So, first (semi-published) non-literature-class story! M/M elements, though romance will not be a main focus. I don' really differentiate between Detective Conan and Magic Kaito, as they are interlinked throughout both manga/anime canons and by the same author.

Also, Do Not Own. Fanfiction, y'know.

Lucid Dreams
Prelude:

Double-ended quartz glinted, a point of red sparking to life under moonlight. Pandora.

They had found it. They had—but the Organization had found them. Panic and silenced gunshots and red-on-white as Kids' suits stained (both, reflections of each other as they had been in so many things throughout the years), and Shinichi knew he'd been shot, knew Kaito had been shot, and the bright quartz had passed from one to the other several times, streaked with sticky-slick liquid, almost black against the growing glow from within the crystal. Not a gem at all, but a crystal.

Two more sounds, sharply soft, and impact and Kaito was falling against him and his own chest felt compressed. He couldn't breathe and it wasn't just panic, but Kaito had been the only one he'd been able to rely on for years. They had trained and fought together until they could slip into each others' roles with no one but them the wiser, because even if Kaito was always that little bit better with sleight-of-hand and Shinichi could calculate a soccer ball bounce twelve ways to Kaito's eight, no one else knew them well enough to tell.

Years of running and tricking and trying not to get killed, trying to draw the carrion crows of the Organization away from people they (still) cherished, of leaving heartbreak and sorrow in their wake as new friends were left thinking them dead again and again and again… Until 'new friends' were too dangerous a thing to have.

Now, they only had each other. Now, now… if Kaito was dead, Shinichi didn't care if he died, too, because he could not do this alone.

His vision fogged and someone (probably Snake, always Snake when Pandora might surface) shoved Kaito off of him with a foot, the thief's body moving with the kick in a way that spoke of death. Light glinting off darkened metal, a double-thud of sound—and Shinichi's vision went dark, a last fading wish passing through his mind.

xxxx

Red light flared, a red like sunrise and fire and butterfly wings and blood; miles apart, two teenage boys jolted up, screaming wordless denial.

xxxx