#in short: unchill dear

[moodyseal]

One thing we don’t get often is to hear Shinichi make any sort of statement about what he is feeling, and not just an objective observation of the situation he’s in.

After 98 volumes and 1001 episodes (yikes), all we got were some casual “oh no the BO can’t find out about me or I’ll die” or “I will metaphorically smack them all in the face as soon as I find enough proof about them :)” or general thoughts about how embarrassing it is to be babied when you’re actually a high school student, but did we get anything deeper - something that actually concerns Shinichi’s outlook on how agonizing his situation actually is? Absolutely not.

I mean, with so many episodes and a bad memory such as mine it is nearly impossible to remember every single scene in DC and thus I may be missing something, but I think that at most we only got a couple of brief scenes of Conan actually looking sad for himself. Most of the time he is worried about how Ran is dealing with his absence or about how he wishes he could stay with her, and the few (relevant) instances of him thinking something like “Damn I wish I could still be a high school student, this sucks, I will not cry because I am a Manly Man but just know that I am, on the inside” were not really canon (as in they were not in the manga) - for example, that time when he was watching Ran and Sonoko go to school while being sick in OVA 9 and he wondered whether he would stay a child forever. Or even the openings - like the 28th, when there’s a shot of him standing in the rain as the singer goes “Even so, tears keep tumbling down my eyes, I think this may be a little bad” while a tiny drop of rain that might have been placed there casually (and it probably was) slides down his cheek, so it actually looks like a tear.

(man, you have no idea how much I love that opening)

And yet it’s weird, because being Conan definitely isn’t a walk in the park, seeing how he must lie and pretend everyday to fool the people around him (something that technically goes against his principles, I suppose?), and with the weight of a devious organization possibly going after him (and, honestly, at this point it’s just a matter of time until they find him, since they probably saw those few shots of him on the Internet and in the news broadcast), the fact that no one takes him seriously except the few people that know his identity or suspect him and the pain of being so close to the people he knew as Shinichi (his friends, Ran) and yet being unable to talk to them like he would like to and like he used to, no one would blame him if he just broke down at some point. But he doesn’t, and just ignores the situation completely until he has any clue about the BO.

It might not be as bad as Haibara’s situation, but while she is used to the ways of the organization and doesn’t really have anyone she needs to lie to except to the bad guys, Conan isn’t - before the whole mess happened, he was just a kid being a detective and getting excited about any new case, unable to understand the actual dangers of such a profession. That new reality came crashing onto him without a warning, and before Haibara was shrinked too he had to deal with that new situation completely on his own, alone in the action.

With The Scarlet School Trip, though, we get a subtle reference to those emotions, and it’s... really relieving. I think often about that “This is too much fun”, and I can’t get off my head how, while the situation is supposed to be light and happy because ohmygodtheyresoclose, it has a really, really sad tone to it. While he was Conan, Shinichi could ignore the joys of being a teenager for a while, at least to a certain extent: other than hanging out with Ran and Sonoko and other kids of his age and solving cases (something that, in a way, he still does), there couldn’t be many relevant things that he would miss, or that he could realize he would miss. After this trip, though, he knows what he’s missing and what he could do if he wasn’t a child - that “This is too much fun” is actually a “I know that the time I have with Ran and the others is short and I will soon be excluded from these normal experiences once again, yet I wish it wasn’t because I am actually enjoying myself after literal months and I don’t want to lose it all over again”.

I know that this might be obvious but I just wanted to point it out because I’m slowly losing my mind over this.

I hope that we’ll get more of that in the future, even if it’s just at the end, when Conan manages to defeat the organization. Seeing his cool and collected façade fade is immensely exciting.

[likeshipsonthesea]

132 for christmas writing ask thing?

ahhh you sent this in a bit ago and now i can’t find the post you’re referring to but i’m pretty sure the prompt was “Yes, I’m drunk in a club on New Year’s, just come pick me up.” sooo i’m gonna pretend that’s the right one and give you a lil new year’s fic?? happy 2020 y’all

“Yes, I’m drunk in a club on New Year’s Eve, just come pick me up. Please.”

