Chapter Text
The heist had been messy.
Conan squints at what seems to be a large, slimy, pink block of jello with several arm-shaped holes in it sitting in the middle of the thoroughly trashed hotel lobby.
He’s considering whether he should poke it – it’s called natural curiosity – or leave it be when one of Division Two’s officers taps him on the shoulder. Conan glances up through his bangs, instinctively making sure his wide-eyed, childish expression is pasted on. The agent, a freckled man with cropped brown hair, immediately smiles at him in response. Impressive – considering the bright red pinch mark on the man’s cheek, Conan can’t help but preen a little.
“Hey kid, you might want to get yourself cleaned up before you head home,” the man says, chuckling. “Looks like Kaitou KID did a real number on your face.”
Conan reaches up to feel his cheek, and one of his fingertips comes away electric blue.
Huh. He didn’t even feel that.
“Thanks, mister!” He chirps cheerfully in response, letting himself hop as he runs past the officer to the lobby bathrooms. It’s only when the heavy door emblazoned Men shuts behind him that he slumps and sighs out a breath. There’s no place his mask slips (disappears) more often than at a heist, so Conan always lays it on thick in the aftermath, before the task force can start getting any ideas about him. It’s exhausting, playing up the persona after having just been so completely himself, like whiplash in his own mind. It feels like coming down from a high, to be so breathlessly real for a night only to fall back into a life that isn’t.
Conan listlessly lifts himself on the marble counter to look in the mirror. His eyes widen at his reflection.
That bastard.
From forehead to chin, the entire right side of Conan’s face is covered in KID caricatures meticulously painted in blues ranging from deepest navy to pale arctic. They’re close enough together that it almost resembles some sort of debasement of a lace pattern. Conan reaches up to touch his skin in numb disbelief. He’d inhaled maybe two breaths of sleeping gas before he managed to push out of the main hall of the hotel. He’d dozed off in the hallway for one and a half minutes. How the hell had KID managed?
There’s only a tiny smudge of electric blue where he rubbed his cheekbone earlier, and Conan groans when he realises that the work is etched in waxy liner instead of a more easily rinsible paint. He’ll have to sneak into Ran’s room to steal some of her makeup remover, though at this rate he may as well just buy a bottle himself. To hell with how weird it is for a seven-year-old to carry makeup remover–one never knows when one may be accosted by phantom makeup experts with a flair for being a huge pain in the ass.
Conan glares at his reflection for a while longer, as if all of the mini versions of KID’s stupid smirking face will vanish the longer he stares at them. Unfortunately, the multicoloured thieves continue to grin at him from his skin.
He’s just about to hop off the counter, resigning himself to a walk home to the Agency looking like a deranged personal advertisement, when he notices something odd about the tassels on some of the doodles.
Conan leans in close to the mirror, cataloguing all the tiny monocle charms on the disaster that is his face. Some of them are a different shape than usual. More specifically, the charms drawn in a particular shade of blue have all been carefully reshaped into hearts.
Conan looks up to meet his own eyes, and the exact same hue stares back at him.
Suddenly, he remembers his encounter with the thief that night. A focused gaze raking over him, an indigo glint of satisfaction as two gloved fingers under his chin hold him still, lips stretched into a smug grin.
“Just checking up on my work!”
Something curls in Conan’s gut as the tip of his index finger traces one of the electric blue hearts right below his left eye. Red creeps behind blue as he feels a flush in his cheeks.
He almost wishes it were normal, that he could write this off as just another one of the phantom thief’s pranks, but no. Kaitou pranks are loud, colourful, and made to humiliate their unlucky victim in front of as many people as possible. They’re not subtle, not little secrets for only two people to know, not…
Not clues, enticing him and leading him to a possibility that…
Conan focuses on his reflection again, on the soft curve of his jaw, on the baby fat in his cheeks, on everything small, small, so damn small. It was all wrong.
A tasteless joke. That’s all it is. There’s no way Kaitou KID could possibly find him desirable as he is now, even if he does know about Kudo Shinichi. Besides, whether he’s Conan or Shinichi, he’s a detective first and foremost, and KID had made his stance on those clear.
(nothing more than a critic, remember? )
Conan shakes himself and jumps off the counter – he needs to go home. Kogoro won’t care until at least tomorrow morning but, if she’s still awake, Ran will worry. If she worries long enough to get angry she might actually start enforcing his curfew properly and – God forbid – begin to check his futon at night. He absolutely doesn’t want that to happen, no matter how conflicted he feels about KID right now.
Conan bites down hard on his lip, and briskly walks out the bathroom door.
