the case of valentine
the suffering of fools | the case of christmas
Shinichi’s curled up on the sofa with a sore throat, a stuffy head, and his tablet. A particularly virulent strain of the flu has his head pounding and his entire body aching, and no amount of medicine seems to cut through it.
He had the sniffles yesterday and hadn't thought anything of it, just that the dry heat was aggravating his sinuses.
This morning he was fine; enough for him to stop by the office and pick up a missing persons request from a worried mother who'd gone to him after the police told her there was nothing they could do for her daughter, seeing as how it she was an adult and had been missing for only twelve hours.
Supposedly.
Someone else had written her texts and a social media post; she'd been gone a lot longer.
He'd found her just in time, tied up and locked in a trunk and suffering from severe dehydration, the car having been abandoned off road in the middle of the Mojave.
He didn't get people sometimes, how they could do such things to each other. Not that he didn't understand why on an intellectual level, because he did, he knew well the things that motivated people to murder, it was just—Shinichi felt things, all right, and strongly. Helplessness. Anger. Jealousy. Fear. Hate. Pain. But he could never tie someone up, stuff a gag in their mouth, and leave them like that to die. It was more than attempted murder, it was cruel.
And it makes him wonder. Whoever had done it had been good at hiding the evidence. Shinichi had hated looking into her eyes, the eyes of her mother, and telling them he didn't know who had done it. There just wasn't enough evidence.
It doesn't mean he isn't going to try. Technically, he has no business investigating it. The LVPD aren't too thrilled with a upstart foreigner “playing” detective, but Shinichi is honestly not too thrilled with Major Crimes at the moment either.
Because there's a pattern. The UNLV student isn't the first woman to be stranded in the desert. And pattern almost always means serial killer. Two, maybe, he's not sure yet. An accomplice, someone to drive the other car. And he hates it because if they are a serial killer, he might have to wait until they strike again and that's almost unbearable.
Some detail he's missed...
He coughs hard, then finds out the antiemetic he took doesn't work as well as it should as the nausea overwhelms him and he retches into a bucket placed beside the couch for just that purpose.
Gross. So gross.
He falls back to the sofa. He doesn't have time to be sick. He needs to be on location or looking at the evidence or something. The Captain at least listens to him in the way that Inspector Megure always did, even if he technically shouldn't.
The door opens, and Kaito comes barrelling in to the sitting room. “Oh, Shinichi~” he says, singing the syllables of his name. He's dressed in a nice suit, and he's at least attempted to tame his hair. He has a large bouquet of roses with him. “I hope you're ready for—”
Shinichi blinks, feeling like he's forgotten something. He knows he has all the necessary clues, but he can't quite put it together. It's not the roses, Kaito brings him roses all the time. But he normally wears white tie to work, and he's in dressed down in black tie today.
He coughs again. “Kaito,” he croaks in response, sitting up—or trying to, his stomach hurts from all the vomiting he's been doing, and he falls back before he can quite manage it, dizzy.
“Shinichi?” he says again, this time questioning, and it's all Shinichi can do to raise his arm over the back of the couch in acknowledgement.
Kaito sets the roses down on a side table, and then leans over the back, examining him. Shinichi knows what he sees. Shinichi’s eyes are bloodshot, and his skin is translucent, almost, his hair almost as tangled as Kaito’s own. His shirt’s a mess; the buttons are mismatched from where he'd had to take it off at the physician's, leaving the collar to push into his chin, and his crumpled slacks bunch at the legs. He just hasn’t felt up to fixing it, not when he can barely move as it is.
“Well, you look awful,” Kaito declares.
“Thanks, I hadn't noticed,” Shinichi says, picking at his shirt. “You look good.” And he does in his tailored black suit, splash of red in cummerbund and tie.
Shinichi, in grimy clothes with greasy unwashed hair, feels like trash in comparison.
“You misunderstand me. As devilishly handsome as you are, you looked healthy this morning,” Kaito accuses, perching on the back of the sofa, trailing his bare foot across Shinichi's leg in a comforting touch.
“Yeah, it came on quickly. Flu,” Shinchi says, and then he sneezes into his handkerchief, and it rocks the whole couch.
Kaito watches as Shinichi curls into himself, shivering, and he procures a blanket, slides down next to him and wraps it around him with one hand, texting with the other.
Then he leans over and kisses the corner of his mouth, and Shinichi jerks back, pushing him away. “Don't do that! Do you want to get sick, stupid?”
