My Favorite Things (Detective Conan, Heiji/Kazuha, #10)

Title: My Favorite Things
Author: fireblazie
Pairing: Heiji/Kazuha
Fandom: Detective Conan
Theme: #10: #10
Disclaimer: I don't own Detective Conan. Am just borrowing the characters for a bit!

"Heiji? Heiji!"

Heiji jerked out of his thoughts - a particular murder that he'd just solved - and glanced down at the ponytailed girl beside him. "What is it?" he asked, boredly.

"You were gazing out into space, as always." Kazuha huffed and crossed her arms over her chest impatiently. "Thinking about another murder case?"

Heiji flushed at being so predictable. "What's it to you?" he spat out.

Kazuha rolled her eyes. "Because I've been talking to you over the past five minutes about our science homework. Aho."

"You're the aho," Heiji shot back, absentmindedly. Trading insults with her was just second nature by now.

"Oh, yeah!" Heiji narrowed his eyes as Kazuha suddenly paused in the middle of the sidewalk and began rummaging in her bag. His keen eyes took in the slight pink flush over her cheeks. He suddenly had a bad feeling about this... "All the girls in the school are doing this.."

"Since when you have you been 'one of the girls'?" Heiji raised an eyebrow at her. It was true. Kazuha never really hung around with the other girls in the school, mostly choosing to stalk him.

She ignored him and took out a magazine. "See this?" She opened up to a dog-eared page and shoved the magazine right in his face.

He shot her an exasperated look before taking the magazine and reading over the page. "The Top Ten Things You Like About Each Other." He shot her another Look. "This is for couples, aho."

"I know that!" Her cheeks went redder. "I just figured - we're friends, aren't we? And we have been, ever since we were little, right? I was curious!"

"This is stupid," he said, flinging the magazine back at her.

"Aho!" she yelled, flicking his forehead. It seemed like she'd gotten an idea, though, because she fumbled around her bag for a pen and then wrote something on the page, and then threw it at him. It hit him squarely in the face, and he gave her a sour glare for it.

He glanced down at it. She had modified the title to, "The Top Ten Things You DON'T Like About Each Other."

She threw him a challenging glare. "What about now?"

He smirked. "Oh, now I'm game." He took the pen from her, sat down, right smack-dab in the middle of the sidewalk, and began to fill in the lines.

Kazuha leaned back against the wall, waiting. She figured that this probably wouldn't take very long.

She was right. Barely five minutes later, he exclaimed, triumphantly, "Done!" He turned the page, where another set of lines filled the page. He handed it to her. "Your turn."

She took the pen back from him. "You're having more fun than I would've thought," she remarked, and he muttered some sort of insult under his breath. She tapped the pen against her chin as she thought. There's one, she thought, filling in the first line. Some minutes later, she had finished her list.

"Let me see," Heiji demanded, holding his hand out for the magazine.

"Of course, your Highness," she replied, sarcastically, and handed over the magazine.

Her list was as follows:

10: His voice is so annoying. He's always yelling at me and going, "AHO!"

Heiji glared at her. She stuck her tongue out at him.

9: He's always wearing his cap. What's up with him? Is it like his security blanket or something? When he was little, he had this fuzzy yellow security blanket with little stars on it that he always took with him wherever he went -

Heiji flushed. "AHO!"

Kazuha smirked.

8: He is such a mystery geek. Every second of the day, if he's not talking about some random Ellery Queen novel, he's scouring the newspapers for any news of a murder, or talking about some case that he just solved.

Heiji was beginning to wish that he hadn't agreed to this in the first place.

7: He's a magnet for accidents! I swear, it's the only thing he's better at than solving mysteries! He's gotten shot, he's fallen off a boat, he's fallen off his motorcycle, he's almost fallen off a cliff -

Heiji slowly turned to face her. "I'm a magnet for accidents?"

Kazuha shrugged. "It's true."

