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Love is not as easy for Kaito as he once dreamed it would be.
There was a time, when he was young and alive and real, that Kaito dreamed of a princess waiting to be saved. It was simple; he helped her out of her tower and he was rewarded with a kiss and her hand in marriage. The ending is happy and the audience claps as the curtains close and there is no need for an encore.
In that ending, Kaito is the hero. In that ending, Kaito does not die so very far away from anyone he could even hope to love.
But he supposes that’s what he gets for handing his ending away to a team of writers that wasn’t at all interested in his opinion. If Kaito ever meets the guy he was before all this shit, the guy that decided it’d be worth it to toss his life into the gutter for a handful of coins, he’ll punch him square in the face.
Yeah, because that’s always helped him before.
It turns out, as Kaito goes back over all the in game footage he can get his hands on and pours over reviews of their season online and tries to subtly ask every single nurse that was even half a fan of the show what they thought, that Kaito was never even the hero at all. Sure, he called himself that at least once in every scene they decided to fucking show, but Kaito was never meant to be the hero of the play at all. Akamatsu was; and when she fucked that up, well, the baton was gracelessly passed to Shuichi.
Shuichi, with his nervous smile and his steady hands and that little crease in his brow that appears whenever he’s thinking. Shuichi, who entertained every stupid idea Kaito ever had and forgave him even when he was being an idiot- and as it turns out, the audience seems to think that Kaito was an idiot more often than not. Shuichi, who was right and who was smart enough to figure things out without dying for it, Shuichi, Shuichi, Shuichi-
Kaito isn’t jealous.
He almost wishes he was; wishes he could look at his almost-sidekick and feel his teeth grit with jealousy and his stomach turn ugly flips. It would be so easy to look at him and begrudge him for winning and making it out alive with a fuckton of cash secured. And, fuck, even if the winner’s prize didn’t exist and they both came out with even paychecks, it would still be so easy to take one look at the forums praising Shuichi for saving the day and admonishing Kaito for holding him back to shift any of his feelings towards the false detective to resentment.
But Kaito looks at him, and sees the ease in his shoulders, the relief that everyone is alive, sees that crease in his brow and the self-assured movements of his hands as he turns down any praise from the staff and focuses on spending as much time with everyone recovering as possible.
Fuck, Kaito looks at him and the wrinkles from stress on his forehead and that delicate posture of his, like he doesn’t want anyone to look at him so he’s gotten real practiced at being still, but now he’s still like a deer with its gaze trained on you, and god, how could anyone look away anyways, with his too-pretty face and that self-satisfied smile you can catch on his mouth that only shows up when he figures something tough out and his hair sweeping low across his face even when he tries to hold it back in a ponytail and, fuck, fuck, fuck-
Love is not as easy for Kaito as he once thought it would be.
Those turns in his stomach when he looks at his friend, at the person he practically died for, died trusting in, aren’t ugly or envious or spiteful. They’re warm. They’re a swarm of butterflies threatening to flood up Kaito’s throat and spill out of his mouth, releasing everything he can’t say along with them. Kaito looks at Shuichi and wonders, wonders at his luck that they managed to end up in the same season together, that they’re together now, that Shuichi’s even considering getting an apartment with him after they get the fuck out of here.
But what can Kaito do?
The butterflies aren’t real, they’re just some shitty metaphor; the only thing coming out of Kaito’s mouth nowadays are frustrated, stuttered words and blood. He’s still sick; the game didn’t give him that, and neither did any of his shitty writers. That was all him, his own personal little sickness. He’s got blood on his teeth and the back of his tongue and dried all over his knuckles, the impact of Shuichi’s skin and Ouma’s skin still echoing all the way up his arms; not to mention the healed fractures in his bones from fights past fought that he doesn’t even remember now.
Kaito looks at Shuichi and it’s all he can do to stop himself from choking on his own blood. He thinks- he thinks it would be so much easier to tell the other boy he loved him if he wouldn’t mean it quite this much. He thinks it would be easier if the other boy were just a little less pretty; if he himself were just a bit less ugly.
Love is not easy, no, and Shuichi is a victor while Kaito is still rotting amongst the wreckage he left behind, sick and coughing up bloodied butterflies in a hospital bed that’s become more familiar to him than his family home.
Shuichi smiles at him and asks Kaito if he’d like to move in together; Kaito smiles back and says he’ll think about it. What else is he supposed to say?
The truth?