��I've had my shot,” Kaito says, pouting.
“That doesn't mean anything! So have I,” Shinichi says. “I don't have time for this. I need to be out doing legwork, and you can't get sick either, with your schedule.”
“Case that bad?” Kaito asks.
“Worse,” Shinichi says, and Kaito finds his hand, lacing their fingers together. He runs his thumb over Shinichi's gold sapphire band.
“I'm sorry,” he says quietly.
“It's nowhere near your fault. It’s just—people,” Shinichi says, bewildered. “I don't get it.”
“Have you eaten anything today?” Kaito asks.
“No, I've been too busy. Didn't think I could keep anything down,” Shinichi says.
“That won't do,” Kaito says, and he tucks the blanket around him, kissing him again on the cheek. Shinichi thinks about scolding him again, and then realizes that he'll regret it once he gets sick, and that will be punishment enough.
Kaito stands, heading to the kitchen, and Shinichi hears the sound of shifting rice and running water, and by the location of his soft steps, he's near the rice cooker.
Is Kaito making okayu? Shinichi really doesn't feel like having that either, he's not that sick. “I've been keeping myself hydrated!” he calls.
“Not good enough!” Kaito calls back cheerily.
Shinichi hears the sound of a microwave, and then the sound of popping corn. Though by the metallic echoes, it sounds like he's popping it in a stock pot.
After a few minutes, Shinichi looks over at the sound of footsteps to see Kaito carrying a big mixing bowl of popcorn back to the room on a tray with some hot yuzu honey tea, by the smell.
Kaito sets it on the coffee table, and Shinichi notes with some amusement it's the pair of mugs emblazoned with the caricatures of Sugarlock Holmes and Jam Moriartea. As their names suggest, Sugarlock is a deerstalker wearing sugar cube with a pipe, while Moriartea is a cup of jam tea with angry eyebrows.
Kaito takes the Moriartea mug for himself. Shinichi's sure that's why he bought the set of them, even though they were ostensibly a gift for Shinichi.
He's also found time to change into an old shirt of Shinichi's and some sweats. Shinichi squints, and he recognizes them as the clothes Kaito keeps squirreled away in the pantry. That was more impressive before Shinichi learned how he did it.
Shinichi keeps finding clothes everywhere. In the strangest of places. Nowhere is safe. Not even his office. Or the diner that has become their diner.
“So, what's on tonight?” Kaito asks as he sits beside Shinichi, handing him the other mug of tea and cuddling into his side, uncaring about Shinichi's germs. He places a piece of popcorn in Shinichi’s mouth. It's matcha popcorn drizzled with chocolate. Huh. That’s a bit ritzier than Kaito usually prepares his snack fare. Shinichi’s nauseated, but it tastes great.
Shinichi wonders what the occasion is as Kaito turns on the television.
“Some old film,” Shinichi says, gesturing an arm at the black and white screen. He doesn't recognize it. He wraps an arm around Kaito and pulls him closer. He sips from his mug. The hot tea feels wonderful to his irritated throat.
Kaito hmms, and feeds him another piece of popcorn.
Shinichi doesn't feel like watching anything, really, but Kaito seems determined to have a movie night, so who is Shinichi to argue?
Kaito pokes at Shinichi's stomach, making him squirm and shift. “What was that for?” Shinichi asks as Kaito snuggles closer to him.
“For getting you to share the blanket,” Kaito says, and sure enough, he's wrapped it farther around himself. He's plastered against Shinichi's side, his warmth seeping down to Shinichi's bones, and it's the first time he's felt anywhere close to good all day.
“You're going to regret getting close, you know,” Shinichi says as Kaito eats a piece with the same hand he's been using to feed Shinichi.
“Haven't yet~” Kaito says.
And okay, the implication makes Shinichi blush, but he looks away and says, “Sure, you say that now, but just wait.”
“Even if I do get sick, I know you'll be right here with me,” Kaito says, squeezing his hand.
Shinichi's heart melts. He groans.
“What?” Kaito says.
“You're so corny. How are you even real?” Shinichi asks, right hand covering his face as his fevered blush deepens. He can’t help it.
“Hey! I'm trying to have a heartfelt moment here!” Kaito says, pouting again.
Shinichi throws a piece of popcorn at him. “Like I said, corny,” Shinichi says.
