AU of yonaga_san's "Your hand on my throat"
Anyway, I've been losing my mind over yonaga_san's amazing Akai Shuuichi x Furuya Rei fic "Your hand on my throat" and I was going to scream about it on @floofiestboy's DMs, but tumblr has decided to be A Functioning Website so I am left with no way to interact with their tumblr but posting things on my own blog and hoping they see their @s like an animal.
(Yes, I watch Detective Conan. No, I am not ashamed of this. Anyone who still follows me should know I am a fan of wasted-potential trash like that the most. The fic is genuinely amazing and I highly recommend it)
So. The AU. It's a time travel, "we don't really know how the WPS characters got here but professor Agasa thinks the place they appeared is in front of whoever has the strongest emotional connection to them" sort of deal.
This fails to thrill Masumi, the person they appeared in front of.
(It later turns out that Masumi is the second-strongest emotional connection, she just happened to be in the same general direction as Shuuichi, but he was too far from Tokyo and therefore the handwavy source of the time travel. It also turns out only Rei's emotional connections count towards this because he's the only one still alive at this moment in time <- this second part is discovered pretty quickly)
The WPS quintet is at first most concerned with their impending deaths (except for apparentely Zero, which none of them would have bet on. No shade on their bestie's skills! But he's pretty reckless. Matsuda in particular is bitter that apparentely his recklessness will bite him in the ass and mister "picks fights like other people pick flowers" is fine) and Masumi helps them figure out how to avoid them with minimal grumbling. Considering Shinichi was involved in three out of four cases they manage to get strategies in place to avoid Matsuda, Hagiwara and Date's deaths pretty quickly, after which she comments that she knows how Hiro died AND how to avoid it. This plus her being provably Rei's strongest emotional connection leads to a fair amount of teasing about craddle robbing.
Masumi laughs at this. It's not amused.
She lambasts Rei for being a cold-blooded murderer that killed her brother and tells them all that he's a pathetic, lonely and cold asshole whose strongest emotional connection is with someone who wants him to rot in prison for the rest of his life.
The lads, of course, protest that Rei would never. Masumi points at Hiro. With two fingers extended, like she's shaping a gun.
"My brother was a FBI agent. He went undercover in the same criminal organization as Morofushi and Furuya. When Morofushi's cover was blown, he didn't know who my brother was or that he was trying to help him. My brother had to choose between his cover and Morofushi's life. It was a tragedy."
Masumi then turns to look at Rei, still smilingly furious and with her finger gun pointed at Hiro.
"You knew exactly who my brother was. You were still undercover, and my brother was not. He managed to escape his cover being blown and stay hidden. He cooperated with you. He trusted you. And you lured him out of hiding and put a bullet in his head."
In the ringing silence that follows, Matsuda tries to ask Zero to tell them that he wouldn't do that. Zero fails to reassure anybody, particularly himself.
It endears him not at all to Masumi.
At this point Shinichi, who had been studiously scrutinizing the diagrams of the bombs that would have killed Hagiwara and Matsuda in order to avoid all possible eye contact, suggests going to see Adult Rei, just in case he knows something else about the WPS guys' deaths. Or something. Away. From Masumi.
(When Hagiwara haltingly suggests he might have an explanation about Masumi's brother she insists on tagging along, so that's an excruciatingly awkward walk for everyone)
They find Rei on The River, but not obviously having a mental breakdown, which tricks everyone into thinking he's fine.
(Shinichi might have noticed something, but he physically couldn't stand the pressure anymore and fled in the middle of their walk because he "remembered" that Takagi-keiji totally told him he could copy the files of old cases he worked on and that would be so helpful to have for Matsuda, Hagiwara and Date, right? So glad we all agree! <- he ran away too fast for anybody to object)
Masumi greets Rei in a very inflammatory way, blaming him for her brother's death. Rei takes this very calmly and denies none of it, which makes the lads loudly protest. Rei simply asks Masumi what she wants. She scoff-laughs that she wants nothing from him.
At which point Rei excuses himself because he needs to go to the hospital. The fact that he has only acknowledged Masumi until this point hits them all like a ton of bricks and she has to be like "You are not hallucinating"
"You got five people to dress up like me and my old police academy yearmates? I supposse it's an admirable effort, but it seems unnecessarily complicated, don't you think?"
Masumi is very wrong-footed about Rei being so calm about what he thinks is either proof of mental disturbance in his part or an elaborate murder attempt in hers. Certain Suspicious about Adult Rei's mental state are raised among the WPS quintet.
Meanwhile, as soon as Shinichi escaped The Most Stressful Class Reunion he picked up his phone and started live-blogging the whole thing to Shuukichi. His logic is that he's only 75% sure Shuukichi is as chill about his brother's murder as he appears, but if nothing else he might manage to calm Masumi down.
So Shuukichi arrives at The River to find his sister upset and confused, his brother-in-law(?) quietly but obviously breaking down and five very unnerved recent police academy graduates who frankly deserve none of this. He goes through the stages of grief in one fell swoop, because:
Nobody told Masumi about The Family Curse.
