Have another superhero(ish?) AU because why not.

To be honest, I'm really more of a Marvel fan than a DC fan, and that's probably why this probably isn't all that accurate comics-wise, since my knowledge of Superman comes from, like, a few pop culture references, but... oh well.

Warnings include shounen-ai, grammar mistakes / general errors, my previously mentioned lack of knowledge regarding actual Superman, etc. Title comes from Taylor Swift's "Superman" because I made an AMV to it a billion years ago and I thought it was fairly appropriate.

He's Complicated, He's Irrational

Kaito is no Hakuba – he doesn't, like, worship at the altar of logic and deduction or whatever, and he hasn't promised his firstborn to the spirit of Sherlock Holmes – but he does prefer scientific reasoning and things that can be quantifiably and doubtlessly proven, things that are constant and verifiable that he can understand, to things that are basically unexplainable beyond "well, it's magic."

Therefore, he's not fully, absolutely, beyond-a-doubt convinced that magic is real. (That makes Akako kind of an unsolved mystery, but he's sure she can be explained with hallucinogens and illusions and really good stage magic. And Pandora – well, he's pretty sure it's just that Snake and his organization are unhinged.)

So when Kaito finds a fair number of articles claiming that his next heist target, the Stone of Life, is possessed or haunted or cursed or something to that effect, he doesn't really pay it any mind. It's literally a rock. What could it possibly do?

Kaito regrets thinking that when he ends up glowing bright green in the middle of a gallery hall at two in the morning the following day, floating five feet off the ground as the stupid emerald absorbs into his hand and Kudou Shinichi stares from the opposite end of the hall, looking as if his soul is being extracted from his body via vacuum cleaner.

Kaito looks back at him, feeling a surge of panic, which apparently causes lasers to shoot out of his eyes. Shinichi swears and ducks when Kaito accidentally lasers a portion of the wall centimeters from his head, slicing through the drywall like a hot knife through butter. He turns and gives Kaito a look so affronted that Kaito feels another upwelling of horror (holy God, he almost bisected Shinichi, pretty, perfect Shinichi), which results in Shinichi losing half his scarf and another chunk of wall sacrificed.

"What the hell is happening," Shinichi says after narrowly dodging some falling rubble. He looks kind of pale, and he's sweating, which is reasonable, considering that he's in the same room as a glowing, floating, laser-eyed Kid who's almost killed him twice in the past minute. He also looks very pissed off, which is also pretty understandable.

Kaito takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and tries to remember the yoga breathing exercises that Aoko taught him during finals last year.

"Get me down, please?" he tries when he opens his eyes again.

"If you laser me again, I will eviscerate you," Shinichi announces, sounding alarmingly sincere, before he crosses the room to awkwardly pull Kaito down by the beltloop. It doesn't really work – Kaito doesn't seem to want to go down, and Shinichi seems unwilling to put more force into it, his self-preservation instincts probably telling him that if he gets Kaito nervous and Kaito laser-eyes him from this close, he's definitely going to lose something at least semi-important.

"Can you try to stop… floating?" Shinichi asks after a minute of holding his hand far too close to Kaito's crotch for Kaito's sanity. Kaito resists the growing urge to whimper.

"No," he admits, trying not to sound as panicky as he feels.

"Hm. Okay." Shinichi regards him carefully for a moment before he unloops the remains of his scarf from around his neck, ties it around Kaito's ankle, and begins to tow him along, like a balloon or possibly a dog.

And yeah. Kaito has a lot of regrets, basically.

It turns out the stone belonged to one of Akako's second cousins twice removed. Apparently she was really into comic books and had a thing for Superman.

"And you couldn't have warned me about that before I went to steal the thing?" Kaito demands from where he's floating near the ceiling of Shinichi's living room, his eyes squeezed shut in an attempt to avoid causing any more property damage (see: when Shinichi accidentally bumped him against the doorframe and Kaito freaked out and destroyed one of Shinichi's very nicely upholstered couches) and he's really trying not to think about how he got here. He thinks Shinichi may be a little traumatized from all the weird, judgy looks they got from passersby.

Akako just shrugs and says, "She's not a first-class witch like me. I didn't think her curses would actually work," despite growing evidence to the contrary. When Kaito cautiously opens his eyes to look at her, he finds that she's sitting on one of Shinichi's remaining couches, her expression irritatingly calm for the situation at hand. "And anyway, nobody else has reported ending up with Superman-like powers except for you. So. There wasn't exactly a precedent." She shrugs, like haha, c'est la vie, isn't it funny that your life turned out this way, I am definitely enjoying your pain and I wish I had popcorn on hand. Kaito kind of really hates her.

Shinichi chooses that moment to emerge out of the background. He's been lurking by an underwatered-looking potted plant for a little while, absorbing information and going steadily paler. Kaito feels for him, considering he's got a real-life witch sitting in his living room casually discussing her psychotic cousin's comic book-inspired curse while Kaito floats overhead like the world's smallest and saddest blimp. Especially when he probably woke up this morning confident in his belief that magic doesn't exist, the same way Kaito did.

"So what are we going to do?" Shinichi asks. There's a little crease between his perfectly arched eyebrows. Kaito is struck by the horrifying urge to kiss it away. He shuts his eyes hastily.

"Kuroba-kun's going to have to figure out how to live with it," Akako says, sadistically. Kaito knew there were still hard feelings from that time he rejected her when they were sixteen and standing on a burning rooftop. "I didn't think that Sanae was actually a good witch, but if her curse hasn't worn off after an hour, I think it's safe to say that Kuroba-kun's going to be flying everywhere for at least a month." She laughs. Kaito has never wanted to rip someone's vocal chords out, but he's starting to know the feeling.