“Oh, like you're any better,” Kaito says, picking it up and popping it into his mouth before flicking another piece at Shinichi.
He catches it with his mouth, and then stills, dizzy from the quick movement.
Kaito's phone dings. Shinichi glances over to see Kaito firing off a rapid series of texts with a lot of emojis.
“Aoko?” Shinichi asks.
Kaito shakes his head. “Miguel sent me a picture of them, don't they look adorable?”
Kaito’s jeweler friend and his wife are pressed together, the photo having been taken by a third party. They're both dressed to the nines. The caption underneath says, “Thank you for dinner <3”
“‘Thank you for dinner?’” Shinichi repeats, uncomprehending, then he jerks up, nearly spilling his hot tea all over himself. Sugarlock Holmes looks at him disapprovingly from his mug. Shinichi must be really out of it if he’s imagining the artwork on his cup judging him for how long it has taken him to figure it out. Kaito dressed outside of his work norms. The bouquet. The green tea and chocolate popcorn. The chocolate that Kaito had indirectly given him.
“It's Valentine's Day,” Shinichi says, and groans again, falling back against the couch, elbow over his eyes. “Those reservations were originally for us, weren’t they?”
“...Maybe?” Kaito says.
Shinichi raises his head and narrows his eyes. He’s acting cagey. “What else are you hiding?”
“Don’t look out front?” Kaito says, hands up.
So of course Shinichi sets his mug down and stands, wobbling, stalking over to the front door and throwing it open. A giant red bow sits on top of a gleaming black tourer. “You bought me a Benz,” Shinichi says in disbelief. “A 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL. A gullwing.” He turns on his heel, rubbing at his temples. “Kaito. Stop buying me cars. The Phantom was enough.”
“It’s not American,” Kaito says, trying to defend himself. “And you bought me a giant stuffed bear!”
That’s his argument? “A bear is not even close to—” His head is spinning. He feels faint. “It’s not a competition.”
“You’re not going to faint on me, are you?” Kaito asks. His voice is flippant, but his brow is furrowed in worry, and he moves closer as if to catch him should he fall.
Shinichi steps out of his reach, lets out a jumbled vocalization of something, takes a deep breath, and then says, “...No. Do I even want to know how much it cost?” Low production numbers, sought out by a lot of collectors...Shinichi imagines it’s high.
Kaito shifts. “I had it checked before I let the money transfer. It’s authentic!” He looks a little pale, though. Anxious. Like he’s worried about Shinichi’s reaction.
It doesn’t answer Shinichi’s question, but he doesn’t want to think about it right now. “You don’t—” He takes another deep breath. “You don’t have to buy me, Kaito, or get me things out of obligation. I’m here to stay.”
“It's not obligation! You like classic cars, though. Old ones,” Kaito says, rambling. “And I—I just thought you might like it. And I like the way your eyes light up when you see them, and when we go driving together with the windows down, and how you talk about them. I can’t help you with your detective work, not really, not as I am now with people so aware of me, and in fact, I know my fame makes it worse, but I thought that this...this I could help with, you know? This I can do.”
Like the mansion and the premium office space and the Rolls-Royce weren’t enough, though Shinichi is sure Kaito bought him the Phantom solely because of the name. He knows that because Kaito also owns a Honda Shadow Phantom even though he prefers sports bikes over cruisers.
Shinichi takes a step forward, lets his head fall and thunk on Kaito’s shoulder. “Thank you. Idiot,” he mumbles, tired.
“Your idiot, though,” Kaito says, his arms coming up to embrace Shinichi.
“Yeah.” Shinichi says, closing the gap. A long pause, his head still down on Kaito’s shoulder. A fancy dinner to make up for forgetting about Christmas. “My idiot.” Something grand and over-the-top for Shinichi because Shinichi had gotten Kaito something of the like.
Well, Shinichi would just show him on White Day. Before that, though…
Shinichi pads over to the table at the entryway, pulling out a long, thin black box with a red ribbon.
“For, uh, today.”
“I thought you forgot?” Kaito asks.
“...No? I mean I forgot it was today, yeah, but I didn't forget forget. I had this made a while back,” Shinichi says. It isn't like there are set rules to this, or that either one of them is the “woman” in the relationship (they're both men, that's kind of the point), so he'd been planning all along to give him something today, their first true Valentine’s Day together. It’s nice that Kaito thinks the same, really, and isn’t insecure about it either.
