“Ah- it’s alright. If you weren’t gone, I wouldn’t have had to learn how to do these things by myself for the future, anyway…”
Ding dong! You guessed correctly. You get my desperate muse on a silver platter. Be sure to get him ‘rekt’ just right.
Shinichi smiled at C-ta before he leaned over and brushed at the other’s bangs..
“I missed you, C-ta.”
Somewhere along the lines, he had wished he and C-ta could have disappeared together in his absence. That would have been the nicest way to leave the scene for a while.
Listen, was it my fault you had taiyaki? No. Was it yours? Yes. Your own wetness was your own responsibility. “Tantei-kun, aren’t you the one who’s been missing? What happened to you, anyway? Don’t tell me you fell into a crime scene and died?”
Oh no, if I get wet, I’ll fully blame you for it.
“Me, dead? If that had happened, would I be standing in front of you right now?” He chucked as he removed himself from the doorframe – you have to assume he leans on those regularly, really – and walked over, hands in his pockets.
“I’m fine. I just experienced some difficulties, but nothing serious.” Just hibernation, Coffee Anonymous meetings and probably poking his nose where it didn’t belong. “You could say I’ve had a case.”
“Fill me in on the things that happened while I was gone.”
Thankful that Shinichi had returned to doing his job, C-ta picked up the pace too, going back to the standard filing and occasional passing of papers from desk to desk. Once upon a time, he thought Shinichi to be exaggerating in his love-hate relationship with paperwork, but there turned out to be a lot more than he’d ever imagined. Working under his branch wasn’t just your average Sherlock Holmes novel after all - they never showed you the documents behind the investigating.
But he almost froze in place when the detective piped up again, his voice gentle with caution. He could sense the ease within it, how the words flowered with a certain appreciation, and somehow, that had caught him off guard.
… Again with the heart throbbing. He’d… almost forgotten what it felt like to be openly appreciated. It only ever mattered when A-ya said it, because A-ya was the only one who had ever truly depended on him, however Shinichi was really pushing it today. Uttering something like that, even though he was only stating the obvious like everyone else…
C-ta didn’t like it.
“… Haha, really?” His breathing began once more and he inhaled softly, forcing his lips into a grin. “I hear that a lot, I guess it’s just how I am. In truth, it’s not like I have a solid talent myself, so helping others is what I do best.” Heaving a box slash container out from beneath one of the desks, he began shifting through to file all the finished stuff back in place. “I’ve always been good with people.”
Shinichi’s gaze temporarily was shifted towards C-ta as he listened to him, somehow having a strange feeling about it. Rather, perhaps it was a bad feeling? But he couldn’t pinpoint why, nor what exactly it was that he felt. All in all, it had seemed C-ta was acting a little weird. Not that strange, just a little different from usual.
“Is that so…?” Somehow, Shinichi found the other’s word hard to believe. “Even if you are popular and well liked by people, C-ta, I don’t think that it is because of reasons it should be like that. It’s more like…”
“You’re rather distant and that is perhaps why people think you’re dependable? They aren’t close to you, so they don’t ask for anything too heavy of you. Anything they do ask is granted easily and it’s not like you’re a bad guy. You give off the dependable mother vibe.”
He smiled, but he actually already had the idea he was treading into a mine field. C-ta was always difficult to figure out. Haibara interfering and crying only made things more difficult to interpret. She wasn’t the type to drama over nothing, after all.
“To be honest, I get the idea you lie more about your identity than I do.” He leaned over the cabinet he opened and ruthlessly continued. “And if you think of yourself as talentless or at least try to look like that in front of me, then perhaps lying is your talent.”
Ah yes, this detective’s mun was trying really hard to destroy C-ta’s.