The guy Shuuichi was amazingly obviously crushing on apparentely loved him back (Good job, nii-san /genuine)
The guy Shuuichi was amazingly obviously crushing on doesn't know about The Family Curse either (Good job, nii-san /sarcastic)
Masumi and brother-in-law(?) are seven seconds to breakdown.
Shuukichi has no way to contact his definitely-alive brother because the asshole has either not bothered to buy another phone or not bothered to call/message anybody in the family.
(Also, the fabric of space-time might be in jeopardy, but that's a minor concern at this point)
"Ah. I see nobody told you about Nii-san's condition"
"Condition?" Masumi asks, too rattled by so many shocks that she can't even be surprised by Shuukichi's random appearence. Or maybe she has already deduced what Shinichi did. Shuukichi has faith in her abilities, but he wouldn't judge her if it's the former.
"We left Britain a few months before you were born" Shuukichi starts, trying to frantically calculate how much to tell and how so that he doesn't make things worse, give too much information to the five wild cards that are going back to the past at some point in the next week at best estimate or accidentally cross the line from misleading to straight-up lying to Masumi -her punches hurt. It's a good thing his outward presentation is always a little bit frazzled, and it's on purpose for occasions such as this. "A week before we got on the plane for Japan we went to visit grandpa. It was Nii-san and I's first time seeing him, and I honestly don't think Mom wanted us to go, but we couldn't bring him with us so we went" <- This visit to grandpa is my one true deviation from floof's AU, mostly there in the name of traumatizing Shuukichi (sorry, Shuukichi)
"Grandfather had spent decades in bed and at first I wasn't sure he was even aware that we were there. However, just when Mom finished giving him our goodbyes he managed to get enough energy together to speak. He begged us to kill him."
Shuukichi smiles at the striken expressions that greet this pronouncement. So far, so good.
"Nii-san didn't say anything, but he started smoking almost immediately afterwards. I really thought you knew this Masumi, I'm sorry. Euthanasia is as illegal in Japan as it is in Britain and the US" A statement that has almost no bearing on what they are actually talking about, but only Masumi should know that. Shuukichi is going to have to apologize and give her the actual explanation later. As well as find a way to contact Shuuichi and make him give his beau The Explanation, because otherwise he really might kill himself, and if that happens Shuuichi will absolutely do his best to pull a Romeo and Juliet. It would be unnecessarily upsetting for everyone.
"Are you saying- But Shuu-nii wouldn't..."
Shuukichi smiles. "You were right earlier. Nii-san would have had no reason to leave the house without his disguise, much less towards a place full of criminals. The circumstances were obviously planned." he turns towards Rei, who has been coiling tighter and tighter in an honestly worrying way. "Only, it wasn't your plan, was it?"
"What does that matter?!" Rei finally explodes. "I put the idea in his head! I should have known what he was planning! It was obvious! I still shot!"
The WPS quintet is horrified. Shuukichi feels the weirdly parental urge to pat their heads.
"Nii-san knew his whole life that he probably had a future of suffering waiting for him. Dying this way, quick and easy, contributing to ending the Organization he had dedicated his life to fighting... It was probably the ending he felt most satisfied with" Shuukichi speaks with audible bitterness, though only he himself is aware that what he's actually bitter about is that it didn't work and Shuukichi will eventually have to choose between letting his brother suffer or trying to find a way to kill him.
"He was perfectly healthy!" Rei wails, because of course he'd be inconveniently perceptive on top of everything else. Nii-san sure knows how to pick them. "He could have had years of living a good life if it wasn't for me"
(His young version is seriously considering trying to convince Hiro to quit the force and become farmers. And perhaps a vow of celibacy, considering the Vibes he's getting from his older self)
Anyway, they manage to get Rei to air out all that poison that's been festering inside of him ("He killed you, Hiro. He killed you, and I could never forgive him. Or myself") and get him kinda-stable. The next few days are spent with everybody trying to Process (TM), while Shuukichi apparentely goes back to his matches like normal (he's frantically trying to send out coded messages using his most important matches so Shuuichi will Get His Ass Here). Rei actually asks Masumi a couple of times if she wants him dead and her responses range from "Unlike you, I am not a murderer" (very angry) to "What would the point of that be? Haven't there already been too many deaths?" (very sad) to "Nii-san wanted you to live. So it's your responsibility to live" (most of the way to acceptance)
And then Shuuichi finally appears. He got Shuukichi's message. Masumi, who had asked for space as she processed things and has actually spent most of this time with Adult Rei and the WPS lads because she's actually been very worried about them all, has not.
(She isn't thrilled to find out about The Family Curse this way, but Shuukichi manages to avoid a punch)
Rei straight-up faints. It's a combination of lack of sleep, stress, dehydration and the mother of all shocks, but it's thankfully not heart failure. The hospital said so.
Young Rei is aghast at this tragic romance drama his life was apparentely destined to become. His friends desperately want to make fun of him for it, but they are mostly just thankful at least one hideously tragic and avoidable death was... avoided. All of them, by unspoken agreement, refuse to think too hard on how.
The rest of the week until they go back to their own time is spent being quietly aghast at how besotted Zero's koibito (write it like enemy, pronounce it like lover) is. Hiro literally begs them on his hands and knees to just forget about him and be happy, for the love of everything that's holy, you can finally be together, just be happy and forgive yourselves, he's begging here.