Of all the ways to spend the last day of the decade, Dex hadn’t exactly wanted this. When he thought how he actually wanted to spend it, though, he mostly just wanted to sleep, which wasn’t “fun” or “festive.” In Nursey’s words, it was “totally boring and completely unchill and now who am I going to drink in the Roaring Twenties Part 2 (this time with a different kind of racism!) with?”

It wasn’t Dex’s fault he was so tired, he thought grumpily to himself as he struggled to push through the stupidly large crowds in the city. He had a giant deadline at work that morning, and yeah it was kind of a dick move for them to set a deadline on New Year’s Eve, but Dex likes his job and it was his first time heading a project and he wanted to do well, so he maybe kind of went into his “zombie mode.”

“Zombie mode,” as Nursey kindly explained to the Baby Frogs their senior year, “is when our dear captain forgets he has a human body that needs food and sleep and socialization.” At this point, Dex grunted, but didn’t dislodge Nursey’s hand from the top of his head because he was trying to find an error in his code and he’d been doing so for half an hour. “When Dex is in zombie mode, it’s up to those who care about him to make sure he doesn’t die. I will demonstrate.” Nursey bent down to Dex’s level then. “Dexy?”

Dex grunted.

“Dexington, it’s time to eat.”

Dex grunted again.

Nursey then put a muffin on top of Dex’s keyboard, forcing him to eat or get crumbs everywhere. Dex doesn’t remember, now, as he squishes between a loud family looking for the ball drop (several blocks away), he doesn’t remember what the error ended up being in his code, but he remembers that blueberry muffin. Damn. It had been a good muffin.

Dex shakes off his glove and pulls out his phone so he can recheck the address for whatever stupid club Nursey is stuck in.

Usually, Dex’s deadlines aren’t a problem for Nursey. He’s even said a couple of times that he likes making sure Dex doesn’t die when he’s in zombie mode. “It’s like knowing another language,” he said, when Dex apologized after finals week their junior year. “I understand you, even when you’re all like– that.”

Why this week, of all weeks, is different, Dex has no clue. But he’s outside the right club, so he steels himself and goes inside.

Nursey said, in his slurred and hard-to-understand-over-the-thumping-bass phone call that he was by the coat check and he would stay there unless he had to pee. So, Nursey’s bladder willing, he will still be there and Dex won’t actually have to enter the club.

The exhausted looking coat check worker perks up as Dex approaches the booth. “Coat check is $30 for the night,” she says, fake cheerily.

Dex winces at the price. He would never get used to city prices. “I’m actually looking for a friend of mine? He called and–”

There is suddenly some rustling of coats behind the worker and a slurred, but loud, “Sexy Dexy!”

Dex winces again. “Sorry about him,” he says, as Nursey crawls out from behind the booth.

“Oh, he was no bother.” The coat check worker turns to straighten out the coats Nursey messed up. “And even as drunk as he is, he can still recite poetry like Shakespeare or something! It’s actually kind of impressive.”

Dex kneels to help Nursey up off the floor. “The charm wears off after a while.”

Nursey grins once he’s upright. “You’re here!” he says, too loud in Dex’s ear. Then he pouts. “But wait. I’m mad at you.”

Dex blinks. It surprises him enough that he doesn’t immediately get them out of this place. “Why are you mad at me?”

“You ruined the plan,” Nursey says, grumpy, and then drops his face into Dex’s shoulder, effectively ending the conversation.

Dex maneuvers well with a drunken Nursey attached to him after years of practice, so he pulls out his wallet and pays the worker the coat check fee and then tips her a twenty, because she’s working on New Year’s Eve in New York City and that must fucking suck.

“Happy New Year!” she calls after them as Dex begins dragging Nursey out the door. Nursey perks up enough to call it back before slumping once again.

Dex immediately decides against dragging Nursey six blocks through these crowds and hails a cab. He rattles off their address and then addresses the Nursey sized issue still clinging to him.