The lobby’s almost empty; a few tired-looking officers are still milling around and chatting as they tug at the last remains of police tape. The man from earlier is among them, talking to a tall woman. He notices Conan making his way to the large glass doors, and points to his own face with a raised eyebrow. Conan just pulls a finger down his cheek in response, knowing that he’s barely smudged the pattern on his skin. The officer winces at him, and he looks sympathetic as he waves good night. Conan idly waves back, and he’s just about to push at the thick glass of the entrance’s revolving door when suddenly all his senses jump to life at once.
It’s like someone’s cranked up the volume on the entire world. His skin is prickling, the hairs in the back of his neck standing stiff as though being pulled by something. His instincts scream pay attention! you’re in danger. He freezes, one hand flat on the door. Someone is watching.
He’s barely begun to turn his head to look around when a woman’s voice pipes from behind him. “Are you alright, little boy?”
Conan turns like his life depends on it.
The woman’s beautiful, with silken hair and fine features, but she may as well be a monster for the fear that’s rushing ice cold in his veins. She bends down, and though her expression is one of concern, her pale, reddish eyes are coolly analytical. There’s no doubt: these were the eyes he felt on his back.
Conan desperately tries to recall the descriptions of every Organisation member he’s heard of, but no one fits the face in front of him. He carefully shuts down the urge to shake, to step away, pulling seven-year-old boy over himself like a shield.
“I’m okay Miss,” he replies, forcing a bright grin. “Just thought I dropped my badge, but it’s in my pocket, see?” He pulls the little Sherlock-shaped badge out to wave briefly in front of the woman’s startled eyes.
“I better go home and clean up then, Miss!” Conan tries to make his smile as cute and apologetic as possible.
Just a kid who got pranked. Turn around. Nothing to see here.
The woman doesn’t budge. Instead, she looks over his face again. Her eyes widen before narrowing. Conan swallows, feeling as if Irene Adler herself were peering into him.
“It does seem like that thief has taken an… interest in you,” she says, voice tight with something Conan can’t identify. He blinks. That was… not what he expected. Is that why she’s been staring at him? He feels a tendril of hope.
“He got me today, but I’ll make sure he can’t prank me again,” Conan slips into his role as the cheerful KID-killer, praying she doesn’t know him as anything else. “Next time, I’ll stop him!”
Irene’s eyes flash dangerously at Conan’s words, but she straightens and her expression clears before he can so much as flinch. A slender hand reaches out and gently pushes some of his bangs, long nails catching at kinks and tugging his scalp.
“I’ll be looking forward to next time, then,” she murmurs, and nods at him in acknowledgment before turning around and walking serenely away. Conan watches her go, a feeling of foreboding rising within him. He gleaned practically nothing from their conversation. He has absolutely no clue who she is or what she wants with him.
Seems like the running theme of this whole goddamn night.
He shoves hard at the door, taking deep breaths of cool night air. It’s louder outside; cars pass through the hotel district at all hours and some devoted fans are still eagerly discussing the heist. A couple of them notice him, nudging each other (“Look! It’s the KID Killer!”) but he ignores them to start his walk home.
He thinks.
Something happened, and he can’t shake off the impression that he missed it.
Conan runs a hand through his hair in frustration, distantly noting the lack of any planted bugs.
Irene can’t be on the task force or even in the police force, that one’s for sure. Too young. Too graceful. No uniform. Maybe from the syndicate? Conan can’t think of anyone with her attitude–except one person, but Vermouth has always been more overt about her identity when she wants to leave Cool Guy cryptic messages.
Plus, the label of the Black Org doesn’t fit this woman. He may not be Haibara, with her superhuman sense for picking them out, but he’s ready to bet that if Adler is with the organisation, she’ll be someone like Vermouth or Bourbon–secretive, independent. That gives him time to throw her off. If she had already known his identity, surely, surely, he’d be dead. The Organisation may be a downright crazy mix of individuals, but they all have one thing in common–they don’t approve of leaving loose ends.
Conan groans; he’s thinking himself in circles. If only he’d stayed longer to observe her. He curses himself. He shouldn’t have panicked like he did. That had been a golden opportunity – a lead – and he’d wasted it.
Although, he tries to comfort himself, if he asks about “that really pretty Onee-san” in the future, there’s no doubt the task force will know exactly whom he’s talking about.
Conan reaches the darkened windows of Poirot and sighs. The night had really ended up a mess. He’s not surprised though. It was KID’s night.
Regardless, he’s home now, and he’s still breathing. He can be grateful for that, at least. To KID’s patron god, who refuses to let even poisoned children get hurt at heists.
A sigh, the second one in the span of two minutes, escapes his lips as he makes his way up the stairs. The apartment is silent, plunged into the dark. Calmly, without making any sound, he traces a beeline to the room he shares with Occhan, changes into his blue pyjamas, brushes his teeth, cleans his face up, removes his glasses, lies down in his futon, buries his face in his pillow,
and proceeds to scream for twenty-eight seconds straight.