There's an audible frown in Shinichi's voice when he addresses Kaito. "Are you sure you can figure out how to live with it?" He sounds concerned, as if he's actually worried that Kaito will end up floating into the sun, as if he thinks that would be a shame if it were to happen, and Kaito feels lighter than –

Kaito doesn't know what happens. One second he's in Shinichi's living room; the next, he's somehow managed to go through the ceiling and end up in Shinichi's bedroom. (Which is, for the record, disappointingly neat.) He bonks headfirst into Shinichi's bookshelf and spends a moment flailing until he notices the gigantic, gaping hole in the floor. Dust filters through the air, barely visible in the dimness. There's a piece of plaster clinging to Kaito's shoulder.

"Shit." Kaito stares down at the hole. Shinichi stares back up at him, face frightfully impassive. Akako is laughing so hard she might cough up a lung if she's not careful.

Kaito hates his life.

(In the end, it takes Kaito two hours of knocking into walls and Shinichi pointedly alternating between glaring at him and looking mournfully at the hole in the ceiling before Kaito figures out how to stop floating. It's a relief, the feeling of his feet sinking into Shinichi's carpet. Then it takes another three hours to get his laser vision under control, during which Shinichi's rug and part of his surround sound system are lost. Akako supervises the whole thing with a martini in hand and copious amounts of laughter at the ready.)

So other than the kind of annoying fact that Kaito keeps finding himself floating half an inch above the ground if he doesn't consciously try not to, life continues on as usual. Kaito spends a lot of time hanging around Aoko and Hakuba's place, halfheartedly planning out new tricks and new tricks to try in between having wedding cake samples stuffed into his mouth and rolling his eyes when Hakuba comes home from work to have lunch and be disgusting at Kaito's best friend. He also follows Shinichi's exploits in the news, which isn't particularly difficult, considering every third news story he sees is something that Shinichi's involved in. Shinichi has many proverbial fingers in many proverbial pies.

He's in the middle of watching coverage of a bank robbery-murder that Shinichi was tangentially involved in, actually, when it happens. Kaito is sprawled across Aoko's couch, partly watching the stern-faced newscaster talk about the details of the case, partly playing halfheartedly with some flammable trick paper, partly listening to Aoko's side of a loud discussion/verbal beatdown of the florist for the wedding reception, when he hears it.

It's the weirdest thing. Kaito knows it's impossible, but he thinks he hears Shinichi making a sound of pain, a sharp little inhale. It can't be, of course, because Shinichi's not in the room or the house or on the news program or anywhere in sight – he's probably in Beika, which is, like, three towns over – but Kaito can hear it, his gasp of pain. And it instantly sets him on edge. He just – he needs to be where Shinichi is. It's like a fishhook's been slipped between his ribs and is yanking him towards Shinichi, a compulsive, ridiculous, irrational urge that he can't ignore.

He gets off the couch on wobbly legs. Even without looking down, Kaito knows he's hovering several inches off the ground, and he hunches over to make up for it as he scuttlingly crab-walks towards the door.

The florist's spirit effectively broken, Aoko gets off the phone and turns around. Kaito freezes guiltily. He's crouching in the doorway, willing her not to look down and realize that his feet aren't even brushing her painstaking chosen mahogany floorboards. She stares at him for a minute. Kaito blinks back at her, opens his mouth, then closes it again.

"I don't want to know," Aoko eventually announces, nodding decisively, and turns back around. Kaito breathes a sigh of relief and flies (literally) out the door.

The second he's outside, Kaito lets go of his tenuous grip on gravity and shoots straight through the cottony cloud cover, shaking water vapor out of his hair as he resurfaces. It's a weird feeling, flying, mostly because it's somehow both familiar and completely foreign at the same time. He knows what it feels like to drift above buildings, rising and falling with thermals and wind patterns, because he's been hang gliding for the past seven years, but it's still sort of disconcerting to feel the ground peel away from your feet as you shoot up into the air.

It doesn't take long for Kaito to locate Shinichi, because he hears a muted ow, distinctly Shinichi's voice, that makes him accidentally shoot a sustained laser from his eyes (and scare a nearby flying V of birds into more of a flying connect-the-dots). Kaito follows the sound all the way over Ekoda and Haido before he spots the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Force Headquarters, gleaming proudly in the afternoon sun.

Kaito drops as quickly as he can to the ground across the street from the police station, hopefully managing to do it fast enough that nobody really notices. He gets a weird look from a passing businessman, but all the guy does is clutch his briefcase closer to himself and pick up the pace as he hurries down the street.

The police station is buzzing with activity when Kaito pushes open the front door and glances around the lobby, his inner criminal biting its nails nervously even though the only potential danger is if Shinichi decides to out him to his coworkers and haul him down to holding. There's a line of secretaries behind a long desk, some answering phones and others tapping away at laptops. One of them – a woman with scarily well-applied makeup, posture so perfect Kaito reflexively straightens just looking at her, and hair pulled back tightly enough that it promises a receding hairline sometime in the future – gives him a perfunctory look as she sets a phone down in its cradle.

"May I help you?" she asks in a tone that implies that if she can't, he needs to vacate the premises within the next twelve seconds. Kaito tries for a smile. He realizes, with a burst of clarity behind his eyes, that he has no idea what he's going to say.

"Uh, is Kudou Shinichi – Inspector Kudou in?" he says after a minute of blistering, soul-piercing eye contact. The woman's eyes narrow. Kaito feels abruptly and weirdly guilty.

"All fanmail and packages specifically for Inspector Kudou should be delivered to the PO box listed on the Tokyo metropolitan police force's official website," she informs him primly. She looks him up and down, as if she's assessing him for signs of mental instability. "And I would like to remind you that all packages are vetted by the bomb disposal department, and anything that Inspector Kudou deems a threat can be DNA-traced by the forensics team if so much as a single skin cell is present."

Kaito feels a lot of conflicting things – Shinichi has a personal PO box for all the fanmail he gets? – but mostly he just wonders what part of him made her add that second part.