6: He's so stubborn! I'm always warning him to be more careful, and just goes, "Hn." If he listened to me more, I'm sure that he wouldn't get hurt so much!

Heiji snorted. "I doubt it."

5: He's completely in love with his motorcycle. He's always cleaning it! Making it all shiny! He pays more attention to to it than he does to me!

Heiji muttered something under his breath. "Who would want to pay attention to you?"

Kazuha glared. "What was that?"

4: He eats. A lot. He could clean out an entire buffet! Which he has, by the way.

Heiji turned crimson. "Have not!"

"Have too."

"...shut up."

3: He's so quick to lose his temper! It's like, one minute, he's completely fine and normal. Well, as normal as he can get, anyway. And then the next, he's just blowing up at me! He's got that Evil-Demon-Head-of-Doom thing, too. Which is just really creepy. Talk about mood swings..

Heiji glowered at her. "I don't lose my temper that quickly!"

Kazuha shot him a Look. "Uh, yes you do."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do."

The Evil-Demon-Head-of-Doom surfaced. "AHO! NO, I DON'T!"

Kazuha smirked.

Heiji flushed. "Shut up."

2: He's got such an inferiority complex! GAH! Can't he just admit that Kudo-kun is better than him and get on with his life?

Heiji narrowed his eyes and faced her with his trademark Pissed-Off-Heiji-Look. "Kudo is not better than me!" He trailed off, muttering. "At least I didn't get shrunken into a little kid.."

Kazuha tilted her head. "What was that?"

Heiji realized his mistake. "...nothing. And Kudo's an idiot."

(In Tokyo, a glasses and bowtie-wearing boy sneezed.)

1: He's just plain stupid. And clueless. It couldn't be any more obvious, but he's as thick as a rock.

Heiji glared. "Am not!"

Kazuha stared at him, with an angry and - if he looked hard enough, pained expression in her eyes. "You are," she said, "you are."

He frowned, and drew nearer. "What? Why?"

She closed her eyes briefly. "It's nothing."

He didn't believe her. "Kazu -"

"Come on, it's my turn!" She interrupted him, snatching the magazine from his hands. "Let me read what you wrote.."

He stared at her for awhile, and then let out a sigh. "Fine."

"Heiji, you aho!" She furrowed her brow. "You were supposed to go from ten to one, not from one to ten!"

"...you didn't say anything about that."

Kazuha exhaled and threw her hands up in the air. "Gah. Whatever. Let me just read it.."

1: She follows me around everywhere! It's like having my own personal stalker!

Kazuha's face had turned an interesting shade of red. "A - Aho!" she stammered. "You think I follow you around because I want to? It's because you're always getting hurt, and if I don't keep an eye on you, you'll die one of these days!"

Heiji waved her off. "Yeah, yeah."

2: She has this whiny, annoying voice. It's annoying enough when she's just talking to me, but when she starts blowing up at me, which she does just about every ten seconds, it really gets on my nerves. And then when she nags at me, too! I'm lucky I haven't blown an eardrum yet!

Kazuha glowered at him. "What's that about my voice?"

Heiji grinned smugly. "Keep reading. There's more."

3: She goes shopping. Constantly. She doesn't even have that much money! And the worst part of it all, is that she always has to drag me along! Then she makes me carry all of the stuff that she buys!

"I don't go shopping that much!" Kazuha protested. "And it's not like you've got anything better to do, anyway, you mystery freak! And need I mention, that half of the murder cases you've solved have been on those little shopping trips? There would be no Detective of the West if it wasn't for me!"

"..." he didn't say anything because he knew she was right.

A triumphant expression crossed the ponytailed girl's face.

4: She pisses me off. Constantly.

"I could same the same for you!" Kazuha exploded, glaring daggers at the dark-skinned boy. "You think I piss you off? You've pissed me off more times than I can count! AHO!"

"Aho!" he yelled right back. "You're the one that's always on my case! Following me everywhere I go, nagging at me!"

