Author's note: Welcome, ladies and gents! This is S2lou's muse using her computer at night when she doesn't know it – she's been wanting to start this for months and she's never done it, so I just thought, ya know… I'll do it for her! (whistles gleefully) She's let me in the dark with this couple faaaar too long, and I've got faaaar too many ideas to let her linger more anytime more. So thou hast been warnt, KaitoAoko fangirl! I'm going to update this again and again!
Neither does she nor I own Detective Conan. Nonetheless, it is very certain that DC owns the heart we share.
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Realizing What It Means
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It was a perfectly normal day when he woke up.
It was still a perfectly normal day when he got to school, walked past the door in his classroom, seated himself at his desk and began calling out for entering classmates. It was meant to be a perfectly normal day, like any other until then had always been…
But then Aoko came in, with Keiko and her usual laugh twitching her lips, and normality jumped right out the window.
She looked everyday-like, too – but somehow, as she noticed him, and came over with a sweet smile and a brush of her hand on his arm, she was an alien. The blue of her eyes met his carelessly, her mouth moved easily over a good morning, and he felt the fragrance of her perfume – the Aoko one, the one he'd associated with her every since they were children – hit him full force, leaving his mind numb and unable to come up with any thought but for one unexpected, terrifying, fabulous truth.
I love you.
He hadn't seen that coming. He hadn't seen it coming. And yet, here it was now, already formed and already perfect – it wasn't discovering he had just fallen in love with her, it was realizing he'd been in love with her all along.
I love you…One unexpected, terrifying, fabulous and very, very beautiful truth.
"Kaito? Are you okay?" she asked, her voice reaching concern. One hand worriedly laid down on his forearm, a black lock of hair astray on her forehead, which she pushed away with a slight jerk of the head, the blue of her eyes piercing suddenly through his like a violent light – and he was breathless again, he could see her lips moving and there was the urge to kiss her, unexpectedly…
I love you.
It seemed that she had always been that important to him, as far as his memories of her lay: a rose exchanged from one hand to another, sad eyes suddenly lighting up with marvel at the magic trick, the beauty of those immense blue eyes and childish face slowly growing to the young woman standing in front of him, hands on her sides and glaring at him, half-mocking and half-serious.
But he would never have her. That was realisation too, and it hit him just as hard as the first time over – she should never be his, no matter how much he wanted it, no matter how much he loved her, no matter how much he yearned to tell her the truth right here and now.
There was too much of Kid in him – too many heists already, too many lies, too many evenings when he'd drawn her father away. Half a minute ago it wouldn't have meant anything to him, but suddenly he realised – what he'd let himself in. And it was too late already to tell her – to late, because he'd been oblivious all along. Because their classmates' bridal march when they entered the room together, his mom's sad smiles when he talked of Nakamori-keibu's dumbness, Aoko's tears over the phone when he hadn't come to her birthday – they had been trying to tell him all along, and he'd laughed and pushed them away, like the stupid, hard-headed, stubborn fool he was.
"Kaito?"
"Uh?" he came back to earth with a jolt, just in time to see Aoko pout at him. Lord, was she lovely… would it matter so much if he kissed her now? Would it change so many things? "Yeah, what?"
"You've just been spacing out for a century and a half – what's going on in this head of yours? Get moving – class's about to start. Really," she muttered irritatingly as she dragged him over to his chair, "I feel like I'm your mother right now…"
He knew himself to be right in doing what he did – but he could be wrong for all that it mattered, if it meant losing her forever. And though she was so close to him right now, though there were her smile and her voice and her eyes for him to see and hear, he had already lost her. If she had ever, ever been for him to take – she no longer was; he'd destroyed all his chances with the own hands of Kaito Kid, magician extraordinaire.
"Kaito, what's going on with you? Is anything wrong?" She'd bent to him, leaning over the back of her chair and his desk. "Earth to Kaito… do you read me?" she was waving a hand in front of his face and he couldn't help but smile.
"No. Yes. I'm okay… I guess." Poker Face reminded itself firmly to him and he grinned suddenly, making her start. "Something's worrying me. I just can't figure it out." The words flew easily, making it up, working up his alibi. He was used to that. He was a thief after all – above it all, he was a thief from the head to toe.
"Maybe I can give you a hand," she said, looking relieved. "It isn't like you to bother about things. What's happening?"
"Well, you see, I was wondering—" One day, it would be over – when he'd find Pandora, when Kid would be safely guarded in a drawer never to reappear again—"—what colour it was today."
Flip.
"Oh, blue?"
"KAITO!!"
the day it'd be over, then maybe he'd get an extra chance—
"I'm SO going to kill you!" she yelled as she pursued him round the classroom, her brand-new mop swishing through the air just a hair's breadth from his skull. He jumped and ducked, easily, laughing. Laughing all the pain away, because that was what he was best at.
And he wouldn't let it go.
I love you…-
And that, dearest readers, is probably the beginning of it all. As it happens, it also is the beginning of this series. Thanks a thousand times for reading. (Reviews are the sunshine of my days - but not meaning to push you to or anything, of course ;)