So THIS is an odd little oneshot I decided to finish when I found it in my WIP folder. I will admit, the humor is a little different from what I usually do, but I'm going to blame that on my sudden addiction to rom-com X-Men: First Class fics. Yeah.

Warnings include shounen-ai, grammar mistakes / errors, Kaito being an adorable idiot, Shinichi being a sassy little shit, etc., etc. Oh, and excessive sap, because that's a given whenever I'm involved in anything.

Enjoy! - Luna

The Worst Idea in the Entire World

Kaito really, really didn't know why he'd done it.

No, seriously. He really didn't.

It was just – Shinichi had been glaring at him with such a ridiculous amount of annoyance, looking so simultaneously unimpressed and ready to strangle someone despite the fact that he was trussed up in pink satin ribbon, that it had been hard for Kaito to take him seriously from where he had been perched on top of the glass display case.

He had grinned down at Shinichi, saluting him merrily. "Good evening, tantei-kun."

"You bastard," Shinichi had gritted out, all fiery eyes and furrowed brows, and Kaito had just laughed airily, waving the Queen's Heart merrily over his head as the cheering fans pooling behind the line of police officers all shrieked with excitement. The man took these things far too seriously, in Kaito's opinion.

"Language, tantei-kun," he had sung smugly as he pocketed the jewel and rose to his full height. At that, Shinichi had made a choked sound halfway between a dying woodland creature and a very unhappy six-year-old (which Kaito felt was rather ironically appropriate given the situation). His eyebrows angled even farther downwards, a feat Kaito had previously believed to be impossible.

"You are literally the most insufferable person I have ever met," the detective had grumbled, tugging halfheartedly at his restraints, and Kaito had grinned all the wider.

"You sure know how to flatter a man, tantei-kun."

The look Shinichi had leveled him read when I get out of this, I will forcibly remove your lungs from your body with my bare hands in multiple languages, most notably Angry Detective.

"You're so aggressive," Kaito had sighed. Glancing around the room and finding that the Kid task force and Jirokichi had still been duct-taped to the walls – Nakamori had been continuously struggling, to no avail, and had begun shouting something that was probably supposed to be a curse but came out more as "Mmmph mmm!" within the last two minutes – he had brushed off the front of his suit jacket purposefully and had landed softly right in front of Shinichi.

"You're so annoying," Shinichi had snapped, rolling his eyes, and Kaito had laughed rather breathlessly, because – God forbid – Shinichi actually had actually seemed kind of cute, trying to be all snarky and sarcastic as usual while being tied up like a Christmas present.

"That's why you love me," he'd murmured, low enough that only Shinichi heard him.

"Please die," Shinichi had rejoined immediately.

Kaito had stuck out his bottom lip. "What a cold man."

"It's my only defense against the aggravated sexual harassment of annoying phantom thieves," Shinichi had mumbled, looking away.

"Is that what we're calling it?" It being the strange flashes of warmth Kaito kept getting whenever Shinichi so much as looked at him, even when Shinichi was wearing his I'm considering strangling you expression.

Which was, um, the normal reaction to irritable detectives. Obviously.

Shinichi had snorted. Loudly. "Yes, that's what we're calling 'calling me and me only by a nickname,' 'changing me into a suit to match yours,' 'implying that I like you in any capacity,' and, most recently, 'forcing me to engage in your weird BDSM fetish.'" He had motioned at the pink ribbon, shrugging. "But I guess I come to heists prepared to deal with your shit. It's not as if I really mind, at this point."

"Oh, really." Kaito had studied Shinichi's face – he had still looked quite unhappy, with the wrinkle between his eyebrows still very much present, and his clothes had been bunching up in somewhat unattractive ways due to the ribbon pulling a little too taut in some places – and he had smiled to himself.

Shinichi really is gorgeous, he had thought, a bit hazily, because Shinichi had been just that distracting, and then he'd leaned in, shared air with Shinichi for a short, warm, candlelight moment, and pressed his lips to Shinichi's.

A thousand camera flashes had instantly gone off before Kaito had even been able to shut his eyes, reminding him that oh shit, he was in front of nearly four hundred fans and a good portion of the police force and this was probably being televised, so he had leapt lightly backwards, almost hitting the display case in his hurry, and smirked as naturally as he could at the frozen Shinichi in front of him.