He's about to ask when a voice calls, "Ki – um?" from somewhere to his left. Kaito blinks and peers over his shoulder to see Shinichi approaching him, wearing the slightly harried expression that everyone in the police station has. He looks nicer than Kaito usually sees him, dressed in a gray-blue suit that does something extremely flattering to his waistline, and he has a manila folder under one arm. It looks as though he tried to tame his cowlicky hair with copious amounts of gel but gave it up as a lost cause. Kaito is hit by an intense, irrational wave of relief. Shinichi is in one piece. Shinichi is fine. Shinichi isn't in danger.

Shinichi comes to a stop in front of him, head tilted. "What are you doing here?" he asks, sounding more curious than anything.

"I, uh," Kaito begins. The receptionist is still watching them. She's poised in a way that implies she's got her hand on a panic alarm somewhere, which isn't exactly imbuing Kaito with confidence. He lowers his voice. "I thought I… heard you."

"Heard me." Shinichi's eyebrows jerk up his eyebrows. "And where were you?"

"Ekoda," admits Kaito after a second.

"Ekoda." Shinichi continues giving him the judgy face. Kaito winces and runs a hand through his hair.

"Look, I thought I heard you – I thought I heard you say ow or something. It's nothing."

Shinichi looks at him.

"You thought you heard me say ow," he echoes.

"Yes, okay, I know it's stupid, are you a parrot?" Kaito snaps, defensive. "I just – I heard you say it, and I thought you were in danger. I wanted to make sure that you were okay. That's all."

"I haven't gotten seriously hurt since that time I was held hostage by that serial arsonist a few weeks ago," Shinichi remarks, sounding pensive. The fact that he says it so nonchalantly is not reassuring at all. "I… wait." Shinichi lifts his left hand slowly. "I… think I gave myself a papercut, like, ten minutes ago? Do you think…?" He does a weird hand-wave thing that Kaito translates as did you hear me get a papercut and think I was being murdered in an alley somewhere?

Kaito kind of wants to die a little, but he nods.

"Oh." Shinichi's eyebrows are arched. He looks kind of disturbed, but also a little fond. Or at least that's what Kaito hopes he's seeing on Shinichi's face. "Well, in that case, I'm fine." He leans in a little closer. Kaito thinks his sense of smell must have been superman'd, too, because he thinks he can smell Shinichi's cologne, something almost floral underneath notes of spice and wood. It's devastatingly attractive. "But how have you been, anyway? With the whole Superman thing. Are you getting along all right?"

"It's been all right," Kaito tells him, shrugging. "I haven't burned through anything important yet."

"Good." Shinichi suddenly looks a little put out. "Because I had to come up with an explanation for why my floor has a giant hole in it when I called my contractor to fix it, and I don't think he bought my exploding radiator excuse."

"Exploding –"

"Hey, Kudou-kun, do you have the Murasaki case report or does –" A tall, slender woman sidles up behind Shinichi, sliding her police notebook into the inside pocket of her jacket as she does. Her eyebrows go up when she sees Kaito. "Oh, am I interrupting something?" She gives Kaito a suggestive, meaningful look. Shinichi, inexplicably, flushes.

"No," he croaks, so obviously awkward that even Kaito is unconvinced, which doesn't even make sense, considering Shinichi's not even lying and nothing of that nature is happening. The woman looks as though she feels similarly unmoved.

"Right," she says, narrowing her eyes at both of them as she adopts a suitably mothering frown. "You do know that you are allowed to have a boyfriend, Kudou-kun? No matter what Yumi says when she's eight shots in during the end-of-the-year parties, we all want you to be happy, and we wouldn't really waterboard anyone you're dating, even if we thought they might have ulterior motives, and –"

Kaito decides to cut in at this point, mostly because Shinichi looks about two more clauses away from an aneurysm, and Kaito is invested in Shinichi not dying anytime soon.

"I'm Kuroba Kaito," he blurts out loudly, offering the woman a plain white rose and effectively cutting her off. She looks surprised, blinking rapidly as she tentatively reaches out to pull it from his grasp and eyeing it as if she half-expects it to be a grenade in disguise, but the surprise lasts five seconds before it morphs into a knowing smile that instantly sets Kaito on edge.

"Oh, I see how it is," she beams, tapping the blossom against Shinichi's cheek. The contrast between the pale white of the petals and the blushed pink of Shinichi's skin is something Kaito wants to write at least one stanza of poetry about. "This is because of your Kaitou Kid fixation, isn't it?" She smiles at Kaito. It's not a very friendly smile, to be honest. Kaito sort of feels as if he's been unceremoniously dropped into a cage with a Siberian tiger that hasn't eaten in a week. "You want to date a magician to see if he compares to Kid. This is some kind of Freudian replacement thing."

"Satou-san!" Shinichi – well, he doesn't quite squeak, but it's a near thing. Kaito stares, jaw slack, as the woman (Satou?) ruffles Shinichi's hair and snatches the folder Shinichi's clutching out from underneath his elbow before sauntering off. Shinichi stares after her, looking mildly like a disconsolate puppy, before he gives Kaito an apologetic look.

"I don't think she meant it like that," he tries.

Kaito can't help the dopey grin that he knows he's wearing. He can feel his face stretching, his eyes crinkling, and he wishes he could stop doing it because he probably looks ridiculous, but his facial muscles aren't cooperating.

"You're trying to tell me you don't have a Kaitou Kid fixation?" he asks around his smile. Shinichi, who had just managed to recover a somewhat normal color, goes light pink again, all the way to the tips of his ears. It's fascinating, watching the progression of color sweep up his neck and settle at his hairline.

"I – what," Shinichi says with startling coherency before he closes his mouth with a snap and points over his shoulder in the vague direction of the headquarters. "I'm just – going to go. Lots of – cases to solve. People to talk to. Yeah. I'll – see you around?" Shinichi sounds sort of desperate, now, as he turns back towards the hall he'd come from.

