Chapter Text
Meitantei is safe.
Those are the very first wisps of thought unspooling from Kaito’s frayed mind upon waking into a non-descript hospital room. Kudo Shinichi is finally safe and Kaito can now rest easy...
...as if.
He steals a moment for himself; an inordinary, rare thing. He indulges in the sharp ache his body is wearing like some sort of badge of honor, only somewhat lubricated by whatever drugs they sedated him with (gunshot wounds still hurt like a bitch). He curls his fingers in, feeling every single digit press against his palms, white sparks of pain traveling up his veins. He lets his eyes slip shut.
Moment’s over.
Kaito’s eyes snap open and he shoots up in bed, throwing the sheets off himself and tearing off the needle injecting whatever-the-hell in his system, a trickle of blood staining sharp down his forearm.
Eyes narrowing, focus sharpening tenfold, he gets in the zone: KID always helps him out on such occasions.
Slipping out of the room, he’s careful to avoid the personnel, swiping nurse scrubs and positioning himself at the information desk, doing a little search on the computer.
It only takes seconds to find the right room.
Trying to act as naturally as the role requires, Kaito inconspicuously reaches his target.
Not giving himself the chance to hesitate, or worse, regret, he lets himself in. Carefully closes the door behind him, back against it. He lifts his bent head, daring a glance.
Meitantei looks dead.
A tiny corpse swallowed by the cover and sheets, pale as porcelain, a fragile doll, exquisitely broken.
Kaito’s knees almost buckle; he doesn't know how he’s fucking standing when every cell of his body is hurting, begging, screaming.
He rushes to him in a haste, but halts once there, hands hovering uselessly upon the lifeless frame.
Kaito’s vision is swimming with guilt.
He plops down on the chair beside the bed raking rough fingers through his hair in frustration, desperation, suppression. He wants to tear his hair out, he wants to shout, but mostly, he wants to hold him.
Kaito slowly raises his head, unaware of the tears sailing paths down his cheeks to merge as one at the base of his chin.
He closes in on him, but doesn’t allow himself the relief of touching him, finding him warm, finding him real.
How can I live without you? I’m dying just at the thought.
Instead, he pushes his face into the pillow Tantei-kun is resting on and bites his lip to stifle the sob clawing for release.
“...I love you.” Kaito whispers it hoarsely, the confession clambering for air inside of him, instinctual and raw, he’s been repressing it for so, so long; so he closes his eyes against the tidal wave and admits. “I love you so fucking much.”
He doesn’t know how long he stays. He doesn’t know how much time it takes him to unstitch himself from the other boy.
But in the end, the only thing left of him are the tears soaking Tantei-kun’s pillow.
He thinks on it for at least an hour, but in the end ends up purchasing the baby’s breaths—a gift from Kaito, not KID.
He sneaks in, days later, when Tantei-kun is resting semi-peacefully and leaves them along with a simple note. He wonders if the brilliant detective will figure out the flowers are from him...
Kaito smiles a small smile to himself.
Of course he will.
Kaito stalks him for pretty much the entire time out of an intense, all-consuming concern.
He knows Tantei-kun has a sixth sense when it comes to sensing KID in the vicinity—which makes Kaito’s heart damn near stop on a regular basis, it gets his hopes soaring too high—so he resolved to ask for Akako’s help, specifically a spell with which to conceal his presence to him, which she graciously accepts to cast before reminding him not to get caught up in any more life-threatening scenarios since his death would be “rather troublesome”, or, in Akako-speak “you’re one of my closest friends, I care about you, I hope you won’t die over something as foolish as love”.
Kaito can’t make any promises on that front.
(Aoko cried when she first visited him at home, where he was carrying out his convalescence, still physically wearing his hurt. Sobbing almost cartoonishly, she decided to plant herself on his bed and refused to leave his side until she was forced to. So they ate snacks together while watching anime and after Kaito would read to her children’s books until she fell asleep curled on his chest, their pinkies entwined, exchanging quiet, sleepy promises with each other. Losing their parents scarred them both for life; that’s an insidious loneliness they never want the other to experience again, so Kaito swore he will never die, never leave her side, no matter what. Aoko swore it right back with a smile, with tears in her eyes.
Pops, unlike his daughter, was much better at collaring his emotions, but his eyes were lucid when he squeezed Kaito’s shoulder.
Jii was pretty much the same as Pops, sighing relieved, letting him know he was glad Kaito is alive.
Mom, on the other hand, was the one who took him by surprise. She didn’t scream or cry or laugh or reprimand him, instead she looked at him with a gentleness that spoke of a profound past love and, with infinite fondness, took a seat next to him. “Oh, darling.” She murmured. “You’re just like him.”
Kaito thinks a knife through the chest would have hurt much, much less.)
Navigating his way around Tantei-kun gets much, much easier with Akako’s help, and he wonders if he should have just asked for this spell two years ago—but no, he wouldn’t have, because half the fun of being chased is getting caught.
Kaito silently arrives at the window. He already knows the mansion is vacant. He makes short work of the lock.
Selfishly making his way in, Kaito takes in his surroundings; he’s surrounded: his room, his things, the essence of him permeating the space, his scent lingering like perfume, holding him at gunpoint and he’s astonished to find he’d gladly surrender.
Kaito doesn’t disallow himself the pleasure of taking it in, the sight spreading before him.
