Hit a roadblock with Runs in the Family, so have some pointless, meaningless fluff. Warnings include shounen-ai, grammar mistakes / errors, etc. Title stolen from "Another Love Song" by Frank Hamilton, which is adorable and my current favorite song but not actually related to the fic in the slightest.

Well, uh, enjoy...? - Luna

You Make My Heart Go Boom

There were very few things that Shinichi was truly and utterly scared of. Most of his fears involved letting murderers commit suicide, his best friends getting kidnapped, Gin somehow not being dead, etc., but one of his most predominant worries, though he'd never admit it, was being trampled to death by Ran.

Which was quickly becoming a very possible outcome of their current conversation.

"Are you completely stupid," Ran ground out from across the table. She was beginning to bend the poor steak knife clenched in her right hand.

"Uh," Shinichi stammered, not entirely sure if the question was rhetorical or not. His gaze slid to the cutlery, which was emitting a faint groaning sound as it creaked cleanly into a right angle. He swallowed.

Thankfully letting go of the knife (it clattered weakly to the table; Shinichi had no doubt that if it could talk, it would be woefully warning him to run while he still could), Ran shot to her feet. She seemed to tower over Shinichi. "How could you try to convince me that you and Kuroba-kun aren't dating?"

"Well," Shinichi began as innocuously as he could, setting down his own fork and knife as he stared morosely down at the slab of steak sitting on his plate. He doubted he was going to finish dinner. "Maybe, um, I'll just. I mean. Tell you we aren't." He coughed, awkwardly. "Because we. Aren't. At all."

"Excuse you," Ran snapped, scandalized, and turn the wattage of her glare up several thousand degrees. Shinichi tugged at his collar, suddenly feeling like an ant being burned by a magnifying glass. "I have eyes, you know. You two are clearly –" She made a frankly obscene hand motion that probably would've made Shinichi choke, had he not already given up on eating. As it was, he collapsed into frantic spluttering, eyes bugging out of his head and feeling the beginnings of an aneurysm, as Ran steamrolled on, waving her hands and frowning and generally looking absolutely terrifying.

"I've never seen two friends, no matter how close, sharing jackets all the time, or sitting on each other's laps in the middle of restaurants –" she huffed, ticking the points off on her fingers.

Shinichi recovered from his momentarily conniption fit to cut her off. "First of all, the jacket thing is because Kaito gets cold easily –"

"It's August," Ran reminded him incredulously.

"…Really easily?" Shinichi tried, weakly. When Ran's expression of irritated doubt only deepened, he flapped a hand at her in an attempt at distraction. One that didn't work. "Anyway, anyway. Not the point. The sitting-on-each-other's-lap thing is just… just because I have a, um, disease that keeps me from sitting on hard surfaces. You know." He cleared his throat. "Kaito's just being a, er, good friend."

Ran looked at him askance, wondering if it was possible to be this disturbingly delusional and still be brilliant enough to solve murders every other day. Apparently so, as Shinichi smiled brightly and hopefully at her.

She barely restrained the urge to rub her temples. "Shinichi, I have known you for about ninety-eight percent of your life, and I know for a fact that you've never had a disease that keeps you from sitting…" Her eyes suddenly widened. "Unless it's because you're sore? Is Kaito is too rough?" Expression darkening, Ran began to growl, "That little bastard, I'll cut his –"

Having gone bright red, Shinichi burst into a litany of objections. "Nonono, he's not – we're not – it's just – no. Stop. Thank you."

Pursing her lips, Ran waited for him to stop babbling.

Coughing into his elbow, Shinichi mumbled, "Well. Um." He ran a hand through his hair. "Putting all of – that aside, I'm sorry to disappoint you, Ran, but I'm, uh. Not in love with Kaito."

"Really," Ran said, flatly.

"Really. Truly. Most definitely." Shinichi nodded. Ran felt mildly homicidal.

Quelling the urge to shove her steak knife into Shinichi's eye socket, she sighed and leaned forward. "Shinichi, it's fine if you're dating Kuroba-kun. I approve of him, even if he's strangely obsessed with his doves." She wrinkled her nose, remembering the three-hour rant Kaito had once given over the proper feeding of his concerningly large collection of pet doves when the dove-sitter he'd hired fed them wrong. Apparently you weren't supposed to feed doves too many safflower seeds in the evening? Ran really didn't know. "I mean, I'm all for your relationship, as long as it's healthy and you're both happy."

"Which the relationship would be," Shinichi insisted, "if I didn't think of Kaito the same way I thought of you." He made a noise in the back of his throat. "A – a friend, I mean."