"Do you get breaks around here, or are the police above labor laws?" Kaito gets out before his nerve fails him. Shinichi's brow furrows for a minute as his expression goes cautiously offended.

"Of course I get breaks," he replies, blinking. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I don't know." Kaito shrugs. "I thought maybe you might want to get a coffee sometime, talk about that Kid fixation. Hang out. You know." He's still grinning. Shinichi rolls his eyes even as he pushes a stray hair back into place.

"Bye, Kuroba," he sighs, and Kaito gets an inappropriate little thrill from the sound of his name in Shinichi's voice. "I'll call you if I stub my toe on a table leg. Oh wait, you'll probably just hear that." It's about forty percent dry and sixty percent exasperated affection, or so Kaito would like to think.

"You're so cold, Shinichi-kun," Kaito calls after him. Shinichi doesn't turn around, just waves without looking back.

Kaito doesn't stop smiling for the rest of the day. Aoko tries to take his temperature twice.

It's a few days later when it happens again. Kaito is in the middle of practicing a trick that involves escaping from a tank of water while handcuffed, so he's working methodically at the keyhole on the cuffs, water up to the crown of his head, when he hears it: the sound of Shinichi swearing in pain, followed by sharp, agonized breathing. It's muffled, probably because Kaito's head is underwater, but it still sets Kaito's teeth on edge. He clenches his jaw and makes an effort to focus on the handcuffs. If he shows up and it's nothing, Shinichi is going to be pissed, and that's really not what Kaito wants –

There it is again, a muted curse and a low grumble.

Kaito gets the cuff of his left wrist and pushes off the bottom of the tank, resurfacing with a splash. He shoves the lid off the top of the tank by the hidden catch and clambers out. He's dripping wet, from the tips of his hair to the bottoms of his socks, but he figures it can wait until he's sure Shinichi's okay.

It's ridiculous, how jumpy and on-edge he feels, Kaito reflects as he hurries outside, ignoring the trail of damp he leaves on his floors. Then again, he's never been entirely rational when it comes to Shinichi, so maybe he shouldn't be surprised.

It takes him under ten minutes to get to Beika, following the echo of Shinichi's pained voice. The windows of the Kudou mansion are dark and unwelcoming when he lands on the front grass, and Kaito trudges up the front walk, hyperaware of every sound he hears. The night is mostly still, save for the rustle of leaves and the occasional distant bark of a dog. Kaito tries the front door – it's locked, but no door is really locked when you're Kaitou Kid. Kaito gets it open in under a minute.

He steps into the house, feeling equal parts guilty and worried as he closes the door behind him. The entry and most of the rooms are unlit and shadowy. Kaito takes a few steps forward before he notices the slice of light spilling out from underneath one of the far doors. There's silence for a heartbeat, the pause before the storm, and then there's a loud splashing noise, as if someone's trying to – to drown Shinichi, or something –

Kaito is moving before he fully realizes it, wrenching open the door and ready to laser-eye someone to pieces. It takes him a second to realize that one, the room is full of steam, and two, Shinichi is climbing out of the bathtub.

Additionally, Shinichi is naked. For obvious reasons. He is also wet. For obvious reasons. Kaito's brain is malfunctioning. (For similarly obvious reasons.)

Shinichi, to his credit, doesn't even scream. He just stares at Kaito for a solid thirty seconds before he drops unceremoniously back into the bathtub.

"I dropped a bottle of shampoo on my foot," he says after a long, horrible silence, during which Kaito can feel himself turning many unattractive colors, purely out of shame. Oh God. He's literally the worst, breaking into Shinichi's house to creep on him in the bath. Shinichi probably hates him at this point. Kaito hates him, at this point. He's going to tie cinderblocks to his arms and throw himself into the nearest lake.

Shinichi must see how horrified Kaito is, and, because he's a much kinder person than anyone gives him credit for, sighs and pushes back a handful of wet hair.

"Wait outside," he says. "Give me a minute to dry off."

"Yeah," Kaito agrees, nearly mangling to word out of sheer embarrassment as he stumbles out of the bathroom, closing the door behind himself. He puts his face in his hands and resists the growing urge to find a cliff to launch himself off.

Shinichi emerges a little while later, markedly less exposed in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. He's fiddling with the towel thrown around his neck.

"I'm assuming this was another accident," is the first thing out of his mouth. He lifts his eyebrows. Kaito cowers. "Otherwise I might need to file a restraining order."

"I'm sorry," Kaito says miserably. God, Shinichi should do that, considering Kaito is a creep with no boundaries –

"I was kidding," Shinichi adds after a minute. He reaches out to hesitantly pat Kaito on the shoulder. "It's not a big deal, really."

"I'm still sorry," Kaito mumbles, unable to meet Shinichi's eyes. Shinichi sighs and prods him until he lifts his face. He's giving Kaito a stern look, eyebrows raised. A droplet of water slithers down his temple.

"Seriously. It's not that big of a deal. And," he adds, looking abruptly and gorgeously shy, "it's kind of… nice. That you worry so much." He shrugs. "Not saying that you need to, but."

Kaito can't figure out if what he's getting is pity or something worse, but either way, it still makes him light up embarrassingly quickly, because he's sickeningly easy for Kudou Shinichi. He grins tentatively.

"You say the sweetest things, Shinichi-kun."

Shinichi scowls and rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, sure." His gaze slides down to Kaito's wrist, and it's at that moment that Kaito realizes he's wearing a pair of handcuffs that are dangling from his right wrist and soaking wet clothes that are leaving puddles on Shinichi's hardwood floors, because in addition to being a creep, Kaito is also an inconsiderate sexual deviant, apparently. "Uh, do you need a change of clothes or anything? I can dry what you're wearing right now in the meantime." His eyes are asking should I ask about the handcuffs? Do I want to know about the handcuffs?