Kaito takes it, unties the ribbon, pulls it open. “It's pretty,” he says, running his finger over it. It's a moonstone cabochon pendant, the stone cradled by a pair of silver doves in flight. It's not on a chain but on a thick leather cord, and the adularescence makes it gleam in the late afternoon light. “Thank you, Shinichi. It's nice.”
Shinichi scratches his cheek. “Sorry for ruining your dinner plans,” Shinichi says for lack of anything better.
“If you really want to apologize, you can get better quickly,” Kaito says. “Which means lots of rest, so move it,” he says, tugging at him. “Come on, back to the sofa. Your dinner will be ready in an hour.”
“You’re being dangerously domestic,” Shinichi muses as he lets Kaito manhandle him.
“Nope!” Kaito beams. “My motivation is entirely self-serving. I can't have my Valentine Shinichi cuddles if my Shinichi isn't here to cuddle, now can?” He tucks the blanket around him, retrieves Shinichi’s mug, tsks at the temperature, and goes to prepare him more tea.
But Shinichi is already feeling much better, smiling fondly at his back. Oh, he still needs to work on that case, his head still aches, the room’s still spinning, he’s still nauseous, and he’s sure even with his medicine it will be several days before he feels better, but it’s nice to have Kaito taking care of him like this. And when Kaito inevitably gets sick in a few days because he has no sense, Shinichi will gladly return the favor.
But for now, he lets Kaito fuss over him, and thinks about the marked changes since Kaito came back into his life—he’s fiercely glad that Kaito came back into his life at the bar that night. Shinichi doesn’t think he can imagine a life without him anymore.
“What are you smiling about?” Kaito asks him, handing him another steaming mug as he sits beside him.
“Nothing,” Shinichi says, raising the cup to his lips to hide it.
“Looks like a lot of nothing,” Kaito says, picking up the remote and going to a streaming service.
“Yeah,” Shinichi says, pressing a kiss to Kaito’s temple. “That’s one way to put it.”
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03. at gunpoint
Prompt was: My way or the highway: held at gunpoint
Using @whumptober2020‘s prompt today.
Buried in here is some Saguru trauma and some black org au. Once again, unedited and relatively incomplete. CW: firearms, some mishandling of them, although no graphic depictions of gun violence. (Someone does get shot, I’m just not descriptive about it.)
----------------------
The first time Saguru had seen a gun outside of popular media, he had been thirteen.
It had been a hunting rifle in the hands of one of his cousins. At one of the family gatherings, he and many of those others deemed to be children had been left unsupervised. Away from watchful eyes, his cousin William had ushered Saguru and a few others he deemed worth to one of the manor’s display rooms. Mounted upon the walls were hunting trophies. Animal pelts. Dead eyes. And there was a safe - a sturdy, unimpressive thing. William began to boast about a recent hunting venture with his father and paternal grandfather as he opened the safe to reveal a small cluster of rifles. With a steady hand, he’d withdrawn one for the others to take a look. Saguru, who had enough exposure to media and articles detailing at length the dangers of a mishandled firearm, maintained his distance even as his other cousins clustered around to get a better look. William at least seemed to have the good sense not to pass it around. He made a dhow of aiming the gun at a statuette positioned in a display case across the room, explaining the sight and other minutiae of the weapon. He boasted about using it during his recent (only) hunting exploit.
As Saguru entertained the possibility of just walking away and leaving them to their devices, one of the others—Jonathan, older than him and younger than William—spoke up. “You’re awfully quiet, Simon! Don’t you have any history lessons or interesting facts for us?”
This was a game his family liked to play with him: somebody would invite him to share his knowledge, whatever obscure reading or research he’d done which coincided with a particular subject, and take pleasure in marveling at his strangeness as he went on and on, spilling out what he could. When he was too young to know better, he thought it was flattery. Now he understood that he was the punchline of their private joke.
Unfortunately for them, he knew better now, and he wasn’t interested in discussing firearms. “No,” he said simply.
The gun’s barrel was leveled at him then. He froze where he stood, and he felt his expression turn stony. The room had transformed into a vacuum of Saguru staring down the weapon, and his mind cycled in an instant through the science behind the way the mechanism worked to fire the bullet, where that bullet would strike, the biological, physical repercussions.
William guffawed, and lowered the gun. “You should see your face!” He mimicked some approximation of Saguru’s expression, although he doubted he’d pulled anything similar to the garish terror painted temporarily upon William’s face.
