be blurting KID's civilian name in the open. This would be the closest Shinichi could get.
His beloved phantom thief smiled down at him, so blindingly bright yet achingly sad. "You caught me—my one truth will always be you, my love."