"I – it was for a trick," Kaito feels an urge to say, and Shinichi lifts his eyebrows but doesn't comment, although his judgment is clear all the same. Kaito sighs. "Some clothes would be great, thanks."

"Okay." Shinichi is nodding as he glances at Kaito's hair, which is still wet. "Uh, do you want to use the bath while you're waiting?"

That's how Kaito ends up sitting in Shinichi's newly furnished living room after taking a bath in Shinichi's house, wearing Shinichi's clothes and drinking Shinichi's tea and watching reruns of Detective Samonji with him.

Basically, Kaito is the luckiest human to ever exist.

Kaito may technically be on the wrong side of the law, but he still likes to think that he's no two-bit bad guy with skulking henchmen and an eyepatch. He does stop to help older ladies cross the street and do card tricks for children and bring reusable bags when he goes grocery shopping. He's probably not a perfect ten (aka Kudou Shinichi) on a scale of heroism, but he does try to do the right thing.

So obviously, when he's on his way home from a disappointingly Shinichi-free heist, trying to decide between slightly concerned (what if something happened to Shinichi?) and pathetically annoyed (what's more important to Shinichi than one of his heists?), and happens across a bus full of crying schoolchildren teetering over the edge of what was once a bridge (Kaito's not one hundred percent on why half of it is conspicuously missing, but his guess is some kind of bombing thing), Kaito swoops in to save them.

It's really not difficult, once he disengages his hang glider and flies down. The children all have their faces pressed against the glass as they scream, which is probably not the greatest idea considering that the bus is balanced on the crumbling edge of the remnants of the bridge, but Kaito gets a handhold in the mess of smoking metal and twisted pipes along the underside of the bus and shoves upwards. The bus slides securely onto the bridge with a graceless squeal of rubber against asphalt, and Kaito drops lightly down beside it, skidding a little on a stray bit of rubble.

He wrenches open the doors. The bus driver, who's squished up behind the wheel, stares at him blankly. Kaito gives him a look that hopefully conveys his distaste.

"Come on, kids," he calls to the children, who are staring at him as if he's the second coming of whatever major religious figure is popular with the kids these days. There's a beat of silence, during which a metal strut to Kaito's left flakes off and drops into the river with an audible splash, before they all surge towards the door at the same time. Kaito jumps out of the way as a stream of rabid first-graders hurtle out the door, screaming as they gather around him. The bus driver follows shortly after, clutching his hands to his chest and looking starry-eyed. Kaito gets the unnerving feeling that they've all imprinted on him, like a family of baby ducklings or something.

"I love you, Kid-san! You're just like a superhero!" A girl who looks as if she could fall over in a slightly strong breeze attaches herself to his leg like a limpet-koala hybrid. A boy the size of a small trash can hugs him around the waist so tightly Kaito worries that he may have difficulty reproducing in the future. The bus driver appears to be crying into his sleeve as he shoves his face into Kaito's shoulder. There's smoke coloring the sky dark, dusky gray, and half the bus has caught on fire, crackling loudly several feet away.

It's probably the most heartwarming thing Kaito's ever experienced.

"Kid-san! Kid-san!" Kaito turns to find a camera crew and a slew of firemen surging towards him, all wearing identical expressions of determination. The camera crew skids to a stop in front of him, the newscaster's stilettos leaving skid marks on the ruined road, while the firemen start attacking the flaming remains of the bus with firehoses and a lot of shouting.

The reporter takes a minute to straighten her unrealistically blonde hair before she shoves a microphone in Kaito's face, nearly trampling over a tiny girl who's clinging to Kaito's gloved hand.

"We're here on the scene with Kaitou Kid, who just rescued a school bus of children, second-graders from Beika Elementary who were on the way back from Beika Aquarium when they were caught in the crossfires of this incident. Kid-san, how did you know that these children were in danger? Did you fly here? How did you move an entire bus off the edge of the bridge?" She says all of this in a single breath, staring at Kaito hungrily as if she can feel her promotion to head newscaster already.

Kaito opens his mouth, then closes it. Somehow, he figures that I got cursed (blessed?) by a magical rock I stole and now I'm Superman might not cut it. At least he can hide behind the "I'm Kid, I'm magic" excuse.

"I didn't know about the children being in danger, but I was passing by and decided to lend a hand. As for the rest, well, a magician never reveals his secrets," he replies instead, winking. The reporter nods once sharply (her hair doesn't even move; it's kind of disconcerting) and gestures at her cameraman, who does something complicated with the controls of his camera.

"So you weren't aware of the bomber situation?"

"No, I wasn't," Kaito answers slowly, frowning. "As I mentioned, I didn't know about the children –"

"The bomber was the lead suspect in an investigation led by Inspector Kudou Shinichi, and her motive was a vendetta against him due to a previous case of Inspector Kudou's in which the bomber's brother was incarcerated," the reporter cuts in. Worry instantly fills the back of Kaito's throat – he'd know if Shinichi was in immediate danger or hurt or in trouble, right? He would've heard like the time with the papercut, right? "She was holding the bridge hostage. Inspector Kudou was able to negotiate with her until she agreed to let the hostages go, but there was an altercation and the bombs went off before the bus could evacuate." The newscaster is giving Kaito a weird, suggestive look. Kaito frowns as he pats a sniffling second-grader on the head, feeling as if he's missing a cue that he wasn't aware of.

"Thanks for the background on the incident," he says after an awkward moment of eye contact, and starts to gently tug children off of his person. The reporter clears her throat theatrically.

"Inspector Kudou often attends your heists, does he not?"

"Yeah, he does," Kaito agrees, prying a set of seven-year-old hands off his suit jacket. He glances up at her. "Meitantei-san is always a good challenge. He's… yeah." The reporter is looking at him as if he's forgotten his lines on opening night.

"There's a lot of speculation that you two are friends outside of your heists. Or perhaps even something more," she remarks, pseudo-casual. Kaito snorts, patting the bus driver on the shoulder as he plucks him off his arm.

