Detective Conan - Magic Kaito oneshots

Assistants of order and chaos

'An inventor and a magician's assistant walk into a bar, innocent and harmless', Konosuke Jii thought in amusement as he turned the keys in the front door lock of the Blue Parrot, his friend Hiroshi Agasa right behind him. The door swung open and the two older gentlemen stepped into the familiar bar that lay beyond it.

"Take a seat. What would you like to drink?", Jii inquired of his companion as he took his usual spot behind the counter. The two enablers of chaotic teenage hijinx settled in comfortably.

"Ah, I'll trust your vast knowledge when it comes to the finer art of drinking. Non-alcoholic though, please. I'll still have to drive home later." "Nonsense. I'll call you a cab and drive the beetle over to your house tomorrow or the day after, if you leave the keys with me." "Well, now if you put it that way...", the professor mumbled abashedly. Pleased with that answer, Jii started pulling out glasses, bottles and other required utensils for the creation he had in mind.

"Don't think I haven't seen right through you though.", the other man chuckled slyly, bespectacled eyes twinkling mischievously behind the round frames. "If you really need to borrow my car again you could just ask." Jii barked a laugh. "Caught red handed, my old friend. You know that is still not my style."

"Once a dubious figure, always a dubious figure.", Agasa smirked fondly, patiently folding his hands on top of the counter. "Yet it's never bothered you.", his companion hummed, equally amused. His own hands had never once stopped moving during the conversation, tipping bottles, mixing fluids, twirling tumblers.

"No, it hasn't." The near-silence that settled around them was peaceful, the soft whirring of the slightly outdated lighting in the bar calming, the clinking of the tumblers in Jii's hands harmonic. As long as the two men had known each other, they'd never passed judgment on the other for toeing the lines of what law and society deemed to be acceptable.

Jii was thankful for it, not a great many people outside of his milieu would accept him and his long life's checkered history as readily as Hiroshi always had. Glad as well, that he'd never had to give voice to the words. People like Jii lived off secrets, spelling out intimate relationship details went against his principles, even if they were open secrets by all means to the ones personally involved.

Both men had always been open with each other in a way they'd not found they could be with anyone else, their friendship had never needed a defined character or explicitly stated boundaries, somehow that innate understanding they'd found in each other had immediately made any further explanation obsolete.

"Though might I suggest again that you get your own car? This is the third time this year that you've borrowed my beetle, either with or sans permission.", the professor restarted the conversation, nothing but exasperated goodwill to his words. "Ah, but what would be the purpose of that? I so rarely need a car."

Understanding, like Agasa knew not to press in that moment, even though he was very well aware that Jii often needed a car, or rather multiple different cars, and that there was more to it, that he'd never reveal. Like they both new they were about to change the topic before Jii initiated it.

"How is your daughter doing?" "She's not my daughter, how many more times are you going to call her that. But she's doing good." Like Jii knew not to press the issue of the girl living with his friend, who he knew he'd never get to see or know any details about, because there was more to her as well.

How he knew Hiroshi protested him calling her his daughter with mixed feelings, knew the man had always been a bit wistful about not having any children himself, and how his new roommate was giving him the closest thing he'd ever get to that kind of relationship. How Hiroshi was thriving in his new role of being a caregiver.