He slowly trudges in, circling the room like he would the location of a heist; he dissects it, probing at it as if it were soft food falling apart with the slide of chopsticks.
Meitantei had a life before him.
...sometimes, sometimes, it’s hard to digest this fact.
Kaito doesn’t want it to be true; doesn’t want to know the shape of the scars he collected in his childhood, doesn’t want to know how many times he scraped his knees against gravel, doesn’t want to know how bad it hurt when he first realized he fell in love.
Kaito’s fists unconsciously clench, nails biting into the fleshy part of his palms even through the cotton of the gloves.
Letting out a shaky breath, he pauses by the small glass case showcasing a select few trophies, the guy’s a rising star in soccer it seems. He keeps walking, lingers by the pictures sitting prettily on the shelves, his own face reflected across a Younger Shinichi’s smiling one, a minute smile gracing his own lips at the infectious sight.
He doesn’t curb the urge to touch: touch his things.
He’s selfish. He’s hollow. He’s yearning. It’s all so pathetically sad.
He bites at the pads of his fingers, hand slipping from the glove.
His bare fingers slowly slide over the picture frames, tracing the shape of his face through the glass, then gliding over smooth mahogany and against the slightly coarse, thick spines of books that Meitantei has probably read, every single one of them, perhaps even more than once.
He’s leaving his fingerprints behind.
The tip of his fingers pause in the path they’re egotistically tracing.
He wonders if Tantei-kun saw him now, how would he find KID’s behavior? Deplorable? Vexing? Kaito’s fingerprints all over Meitantei’s things. Sensual?
Kaito lets go of a shuddery exhale, shaking his head at himself, at how pitiful he really is, bitter as he wears back his glove. Sharp, sharp tingles stab his fingers oh so sweetly, the different textures of the objects he touched now imprinted in them.
He wonders if Tantei-kun knew that his room is currently flaunting KID’s fingerprints, would he arrest him?
...even after everything, would he?
“Shit.” Kaito curses under his breath, unbidden tears stinging the corners of his eyes. He quickly rubs at them with his forearm and goes to fix his appearance in front of the door-length mirror so it won’t look like he’s on the verge of a meltdown.
He doesn’t want to think about it—about the hurt, Tantei-kun scraped and bruised and barely alive, lying motionless in a pool of his own blood, fighting for his life—Kaito has enough trauma to last him two lifetimes, so he doesn’t want to think about it anymore.
Fool. He’s a fool, if the shoe fits.
Driving down this same treacherous road just to chase that pain again.
It’s a bit shocking, the earth-quaking kind, seeing him in flesh and blood, holding his own weight on two stiff feet and two rigid shoulders.
But mostly it’s relieving seeing him awake, breathing, alive.
The lights are off but the curtains aren’t pulled, twilight sweeps what little’s left of a dying afternoon into the room; Kaito’s always seen him in shades of blue.
He’s wearing dark navy pants, a burnt golden shirt, stark white bandages across his forehead, stitches on the back of his head. He’s wearing his wounds still, displaying them for Kaito to see.
Nausea roils in his stomach.
If Kaito didn’t already know the Black Organization to be six feet under, he would have personally found every single one of those fuckers and enjoyed sadistically tearing the life out of them for what they dared to do to (his) Tantei-kun, for the hell that they put him through.
Tantei-kun snaps him from his thoughts with the careful aim of, “What the hell are you doing in my room?”
Kaito exhales slowly, and starts talking.
Somehow, they end up curled around each other, the mattress swallowing around them.
Let the record state that Kaito was absolutely joking when he said he came here to cuddle—never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined this would be the culminating point of the night.
Now, Kaito dares to look at him like he’s allowed.
Tantei-kun’s glasses are neatly deposited on the nightstand beside his queen-sized bed, his face bare for Kaito to take in, a privilege he doesn’t take lightly. He wonders if his skin is as soft as it looks, if his finger would sink in his chubby cheek down to the nail.
Fuck, fuck, he shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be doing this. He’s only fanning a fire that will fizzle out to embers anyway, because none of this is right and he doesn’t know how Tantei-kun can’t see that and—
“I can hear you thinking.”
Tantei-kun has this irritating, innate ability to startle him whenever he pleases.
“I’m glad your hearing works so well.” Kaito remarks, just a smidge annoyed.
Tantei-kun snorts and moves a few millimeters in, kickstarting Kaito’s heart, provoking the relentless tornado tearing through his chest.
Kaito has an arm wrapped around his waist, somehow, for some reason, he’s been given permission to hold him, and so he holds him against the uncertainty of the moment, thinning with every passing minute they spend sinking into each other and themselves.
The ensuing, gentle murmur breaches through the heavy silence blanketing the room.
“Your heart’s beating so fast.”
It seems Tantei-kun is playing the Let’s See How Long Can I Keep Shocking Kaitou KID game.
Kaito bites his lower lip, teeth worrying at it, and tries to repress the stutter in his chest in vain. “...sorry.”
A slow grin burns through Tantei-kun’s face, a lazy stretch of the corner of his mouth that Kaito can see. “S’fine, KID.”
It’s really not, but who is Kaito to deny him?
“...everything’s fine now, so you don’t have to worry anymore.”
Tears abruptly spring to Kaito’s eyes, reflexively clutching him tighter to himself in the wake of the sweet lie, finding him warm, finding him real against himself.
Oh god, he thinks, choking on tears, toeing along some sort of tremendous precipice, I’m so in love.