"I wish," he mutters before he gives her a blindingly fake smile. "Well, if that's all, I've really got to go!" And then he launches himself out of there, cape rippling behind him as he shoots into the sky. There's appropriately excited screaming from the children. Kaito makes a point of waving as he flies off. He's done his good deed for the day.

And at least he now knows why Shinichi didn't show up to his heist tonight. Although, judging from the fact that Kaito heard absolutely nothing from him, no cry of pain or influx of worry or anything hinting that he was involved with a bomber, Shinichi's self-preservation instincts are on permanent hiatus.

Later, when he's showered and sprawled gracelessly on the couch, heedless of his wet hair and the fact that Aoko will have a coronary about water stains on leather if he forgets to wipe it down later, Kaito flicks on the TV just in time to catch the tail end of an interview with Shinichi.

The Shinichi on the screen looks tired and kind of unenthused about life in general, but he looks markedly better than if he would if he'd been blown up in any way. He's looking at the newscaster – who is, incidentally, the same one who interviewed Kaito – with a wary expression.

"No, I don't really interact with Kaitou Kid outside of heists," he's saying slowly. "I appreciate what he did tonight, saving those kids, and I think he's a… an excellent showman, I suppose, but I don't condone his disregard for the law." Kaito snickers. As if Shinichi's never done anything borderline illegal to get his way. Kaito distinctly remembers a specific occasion upon which Shinichi blackmailed Kaito into helping him throw off a criminal organization in a ploy that almost killed Kaito and ended up in a train car being blown up.

The newscaster is nodding, brow furrowed. "Yes, but there is a large portion of your fanbase and the public that believe you and Kid are more than just thief and police officer. Do you two have a relationship that goes beyond a friendly rivalry?"

"Beyond a…" Shinichi looks momentarily confused before he flushes. Even shot through a camera, translated into pixels, and blown up on Kaito's TV screen, Kaito can't stop staring. "There's – I – nothing like that. There's nothing like that going on between us."

"Oh really," the reporter drawls, looking like the cat that got the canary, the cream, and the deeds to several goldmines. She's apparently envisioning the paycheck that will accompany her inevitable promotion. "Would it interest you to know that when I asked the same question Kid earlier, after his brilliant rescue of the schoolchildren, his response was 'I wish'? As in, he wishes that you two had a relationship that transcends the purely professional?"

Shinichi stands there for a full three seconds, his mouth partway open and his face growing steadily and steadily more pink, before he clears his throat and shoves a plain-looking, dark-skinned man in front of the camera.

"Assistant Inspector Takagi will be answering any further questions," Shinichi announces in a firm tone of push it and die before he stalks away, yelling something at someone off-screen. The reporter is smirking openly now. The camera is shaking slightly. Takagi looks half a heartbeat away from hysterical, incredulous laughter.

Kaito resists the urge to do something undignified like start dancing in the middle of his living room.

The interview is, essentially, the spark to the powder keg that is Kaito's deep-seated desire to date Shinichi. Kaito is fully prepared to march into the police station at the next available opportunity and sweep Shinichi off his feet. So it's only fair that his good luck has to be tempered by some kind of horrible, anxiety-inducing catastrophe.

Shinichi gets kidnapped by the bomber's boyfriend. Who turns out to be a serial killer with a body count in the twenties who got accidentally released from prison on a paperwork mistake or something equally, epically stupid.

Kaito happens to hear Shinichi grunt in pain sometime around ten in the morning, when Kaito is halfway through his daily caffeinating ritual and not fully coherent. (As he later discovers, that was the sound of Shinichi being hit over the head and then chloroformed and dragged into a van.) At the time, though, Kaito puts it down to Shinichi accidentally tripping over a shoe or something similar, mainly because he also really wants to avoid another incident like that bath incident. He's pretty sure there's only so much creepiness Shinichi will be able to take before he actually does file a restraining order against Kaito, and Kaito really doesn't want to test that threshold.

So Kaito continues on with his plan for the day, which is to put on his maid of honor (man of honor?) outfit, a light gray-blue suit thing that's supposed to compliment the bridesmaids' dresses, get to Bell Tree Tower, and prevent Aoko from having a nervous breakdown six hours before her wedding.

There are a few more sounds of pain sprinkled through the next hour or so, little gasps and hisses that burn Kaito's eardrums and ache deep in his teeth even as he assures Aoko for the fiftieth time that her makeup is fine and the flower arrangements are perfect and Hakuba will not leave her at the altar and stop worrying, please. Kaito ignores the unease that sets in around the second or third sound he hears – maybe Shinichi is just being (uncharacteristically) clumsy? Maybe he's drunk and bumping into things (at ten in the morning…)? Needless to say, Kaito is kind of useless, and he ends up letting Aoko verbally assault her makeup artist while he sits in a corner.

And then around eleven thirty, Shinichi starts yelling.

Not in pain, thankfully, but he starts yelling, "KUROBA, YOU ASSHOLE, I WAS KIDNAPPED, COULD YOU GIVE ME A LITTLE HELP HERE IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, PLEASE?" and yeah, that's when Kaito gives in, abandons Aoko's makeup artist to Aoko's passive-aggressive comments about eyeliner, and jumps out the nearest (locked) maintenance door, since the windows don't open this high in the tower. Aoko shrieks something after him, some combination of infuriated and terrified, but the sound of her voice is lost in the roar of the wind.

Shinichi is still yelling, less comprehensibly now, just a string of "KUROBA? KID? UM? OKAY, OKAY, I'LL STOP, STOP, JUST – GIVE ME A SECOND," interspersed with gasps, and Kaito follows his voice all the way, soaring over Ekoda, Haido, until he reaches the outskirts of Beika, landing in front of a dilapidated building that might have once been an apartment complex before the mold and termite population invaded. He doesn't even have to strain to hear the sound of Shinichi crying out in pain coming from one of the rooms on the second floor – no, the third –

Kaito doesn't bother with subtlety this time. He jumps the flight of stairs and breaks the door down in one kick, trying not to panic as he surges forward into a room that smells unpleasantly damp. The scene that awaits him doesn't do anything to stop his blood from boiling.