"I think that qualifies more as sexual harassment, don't you?" he'd trilled – his voice had been noticeably higher than normal, but he couldn't bring himself to care – before deploying every last canister of sleeping gas that he had been in possession of and getting the hell out of there before it could fully register that he had kissed Kudou Shinichi on national television.

Unfortunately, now it was hitting him, Kaito thought despairingly as he sank even lower in his seat. Around him, the rest of the class was comparing screenshots and pictures they'd taken of what Kaito was beginning to refer to as The Worst Idea in the Entire World, discussing loudly and at great length what Kid's sexual orientation was. (A good percentage of the girls fervently prayed he wasn't exclusively into men, while a marginally smaller percentage of the boys fervently prayed he was.)

"Hey, hey, Kaito, did you see what happened last night?" Blinking, Kaito looked up just in time to see Aoko leering over him. His throat suddenly felt very, very dry.

"What… happened… last night?"

"This!" Aoko shoved her phone in his face, gloating far too happily to mean anything other than certain mortification.

Kaito took a moment to focus his eyes, squinting, before he blanched. Aoko had gotten a disturbingly good shot of The Worst Idea in the Entire World – probably because her dad was the Kid task force's leader, and she was Hakuba's girlfriend of eight months, etc., etc. – but the picture content was what made him want to curl up in a deep hole and decompose quietly away from civilization.

Firstly, he looked completely stupid. His hat was tipped back from where the brim was nudging against Shinichi's forehead, and his hair was sticking up as a result. From this angle, he could see his left hand frozen in midair, sort of T-rex-like as it hung halfway between him and Shinichi, and even from Aoko's cell phone quality shot he could see how chapped his lips were.

And second (and worst) of all, Shinichi looked absolutely adorable.

His eyes were hugely blue, swallowing up a good amount of his face, and there was the faintest suggestion of pink creeping up the portion of his neck and jawline that peeked out from behind the starched shape of his collar. Even wrapped up in lines of ribbon and clearly uncomfortable, there was something incomprehensibly attractive about the flex of his shoulders and the sliver of toned hipbone visible from the hem of his shirt riding up, pale and smooth and soft (okay, so maybe the attractiveness wasn't so incomprehensible). And Shinichi's lips certainly weren't chapped – they looked rather like the ribbon, actually. Pink and satiny smooth -

"Ugh." Kaito hurled Aoko's phone at her, ignoring her scandalized squawk and her fumbling as she scrambled to catch it, and dropped his head onto the desk with a clunk.

With any luck, this whole thing would die down, people would stop talking about it, photos would stop circulating, and then maybe no one would realize how drop-dead gorgeous Kudou Shinichi was.

So apparently, Kaito had used up his entire supply of luck or something, because an entire week later, everyone was still talking about The Worst Idea in the Entire World.

No, seriously. People were selling photos of the kiss like trading cards – if Kaito was approached by one more parka-wearing middle-aged woman who cackled, "You look like someone who could appreciate some hot action," and then proceeded to present him with fourteen different (grainy) prints of The Worst Idea in the Entire World, all the while winking suggestively, Kaito was going to go on a rampage, laws and common sense be damned.

Also, it had been discovered that apparently every doujinshi artist in the entirety of Japan, Asia, and the whole world had been a closeted Kid x Kudou fan, because Kaito had seen several of his classmates with mildly inappropriatemanga that he sincerely doubted any respectable publishing house would ever print.

There were also apparently fan works written in English, as Kaito had realized when a girl tried to convince their English teacher that reading a Kid x Kudou story written in English during a lecture would "benefit her English learning." Their teacher, who was apparently certifiably insane and possibly a secret fujoshi, actually let her. And then went on to request a copy of the story for "personal edification."

Basically, Kaito was going out of his mind,and he needed to do something about this before he legitimately snapped and started taking hostages, starting with his English teacher.

And so this was the solution he'd come up with.

Looking up at the imposing, silent Kudou mansion, with its overgrown tree in the front yard and unlocked wrought-iron gate, Kaito was having… second thoughts.