“You aren’t supposed to point a gun at something unless you intend to fire the gun,” Saguru said, clipped.
“Don’t be so serious! The safety’s on and it isn’t loaded.”
How many times in history had that phrase preceded tragedy?
Fortunately, that evening tragedy did not befall Saguru or any of his other relatives. William’s father had discovered the boys clustered in the hunting room and scolded them for getting into the safe, however. Saguru sat through the brief lecture and spent the remainder of his evening staying as far away from his cousins as he could and trying to forget about the cold dread that had taken hold of him.
—
Allegedly, citing that as his first in-person encounter with a gun was incorrect, although it was genuinely challenging for him to recall the first time. Remarkably, he had no recollection of the ordeal. This was especially remarkable, as Saguru typically remembered everything, could detail memories he possessed from when he was far younger. He was told he had a gun quite literally held to his head once, shortly after he turned four. There had been very real threats made against his life. If he strained to recall it, he could recall the terror, and the visceral feeling of restraining force, but no more than that. According to his parents, he’d been scared silent for days afterward.
—
The second time, or third, depending on how you decided to count it, that Saguru had come into contact with a gun, it was because he had grimly requested firearm safety training. His mother had thusly made arrangements for him to receive this education. The fact of the matter was that Saguru was outright terrified of guns, their potential deadliness. He felt it bordering on illogical; a respect and caution for the weapon was understandable, necessary, but he couldn’t help but think that the amount of fear that firearms could inspire in him was not productive. Anyway, he figured it would be necessary to understand how they worked—not because he ever wanted to handle one, but because he felt the information would prove useful should he need to disarm somebody, or if he wanted to keep such a weapon out of more dangerous hands in a bad situation.
Saguru had not enjoyed firearm safety training to any extent. It was impossible for him to relax, and while he focused his way through the fear, it didn’t change the fact that he was still in knots the entire session, as well as for hours after the fact. Not only that, but he found he was a terrible shot. This was especially vexing since he performed at least slightly above average for an amateur in his limited experience with archery.
He comforted himself by remembering that he had no interest in using a gun, anyway.
By the time he’d finished his gun safety training, he understood how to use a hunting rifle inside and out, and had a more robust textbook understanding of other varieties of firearms (although no hands on experience, thank goodness). He didn’t like guns anymore than he had before, and they still made him quite anxious, but at least he knew how to handle one.
—
And then there was this: the world feeling as though it had gone out from under him, a pistol pointed directly at him, the one wielding it wearing Kuroba Kaito’s face (although, underneath some light facial prosthesis, enough disguise to maintain plausible deniability). To say that none of it made sense was an understatement. The visuals of the situation were adrenaline-crisp, but what he could see was only confusing things. The gun trained on him. The stranger standing meters away from Kuroba, who Saguru had only minutes ago witnessed in the midst of planting an explosive.
Saguru’s heart roaring in his ears as it was, he almost didn’t hear when the stranger said, “Take care of it, Cachaça.” Cachaça. Fermented sugarcane. Liquor. Similar in nature to Rum, although less matured. Portuguese, in origin, he thought? Cachaça, in application to Kuroba—some sort of encoded speaking? Or just a nickname—code name? ‘Code name’ seemed a strange, overly paranoid term to apply, but this entire scenario warranted paranoia—
He hadn’t even managed to figure out what approach he was meant to take in order to talk his way out of this when the gunshot rang out. Saguru’s field of vision became a dark tunnel, every part of him braced for the sensation of bullet burying into flesh, ricocheting, bones and muscle and tissue protesting. The anticipation turned him lightheaded.
And then he realized: he was unharmed.
However, the stranger was a pained heap on the ground.
Kuroba (—was this truly Kuroba?) looked at him, and his expression was something Saguru might have described as rueful, or frightened, or agitated. He wasn’t quite prepared to trust his assessment of others’ emotional state right then, though.
Between one moment and the next, the gun was gone, vanished away. Not holding anything, Kuroba’s hands were flighty things, moving quickly and with no clear purpose. Fingers curling into fists and the uncurling, fiddling with something, and then putting away a moment later. “Damn it,” Saguru heard him say under his breath. Saguru had no idea what to make of it. He was shell-shocked.
“We need to go,” Kuroba said then, reaching like he might seize Saguru’s arm, then thinking better of it. He jerked his head in the direction they needed to move. Kuroba strode away. Saguru followed.
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