There's a man, bulky and sharp-eyed and dangerous-looking, standing in front of Shinichi, who's tied to a chair around the abdomen and limbs. Shinichi's face is swelling in several places, the skin around his eyes especially dark and puffy. Blood drips down one side of his face. His wrists and ankles are visibly chapped, rubbed pink, from struggling against the coarse rope.

"Oh," he says when he sees Kaito, and manages a smile. "Hi."

The man is gawking at Kaito, his mouth partway open. His knuckles are red and raw-looking, but nowhere near as bruised as Shinichi's face. The sight makes Kaito irrationally angry.

"What the hell're you doing here –" the man starts to say, raising his fists defensively, but then Kaito sees literal red and the rotting floor beneath the man's feet crumbles to dust. The man makes a high-pitched sound as he drops through the sudden hole, flailing unbecomingly as he goes. Kaito pushes off the ground as he dives after him, taking personal delight in grabbing the man by the collar and punching him repeatedly in the face. He may get a little too enthusiastic, actually, because the man is out cold in a second, dropping limp in Kaito's grip. Kaito pretends not to notice, just so he can get in one last hit guilt-free.

Kaito tosses the man up through the hole, making a point to do it as ungently as possible, and launches himself back up to where Shinichi is still bound to the chair, watching Kaito with an impressed look on his face that would make Kaito preen in any other situation. There's blood dripping down into his eyes.

Heart in his throat, Kaito falls to his knees and gets to work untying the knots around Shinichi's upper body. His fingers are shaking even as he works the rope free, and he's breathing hard, desperate, which he only realizes when one of Shinichi's newly-freed hands drops to the side of his neck to push against his pulse.

"You're looking very dapper. Do you have somewhere to be?" Shinichi asks after a minute, motioning at his suit, and Kaito gives him a look that hopefully conveys his combined disbelief and horror. Shinichi withers, but only slightly. "I've been in worse situations. Seriously."

"That doesn't mean I have to like it." Kaito yanks the rope off Shinichi's ankles and sinks to the ground, absently clutching one of Shinichi's legs towards himself. He should've come sooner. He should've known Shinichi was in danger from the first sound he heard, he should've been there instead of just ignoring it because he didn't want to look stupid in front of Shinichi. This is all Kaito's fault.

Shinichi coughs lowly, a wet, slickened sound, and one of his hands finds its way into Kaito's previously styled hair. Now it's just a gel-snarled mess, bits of hair standing up every which way in a bird's nest of curls, but Shinichi somehow manages not to pull at Kaito's scalp as he pushes his fingers through the tangles.

"I hope you're not blaming yourself," he says quietly, sliding his hand down until his palm cradles Kaito's face. His skin is clammy, sticky with leftover nervousness and pain, and Kaito shivers. "Because it's not your fault." When Kaito doesn't look at him, Shinichi insists, firmer, "It isn't."

Kaito disagrees, but he still looks up at Shinichi and nods. Shinichi's eyebrows draw together, and he opens his mouth, but Kaito shakes his head mutely, and Shinichi sighs.

"Let's get you treated," Kaito mumbles after a minute, climbing back to his feet. He gestures at the man, who's crumpled on the floor beside the gaping hole, and kicks lightly at his head when he twitches, more because he can't help himself than because he's worried the guy will wake up. "What should we do about him?"

Shinichi gets a look in his eyes.

(Later, the police find the man suspended from the ceiling by the rope that Shinichi had been tied up with, dangling above the hole in the floor with his feet bound nearly to his shoulders. Kaito isn't sure whether he should be impressed, turned on, or confused by the fact that Shinichi would definitely be good at bondage.)

They're sitting in Shinichi's office at the police station an hour later – Shinichi just gave Kaito a blank look when Kaito suggested going to the hospital to get his face treated, as if he's never heard of the emergency room or possible concussions or broken noses – and Shinichi is dabbing at his face with an ice pack he stole from the department minifridge wrapped in a handkerchief. The swelling is going down, slowly but surely. Kaito still can't look at him, staring into his lap instead. Guilt sits at the bottom of his stomach like a storm of sediment.

There's a thunk when Shinichi sets the ice pack down on his desk. Kaito looks up just in time to see Shinichi point an accusatory finger at him.

"You're blaming yourself for this," he says, sounding, for the first time, genuinely upset. Kaito blinks as he continues, "None of this is your fault! You weren't the one who kidnapped me and strapped me to a chair!"

"But I could've been there sooner," Kaito mumbles. Now that he's looking at Shinichi, he can't bring himself to turn away. The bruises are blooming deep purple-red around Shinichi's cheekbones and eye sockets, splotchy and awful. Kaito feels sort of sick.

Shinichi looks at him disbelievingly. He gestures at his face.

"This is not the worst thing that's ever happened to me, believe it or not. I've been in situations where nobody came to save me, and I was fine then," he snaps, but when he sees the way Kaito winces, he backtracks. "I understand why you didn't come at first, after what happened last time. I wouldn't have come, if I were you. But you came as soon as you realized that I actually needed you. It's fine. That's all I expected." He stands and stalks around the corner of the desk to take Kaito's face in his hands, forcing Kaito to look at him. Beyond the bruising, his eyes are the same, determined and unwavering and beautiful as always.

"I don't blame you for any of this," says Shinichi, enunciating carefully. "And I don't want you to blame yourself. Got it?" Kaito stares at him. He's overcome by a wave of affection, so strong he can't help but wrap his arms around Shinichi's waist and bury his face in his chest. Shinichi lets him, tangling his hands in Kaito's hair. His thumbs rub circles in the spaces behind Kaito's ears, the movements smooth and comforting.