“Why are you mad at me?” he asks, prodding Nursey’s cheek until he sits up enough so Dex can see his face.

Nursey, previously smiling at some unknown thing going on in his drunk brain, pouts once again at the reminder of his anger. “You ruined it,” he says, grumbling.

“What did I ruin?” Dex glances up and asks the driver to take a left instead of going up another block, knowing that the traffic will be slightly better. When he looks back down Nursey’s staring up at him with his big green eyes and he looks– fuck, he looks actually sad.

“I was gonna do it,” he says, the tone of his voice akin to that of a thousand forlorn sighs. “I was finally gonna do it.”

“Do what?” Dex, usually, when faced with that expression on Nursey’s face, has a place to direct the anger it engenders. The magazine editor that said no to publishing Nursey’s piece, the shitty guy at a party who doesn’t respect boundaries, the producer of a movie that makes Nursey sniffle cry all through the ending. But now the person who made Nursey look like that is him and he doesn’t know why and instead of anger all he feels is an annoying, unrelenting desire to fix it.

Nursey, though, sniffles mildly and hides his face in Dex’s shoulder again. “Doesn’t matter now,” he says, slurring a little, and then his eyes close and Dex knows from experience that trying to make him talk now will get him absolutely nowhere.

The cab ride ends pretty soon after that and Dex pays the guy and then helps Nursey into the elevator and just as the door closes and Dex’s thumb is hovering over the button for their floor Nursey asks, “Why did you agree to work on New Year’s?”

Dex frowns, hesitates for a moment, and then presses the button. “I didn’t really have much of a choice.”

“Yeah you did.” Dex doesn’t turn around, but he can see in the reflection of the closed elevator doors as Nursey straightens up from his slouch. “I was talking to Andy and she said you had the option of making the deadline later in January. But you didn’t take it.”

Dex tightens his hands into fists and then releases. “If we’d made the deadline later it would’ve thrown off–”

“Dex.”

Dex stares at his own reflection to avoid meeting Nursey’s eye.

The truth was, he did have plans in his head around this New Year’s Eve. He’d been planning to watch shitty movies on their couch and to use the fact that he was tired from work as a means of winning any argument over who had to refill the popcorn bowl. He’d been planning on turning down the heat and piling every blanket they owned onto their little three seater and not saying anything when their legs tangled together. He’d been planning to fall asleep on the couch, probably before midnight, and wake up sometime at like two or three and see Nursey asleep across from him and do something cheesy, like whisper “Happy New Year,” to Nursey’s closed eyelids and think something stupid like, “I hope I can welcome in the next decade with him, too.”

The truth was, though, that he still didn’t know how to say to his mother that he wasn’t coming home for the holidays because his real home had stupid green eyes and recited poetry when he was falling down drunk and knew how to keep Dex alive when he went into zombie mode and his real home was a boy in New York and he lo–

“I could tell Ma that I wouldn’t be home for New Year’s because of a deadline at work,” Dex tells his metallic reflection. “I couldn’t tell her that I wouldn’t be home because I would rather be here instead.”

Nursey’s swallow is audible in the small space. “Here, like, New York?”

Dex huffed, a short breath of a laugh. “Here like with you.”

The elevator doors open then so Dex can’t see before he’s being turned around the way Nursey stumbles forward to grab him, and then he doesn’t see anything but the inside of his eyelids as Nursey clumsily, drunkenly kisses him.

He tastes like those stupidly sweet fruity drinks Nursey likes to order and if they don’t stop kissing within a minute the doors will close again or, worse, their nosy next door neighbor who looks through her peephole when they come home will leave her apartment to see what’s holding them up and they’ll never be able to live it down but

But Dex is 24 years old and he’s kissing the boy he’s loved for the past four of them and he’s home and, really, there’s nothing that could make it better.

Nursey pulls back as the elevator doors begin to close. When he smiles, Dex can feel it. “That’s what I was going to do,” he says, breath hot against Dex’s skin. “At midnight, I was gonna do that.”

“Midnight is too far away,” Dex says, and kisses the laugh from Nursey’s lips.