#and pls forgive my typos and grammar errors asdahdf

[gisachi]

Prompt 17 sounds good for ShinRan 🤭

Thank you for waiting! Another serving of soft ShinRan coming right up! Hope this is good enough for you, Anon. Much love. 💙

17. Tucking their hands beneath the other person’s shirt, just to watch them break the kiss and gasp in surprise at the sensation of cold/warm hands on their skin. (1,287 words)

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Contrary to what others might think, working with the FBI to defeat an underground organization while still in his prime did not make Shinichi feel invincible. What it succeeded in doing though, was screw him up and distort his idea of normal.

It’s a decision he purposely chose, remembering the day he went after a suspicious man in black after his date in Tropical Land. Nothing, however, could’ve ever prepared him for the damnifying consequences that followed. Before he knew it, he was thrown into an arena meant for adults, while still being a teenager. Suddenly, there were so many people to distrust, so many secrets to keep, so many days waking up full of dread, uncertain who among his loved ones had been taken while he’s asleep—like he was living straight out of a film.

As young as he was then, he coped by expecting the worst in every scenario. Not at all the healthiest mechanism, but the most realistic. It’s not like he was given much of a choice anyway. ‘We’re alive because we have plans ready when things turn extreme south,’ Akai-san used to say. And he’s right. Plotting plans after plans for every situation ranging from bad to worst, saving his or another ally’s death as the last probable option. That’s the best—at the same time worst—he could do, in a reality he had to accept.

He survives, but that doesn’t mean the nightmares end there. He brings them with him, in his mind, crippling his ability to think like a normal person, because he’s so used to being not.

That’s why when things fall into the right place, instead of actually feeling fortunate, he’s just...appalled. Like this right here isn’t supposed to happen, because his mind says so. This isn’t normal. His normal.

It’s sad, how he’s gotten so used to rejecting the idea of a good outcome that when it actually happens, he refuses to take it. He has prepared himself so much for the bad days to the point that he forgets how to act when a day in his life actually isn’t.

Like right now.

He wakes up to gloomy skies outside.

Surprised why he isn’t freezing when he’s barenaked, he notices that the heater’s been turned on. He looks at the space beside him. No one’s there.

The silence and empty sheets only serve to trigger dreams he used to have, those which never ended well. Has she left? Where has she gone? Did she leave on her own? Who took her? Is she alive?

Putting on his boxers and house pants he finds scattered near his feet, he anxiously goes out the bedroom, only for the sound of clanging utensils and the aroma of pancakes filling his senses.

Anyone who isn’t Shinichi would’ve calmed down at this point. But he is Shinichi, and if there’s another takeaway he picked up from his ridiculous past, it’s that the most seemingly normal situations are the situations he needs to put his guard up the highest. So he inhales deeply and walks, footfalls as quiet as his breathing.

Yet for some inexplicable reason, the closer he gets to the source, the more his muscles relax. This is...new. Akai-san and Jodie-sensei didn’t teach him any alternative to thinking of the worst in every situation. It’s always ‘put your guard up’. They didn’t talk about gut feelings; their plans were always backed by logic.

Perhaps that feeling cannot be taught. Because right now, there’s no plan. Walking on tiptoes is hardly a plan. He’s bare and defenseless, nothing but him and his gut feel, telling him not to worry.

And he trusts it.

Standing there behind the kitchen island is her, back facing him, faintly humming a tune he doesn’t understand but still a melody to his ears. She looks so beautiful wearing his shirt, a little too oversized for her, hair tied up in a messy bun. She doesn’t seem to notice his presence as she continues whisking the batter before pouring some into the pan. Two plates with one pancake each rest on the kitchen island beside a bottle of honey syrup and some bowl of fruits, and apart from the pancakes is the aroma of brewing coffee.

Shinichi blinks, unable to take his eyes off of what he’s seeing because he’s almost unsure if this is real. Even his dreams don’t show anything of this sort. When has this all started again? How long has he been living like this?

Everything’s so... domestic. So peaceful. So right.

Makes him feel like he’s never gone through anything ugly in his life.

Acting on pure impulse, he approaches her, snakes his arms around her waist, placing his chin on her shoulder. She, on the other hand, welcomes the sudden intrusion, head tilting sideways to rest against his.

“Hey.”

“Shinichi? You’re already awake.”

“I love you.”

For sure she isn’t expecting anything like that from him this early. If any, she might’ve thought something was up. She turns her head enough to see his face, eyes filled with gentle wonder.

“You’re so odd.” Ran touches his cheek, staining him with pancake batter from her fingers as she brushes his skin with her thumb.

“I love you,” he repeats, like his vocal cords are designed to say just this. Because he really does. He never wants her away.

Planting a chaste kiss on his lips, she says, softly, “I love you, too.”

His past self and past experience would’ve never allowed him to dream of a day like this to come.

Yet here he is.

And here they are.

Delicately, he spins her around to give her a more proper kiss, unmindful of the spatula she still holds and the half-cooked pancake behind them. Ran is okay, she always is, and she’s in his house, cooking for them. She isn’t a dream. She’s right here, in his arms, kissing him. Nothing was wrong.

And he’s always forgetting how this isn’t new. He’s been with Ran for months, for years, and since the fall of the organization his family, his loved ones, his Ran, they’re all safe. Nothing is wrong.

The past is done and over with. It’s time he breathes again, like the normal guy that he is in a normal world he deserves to live in, sharing a normal life with his future wife. Nothing will ever be wrong.

Because that’s truly how it should be.

With his emotions heightening, Shinichi’s arms around her tighten, eliminating the littlest space there is between them. Their kiss deepening by fractions, he finds himself tucking his hands under her shirt - his shirt - only for her to jolt, separating their lips with a soft sound.

“Your hands are so cold,” she gasps.

‘Yeah, because apart from waking up cold, I woke up with you gone.’

‘I got paranoid. It happens sometimes.’

‘It’s probably the trauma.’

“And you’re so warm. I could hug you all day,” is what he says instead.

Ran plays with his hair, stares at his azures with so much love and affection, warmth of her flesh thawing his frigid body.

“It’s snowing outside, Shinichi. That’s why you’re so cold.”

Whether or not she knows what’s going through his mind, the way she says this so calmly, so reassuringly, is enough to make every tense fiber in his being relax, enough to make him forget why he’s thinking like this in the first place. His expression softens, curve pulling up his lips.

“Yes, that’s why.”

With a final sigh into her lips, he asks, “Back to bed after breakfast?”

She smiles, kisses him fondly. “Sure.”

Shinichi would’ve never dreamt of a day like this to come, but here he is. And here they are.

Happy, contented.

Normal.

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