Of course, that's the moment when Satou pokes her head in and wolf-whistles. The moment dies a horrific, gruesome death when they spring apart and Shinichi trips over the corner of the desk and ends up bashes his cheek against a filing cabinet, adding yet another bruise to his repertoire. While Shinichi is whimpering and clutching at his face, Kaito abruptly remembers that his best friend's wedding is in less than three hours and his suit is a currently mess of torn fabric, questionable smears, and Shinichi's blood.

Aoko, to say the least, is not pleased.

The same receptionist from Kaito's first visit is sitting at the desk when Kaito walks into the station, and she gives Kaito a narrow-eyed look as he comes to a stop in front of her.

"Good morning, miss," he grins, smiling as charmingly as he dares. She remains unmoved, squinting suspiciously up at him as if she expects him to knock her over the head and take off with her desk phone. Kaito swallows. "Uh, you look nice today." When that garners exactly no response, he tries, meek, "I love your lipstick." He squints. "Lip gloss? Lip… color."

"I suppose you're here to see Inspector Kudou again," the receptionist remarks after a minute of Kaito sweating through his smile. She makes a disapproving noise, even as she reaches for her phone. "You're lucky I'm feeling generous, otherwise you'd be stuck waiting in a holding cell like the rest of his…" She pauses ominously. "Admirers."

"Um, right. Thanks." Kaito takes a hesitant step backwards, wondering if she can smell fear. The receptionist maintains eye contact as she dials, probably much slower than necessary.

"Well, if it isn't Kuroba-kun!"

Jumping, Kaito turns to find Satou coming towards him, looking alarmingly enthused as she shoves past a poor, undeserving mail courier en route to the door. She claps a hand on his shoulder once she's close enough, beaming brightly at him.

"Good to see you again, Kuroba-kun!" she beams. "Kudou-kun's been trying to work even though his face is basically broken. Maybe you can… talk some sense into him?" She winks, lasciviously. Kaito gets the feeling that she doesn't mean for him to talk to Shinichi. "He has a private office, after all."

"Oh, uh, yeah," Kaito fumbles in return, fairly certain he's the color of a stop sign. Satou giggles and ruffles his hair – or tries to; her hand gets stuck and she spends a second extricating it. She pats him gingerly on the head instead.

"Really, don't hesitate to, ah, talk it all out. Wataru and I have taken over his case load for now. Best wishes, Kuroba-kun!" she calls over her shoulder as she saunters off. "Tell Kudou-kun to invite you to the next department get-together!"

"Right," Kaito yells in response, staring after her a little forlornly. He's not sure what facial expression he's making, but Satou offers him two thumbs-up and mouths smile! before she turns the corner, so it must not be all that heartening.

Shinichi chooses that moment to materialize beside him. His face is still doing a good impression of purple camouflage, but his eyes are clear and his smile is the same combination of judgy and cute it always is.

"What's up?" he says, out of breath in a way that implies he ran all the way to the lobby. "Is something wrong?" A cagey look enters his eyes. "I totally iced my face, I didn't fall asleep in a case file by accident, what are you talking about?"

"Yeah, because you should definitely be working on case files when your face is the color of an eggplant," Kaito feels compelled to point out. Shinichi just blinks at him.

"Right, exactly," he agrees, entirely sincere. Kaito closes his eyes for a minute, sending a prayer to whatever gods are watching over Kudou Shinichi. They must be overworked.

"Anyway, with… everything that happened, I forgot to mention that I saw your interview with Nichiuri TV. You know, the one from after the bombing case," he informs Shinichi when he opens his eyes.

"The interview with – oh." It's interesting to see the instant flush that blossoms along Shinichi's neck and cheekbones, filling the spaces between bruises. Kaito fights back a smile.

"I know what it looked like," Shinichi begins, looking evasive, and Kaito waves a hand.

"I do too, and that's why I'm here." He grins. Shinichi is eyeing him speculatively, a little nervous, as if he's not sure where this is going. It's as if no one has flirted with him before, which isn't something Kaito can believe. "I'm here to collect on that coffee date that I mentioned last time. When does your break start?" When Shinichi frowns, he adds, "And by coffee date, I mean date that involves coffee. You know, coffee date. But with an additional emphasis on the date part."

Shinichi stares at him for a full twelve seconds, his mouth partway open, and for a moment, Kaito gets a sinking feeling that he's about to be rejected, flustered interviews and blushing aside. But then Shinichi grins, glancing down at his hands and then back at Kaito. It's kind of a dopey grin, and it probably hurts, considering the patchwork of blues and blacks that is masquerading as Shinichi's face at the moment, but Kaito doesn't have room to talk, considering he can feel his own face doing something embarrassingly happy.

"I can take my break whenever," Shinichi tells him around his smile. "Perks of being a full inspector."

"Okay," Kaito says, distinctly moony. He can't help it, though. "I – okay. How about now?"

"Now's great," Shinichi agrees, smirking, and Kaito takes his hand before he can lose his nerve. When Shinichi squeezes his hand back, Kaito lifts half an inch off the ground. Shinichi tugs him back down, and Kaito goes easily.

"You know," he remarks thoughtfully when they're halfway out the door, "you're kind of my Lois Lane." He glances over at Shinichi, mostly expecting a glare, but Shinichi just rolls his eyes. He's still smiling, miraculously. Kaito stares, thoroughly enchanted.

"If anything," Shinichi says, giving him a narrow-eyed look, "I'm your kryptonite." And when he lifts Kaito's hand to his mouth and brushes a kiss against Kaito's knuckles, Kaito is inclined to agree that yeah, okay, he's really weak for Kudou Shinichi.

If you enjoyed this fic even a little, please consider dropping me a review, and I'll see you all soon! - Luna