The media had been unable to get much out of Shinichi, unsurprisingly. The detective had politely (and later not so politely, when the reporters got out of hand) declined, scattering No comments and distant smiles whenever he waded through the sea of cameramen and news anchors. Eventually, everyone had given up, because it had become clear that Shinichi had a much stronger will than anyone had assumed.

Kaito almost snorted at that. Of course Shinichi was strong-willed – it was one of his best qualities, in Kaito's opinion. He looked so good whenever he leveled that does it look like I give a shit smile at anyone, even Kaito, because the way his mouth curved was impossible to replicate perfectly –

But enough of that. Kaito had already spent too long thinking about that smile. For today, at least.

Gritting his teeth, Kaito forced himself to march through the gates and up to the front door, which somehow managed to look disdainful as he lifted a hand to knock. Despite, you know, being a dead piece of wood that someone had carved and attached hinges to.

Hand still raised, Kaito hovered for an uncharacteristically long time. Should he – no, this was a really bad idea. But he needed to get some kind of closure on this, right? Er, but this was probably – no, he should just leave. Before he actually had to talk to Shinichi. Because what would he even say if Shinichi were to open the door right now, anyway?

It was at that moment that Shinichi opened the door.

Someone (possibly his mom or Akako) had once offhandedly told Kaito that suits did to men what lingerie did to women – made them look their sexiest or most appealing or something. Whatever.

But apparently Kudou Shinichi was a rare exception, because Kaito was having a hard time imagining Shinichi looking any more attractive than he did wearing a pair of painfully thin gray pajama pants and a towel slung around the back of his neck. And a noticeably absent shirt, leaving his entire upper body, the smooth, porcelain skin soft and dewy (presumably from a shower) and completely bare. Visible.

Kaito was barely breathing, making a conscious effort to keep his jaw from dropping at the toned lines of Shinichi's abs – okay, so apparently fighting crime and being insanely adorable led to having a six-pack, good to know, file that away for future knowledge – before he managed to regain control of his faculties.

Meanwhile, Shinichi was squinting at him. "So you're Kid. Huh."

Apparently control took a lot longer to reach Kaito's mouth, because the first thing he said to Shinichi, after not talking for a week since their kiss on national television and after Shinichi had effortlessly outed him as a wanted criminal, was, "Why did you take a shower in the middle of the afternoon?"

It took everything Kaito had to not hit himself in the face at his own stupidity.

"Hm?" Shinichi glanced down at himself, then gave a grimace. "I ran into a crime scene after school. There was an – incident. Involving a grapefruit and several pints of alcohol. So I had to shower when I got home."

"Really." Kaito waited for Shinichi to explain.

He didn't, electing to wipe at his cheek with the corner of his towel.

"Oh," Kaito finally mumbled after a few seconds of awkward silence, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Well, then." His brain stalled at that point, too overwhelmed by the combination of shirtless Shinichi and wet-haired Shinichi and towel-wearing Shinichi and – maybe it was just Shinichi.

Apparently, Shinichi didn't notice his sudden lack of motor skills as he draped himself in a painfully underwear model-esque manner across the doorframe. "You want to come in?"

If Kaito's brain had been stalling before that, it was probably was now going up in flames. Feeling himself turn a most likely unattractive shade of orange, Kaito eloquently asked, "What?"

Shinichi jerked his head back into his house, one fine eyebrow lifting up his forehead with what appeared to be amusement. "Wouldn't you rather be having this conversation in a warmer place that's not in view of every house in this neighborhood?" The corners of his mouth tugged upwards. "I'm pretty sure I'm going to catch a cold if we continue this out here."

"And as your health is my primary concern, of course, let's go inside," Kaito managed with a weak, strangled smile he doubted looked very much like a smile, but Shinichi just smirked all the wider and held the door a little more open.

The Kudou family was well off, or at least that was what Kaito surmised from the expensive mahogany floors and the fact that he couldn't quite see all the way down the hallway connected to the front entry. It wasn't much of a surprise – Kudou Yuusaku was a bestselling author, after all, and Kudou Yukiko had once been one of Japan's leading actresses.

As Kaito bent to pull off his shoes, Shinichi brushed around him (oh God he smelled so good and oh wait that was creepy, wasn't it?) and set out a set of slippers for him. Once Kaito had exchanged his sneakers for the slippers, Shinichi padded off down the hall. Assuming that he wanted him to follow, Kaito trailed after him, feeling somewhat like a lost puppy amid the cold, austere grandeur of the mansion. He wondered how Shinichi dealt with it.