If Ran had a superpower, she suspected it would be laser vision. She demonstrated this by glaring holes through Shinichi's face. "Really." Her tone was flat.

"Like – like how I feel about Hattori," Shinichi attempted. He gave her his best please agree with me smile.

"Unless you're harboring an urge to throw Hattori-kun against the nearest flat surface and rip his shirt off with your teeth, I'm thinking no," Ran intoned, unimpressed, as Shinichi flailed and whined about wanting brain bleach and oh God Ran was that really necessary, I'm never getting that image out of my head, I hate you, etc., etc.

Still shaking her head, Ran dropped the subject and returned to her now-cold steak. Hakuba was going to be disappointed, was all she could say.

Later, when Shinichi regained his ability to form independent clauses and use adverbs and the like, he rolled over, the sheets clinging to his damp skin, and poked Kaito in the shoulder. "Hey."

Kaito, making a sound like a sleepy kitten, mumbled something unintelligible and cocooned himself in the blankets, curving away from Shinichi. "Go to sleep, Shinichi," he grunted crossly, although one of his arms crept out from underneath the comforter to snake around Shinichi in direct contrast to his words.

Letting his head rest against the swell of Kaito's bicep, Shinichi casually mentioned, "I told Ran we weren't dating," and waited expectantly.

He should try to startle Kaito more often, Shinichi reflected pensively as Kaito jerked as if he'd been electrocuted and emerged from the sheets wide-eyed and glowering. After all, it wasn't every day Shinichi got to witness a naked, sweaty Kaitou Kid looking at him as if Shinichi had murdered a bucket of puppies, despite his hair's valiant attempts at impersonating a pineapple and his eyes still partially glazed over.

"What? Why would you do that?" Kaito demanded, expression absolutely heartbroken, and Shinichi grinned.

"Would you believe me if I told you that I realized Hakuba asked her to find out if we were dating?" He carefully rearranged Kaito's arm underneath his neck, getting more comfortable. "I deduced a couple days away that they – Hakuba, Ran, Nakamori-san, Hattori, Toyama-san, and maybe Sonoko – have a betting pool going. If Ran confirmed that we were dating today, Hakuba would've won about ninety percent of the pool. Somehow I thought you'd rather I didn't tell Ran about us, at least not today."

There was a moment of silence.

"Oh," Kaito said, deflating, and dropped back down to snuggle against Shinichi's side like a touch-starved koala. Shinichi let him, absently running a hand through his hair.

"I didn't know we were hiding our relationship, though," Kaito muttered after a few seconds.

"Neither did I, actually. I thought it was pretty obvious." Shinichi sighed. His friends were remarkably unobservant for certified geniuses.

"No, seriously. Was there ever any question about if we were dating?" Kaito struggled into a semi-sitting position, dragging Shinichi up with him. Shinichi went along with it, mostly just because Kaito was beginning to look a little manic and he was a little concerned. "I wear your jacket in public, that stupid Sherlock Holmes one that should probably be donated to a homeless shelter, if not just thrown away –"

"Excuse you, that is vintage –"

"– and you sit in my lap literally anywhere possible. You even sat on my lap at the banquet, the black tie one where that Nobel Prize winner murdered that one waiter. Everyone saw that."

"Ah yes," Shinichi agreed as he fondly remembered that night. The man had used that soup spoon absolutely brilliantly. He clearly deserved that Nobel Prize. (Possibly not for peace, though.) "I remember that."

Correctly interpreting Shinichi's expression, Kaito snorted. "You're remembering the damn soup spoon, aren't you." Rolling his eyes and ignoring Shinichi's halfhearted sounds of protest, he slid back down under the covers and insinuated himself between Shinichi and the mattress. "Well, whatever. When should we tell them we've been dating for the past two years?"

"Uh…" Shinichi thought about it, trying to recall the contents of the emails he'd glanced over Hattori's shoulder. "Who do you want to win the pool? I think Hattori's going to win if we admit to it within three days and Nakamori-san bet on next Wednesday, if I've deduced everything right. I don't think anyone bet on a day past that."

Kaito nuzzled into Shinichi's collarbone. "Let's do it next Thursday." He yawned and wrapped himself around Shinichi's torso. In ten seconds, he was asleep.

Shinichi grinned, lacing his fingers through Kaito's hair. There was a reason he loved this man more than anything else.

I apologize. Runs in the Family is not cooperating at the moment, so.

Thank you for reading (if you enjoyed, please consider dropping me a review!) and I'll see you all soon, my darlings! - Luna