The look Kazuha sent his way was chilling enough to make him shiver.

5: She worries about me way too much. It's not like I'm going off to get myself killed or anything. I'm just going to solve some cases. It's like being a police officer, and I don't see her stalking her dad.

"Why, you!" Heiji instinctively took a step back. "You should be grateful that I even bother worrying about an idiot like you! You're not even worth my time! I don't know why I bother!"

"It's not that I don't like you worrying about me!" He narrowed his eyes. "But you worry way too much! Always friggin stalking me!"

"I don't stalk you!"

"Oh yeah? What do you call forcing yourself on my bike? What do you call handcuffing me to my door so that I won't leave without you? I'm really interested to know."

"...shut up."

6: She always gets jealous when I meet a girl. Like when she met Neechan for the first time. She mistook her for Kudo! Nearly bit her ear off! What is it with her and other girls, anyway? Does she like me or something?

Kazuha's face was flaming red. "Of course not! Who would like someone like you, anyway?"

Heiji shrugged. "It's true. Good thing I came when I did. Neechan looked terrified of you."

Kazuha simply glared.

7: She always, always, ALWAYS butts in when she shouldn't. Case in point: That time when we almost fell off the cliff. I'm sure that I would have been fine, but she had to go and get involved, and almost died herself! Her dad would've killed me..

"You ungrateful -" Kazuha fumed, running out of insults to fling at him. "I saved your life that day! I don't even remember getting a 'thank you' from you for it, either!"

"Like I said," Heiji retorted, "I would have been perfectly fine by myself."

"Yes," Kazuha retorted, sharply, "if by 'perfectly fine' you mean dead."

"..." He still glared.

8: She cries over everything. And I do mean, everything. Whenever I threaten to leave her behind, after screaming her head off at me, she'll turn on the waterworks. And - gah, she just cries all the time! And I hate it, because then she makes me feel like it's my fault! Which it's not. Of course not.

Heiji warily backed away. Kazuha did take aikido, after all, and that itself was something to watch out for.

"So," she said, suspiciously, "you don't like it when I cry?"

"Of course not!" The words fell out of him.

And then she looked all happy all of a sudden as she turned back to the list. He furrowed his brow and hesitantly stepped closer. Girls. Detective or not, he didn't think he'd ever be able to figure them out.

9: She probably doesn't realize this, but she's always got guys looking at her. Which drives me absolutely crazy. They're always there, hanging around, looking, staring, and whispering. Once, this guy looked like he was about to walk over to her, to talk to her, I guess. ....I think he's probably out of the hospital by now.

Kazuha simply gaped at him.

"..what?" Why was she looking at him like that?

"I don't know what surprises me more," she said, still looking startled. "The fact that I've actually got guys looking at me, or that you sent one of them to the hospital."

"Well," he said, huffing and turning away. "It's not like you're bad-looking or anything."

Her jaw just about hit the ground. She placed a hand on his forehead. "Are you sick?"

"No!" The sensation of her hand on his skin sent his heart careening against his rib-cage, and he didn't understand why. Feh. Stupid heart.

Kazuha took her hand away from his head, and he frowned as she did so - only just stopping himself in time.

"All right," she said, going back to the magazine. "The last one.."

10: And for some reason, despite all of this, I still like having her around. Which doesn't make any sense, because all she really does is drive me crazy. But I still couldn't imagine not having her around. That's another reason I don't like her - because she makes me feel this way. Then again, maybe I'm just a masochist..

Heiji hung back awkwardly, watching her eyes widen as she read and reread the last statement.

The wind blew, kissing her soft, dark hair. He found himself watching her, even though he knew that he shouldn't. Her lips broke out into a smile, and her eyes lit up in ecstacy.

"I don't know about you," she said, grinning widely at him, "but I like number ten the best."

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and couldn't help but grin back. "Me, too."

- fin -