(The thought of Shinichi sitting in his room by himself, huddling quietly on the bed or staring listlessly out the window, made Kaito feel hollow and a little sick to his stomach. He wondered why.)

At the end of the hall, they turned into a room. With some relief, Kaito found that this room – the library, judging by the frankly astounding number of books on the shelves – was warm and comfortable, the desk in one corner positively swamped in papers and folders, the armchairs in the center surrounded by towers of books and stray cups. It had a nice, lived-in feeling that made Kaito almost feel as if he was seeing something precious, something secret.

Shinichi wasted no time in crossing the room to arrange himself over one of the armchairs. He was still rather obviously not wearing a shirt, and his stomach muscles fluttered with the motion of crossing his legs and reaching up to finish toweling off his hair. "Go ahead. Sit down."

Woodenly, Kaito sat down on the armchair opposite him. Shinichi was regarding him with steady azure eyes, and it was probably the most unsettling thing Kaito had ever felt.

Clearing his throat, he tried to make his expression as businesslike as possible. "So. I'm going to assume that you know why I'm here."

"Because your sexual harassment was caught on camera and you want to make amends," Shinichi replied instantly. He sponged a stray droplet of water off his neck, the picture of serenity.

"That is – one way of phrasing it." Kaito mentally congratulated himself on managing to not spontaneously combust. His face, however, was still intent on impersonating an overripe tomato.

"Or," Shinichi continued, apparently oblivious to the fact that Kaito was three shades of red, "you could act on the feelings you so clearly have and make a love confession." He paused. "To me, that is."

All the blood in Kaito's body rushed towards his head. He fought to breathe, because who knew Kudou Shinichi had it in him? Everyone always called him dense and bad with feelings, but apparently he was… not. "You could… stand to be a little more subtle."

The blank stare Shinichi leveled at him made him flinch back. "Last time I checked, you were the one who kissed me on national television, Kid."

"Right, I – did that." Kaito rubbed at his eyes. Why did he feel so tired, again?

"Indeed, you did." Shinichi displayed Zen levels of calm as he let his towel coil loosely around his neck. Kaito watched as he reached down to pull a book off the stack nearest his left elbow, then blanched once he saw the cover.

"Is that…" He couldn't bring himself to finish.

Shinichi glanced at the garish pink cover, most noticeably at the tophat-clad Kid and the ribbon-wearing version of himself wrapped around each other like snakes on a caduceus. "This is the eighteenth volume of Magician Killer! Kiss," he answered blandly, and Kaito was struck by the urge to cry.

There was the sound of pages flipping, and Kaito looked at Shinichi to find that he was actually flipping through the monstrosity. "Oh, I see," Shinichi murmured, nodding appreciatively. He turned the page to face Kaito. "At this part, I'm supposed to be giving you a really, really good blow –"

Kaito made an inarticulate sound of terror, and Shinichi sighed at him before putting the doujinshi down. "I'm just saying," he said archly, "that we have fans. Already. People support us, if you haven't noticed. The whole," he waved a hand dismissively, "sexuality thing isn't much of an issue, in our case."

For a moment, Kaito just stared at him. Why hadn't he thought of making a love confession before, he wondered, when Shinichi seemed to dismantle him with his very gaze, admiring every bit of Kaito he came across?

"Although," Shinichi began before he cut himself off, hedged, and then rubbed at his mouth.

"Although?"

"While the, ah, public may support any kind of relationship we may or may not start, I'm… not entirely sure about my friends."

That… had not been what Kaito had been expecting. He stared. "What."

"Not for the whole – two guys together thing," Shinichi quickly assured him. "I have better taste in friends than that. But, uh, I guess Kid's just… you're kind of..." He made a hand gesture Kaito concluded meant A Terrible Criminal Who Sexually Harasses People on National Television. Which, to be fair, was true, but at the same time, Kaito couldn't help feeling a sting of irritation.

"What do they want you to do?" he demanded, scowling.

With a slight flinch, Shinichi ran a hand through his damp hair. "So far," he began meekly, "Ran wants me to castrate you, Haibara would like your autograph, Hattori has asked me multiple times if I know if cyanide will work on you, the Detective Boys collectively are trying to find out where you live as well as procure pepper spray for 'unrelated reasons', and Sonoko is divided, because apparently she's been selling Kid x Kudou doujinshi for the past two years." He pointed at his copy of Magician Killer! Kiss. "That was from her, actually."

Kaito swallowed hard. Uh. That was a lot of, um, pain. "So... two out of five?" he stammered awkwardly. Two out of five wasn't so bad –

"More like two out of eight," Shinichi corrected. "There are three Detective Boys, after all." He closed his book. "So general consensus amongst my friends is that I castrate you, let my best friend feed you cyanide, and give three eight-year-olds pepper spray and your address."

"That's...?"

"That's what they want, at least."

For a moment, Kaito didn't say anything before asking softly, "What do you want, Shinichi?"

Shinichi startled a little, clearly surprised by the use of his first name, and then he was looking at Kaito with those bright, bright azure eyes, and he was smiling a little as he responded, "I'd you to make a love confession so that I can reply with 'I've loved you for the past two years, too,' and then we can have a moment straight out of Magician Killer! Kiss, minus the ribbons." He frowned, contemplative. "And the chocolate lube. I don't think the chocolate lube part is physically possible to accomplish."

There were a lot of things going through Kaito's head – ranging from incoherent screaming to do I really want to know what the chocolate lube part is – but all he could do was gape at Shinichi and notice that despite his blasé words, there was a tremor in Shinichi's hand as he waited for Kaito's reaction, a shiver to his throat as he swallowed hard. He looked small and strangely vulnerable, sitting in that armchair surrounded by books, wet hair clinging to his forehead and skin still a little damp, looked nothing like the power, intelligent world-famous detective he was, and Kaito had never adored anyone so much.

So Kaito took a deep breath, smirked, and confessed, "I've loved you for the past two years. Would you please go out with me?"

Without missing a beat, Shinichi grinned at him, all teeth and blue eyes, and crossed the room to murmur, "I've loved you for the past two years, too," before he dove in and kissed the air straight out of Kaito's lungs.

When they broke apart approximately eight years and three eternities later, Kaito peered down at himself to find that his hands had migrated to the soft, supple skin right above the flare of Shinichi's waist, pressing into the warmth, and Shinichi's hands were now laced around the back of his neck, cool and dry.

"Well," he managed, blinking, "I. Wow." He locked eyes with Shinichi, noting the amusement he found there. "Um… my name is Kuroba Kaito. If you care."

"I know that," Shinichi half-laughed. "Hakuba's told me all about you. He's convinced that you're Kid, by the way. With good reason." He shook a clinging piece of his bangs out of his face. "He's shown me picture of you. I wasn't sure you were really Kid until you came here and I met you in person."

"Oh." Kaito felt a little stupid. He knew that Shinichi and Hakuba had been hanging out, much to his annoyance, but he hadn't realized they would be discussing him. The thought was both uplifting (Shinichi liked to talk about him) and alarming (Hakuba liked to talk about him), but Kaito pushed it aside for the meantime, in favor of focusing on the pads of Shinichi's fingers ghosting over the nape of his neck.

"Anyway," Shinichi went on, and he was purring at this point, in a way probably calculated to make Kaito's knees go weak (and Kaito had to admit, Shinichi was good at calculating), "you want to reenact the rest of Magician Killer! Kiss?"

"You're willing to go that far with someone who you hadn't even technically met until today?" Kaito stammered as Shinichi extricated himself from Kaito's grasp and flounced towards the door of the library like some kind of extremely good looking and extremely classy stripper.

Shinichi just grinned wolfishly over his shoulder at Kaito, and yep, there went Kaito's remaining two brain cells, goodbye forever, nice knowing you. "Oh, come on. I don't come to the door shirtless for anyone, you know."

"I should've known you planned that," Kaito muttered darkly under his breath, but he followed Shinichi down the hall and up the stairs without much complaint.

Maybe The Worst Idea in the Entire World was really The Best Idea in the Entire World.

*nervous laughter*

A-All right, I'm going to go now before I burst into flames of embarrassment. If you enjoyed this, please consider dropping me a review, and I'll be back soon! Goodbye, my lovelies! - Luna