Shinichi should have known. He really, really, really should have known better. It was rather careless of him to assume that spiting someone, especially Kid, was not going to bring him some very heavy regrets.

He might as well have just sent tabloids an embarrassing photograph of when he was four years old, running around stark naked with a towel wrapped around his neck. It would have caused him the same amount of embarrassment he was experiencing now, with the added bonus that it would have been on his terms, and he would have at least had the means to do decent damage control. Better yet, he should have had the foresight to make some kind of public service announcement, regardless of whether or not he thought something was going to blow up in his face, because he shown have known better than to think it would never come to that.

If there was anything he had learned over his years of being a detective, dealing with secrets that were not meant to be leaked, it was that you ran less a risk of telling the truth about any given situation yourself, than you did letting someone else put their own spin on the tale. Even the smaller things in life made you look like a fool if they were told in the right way, and really, he should have known things would have turned out this way. It always did.

No one ditched Kid right in the middle of a heist. Certainly not when the thief had invited you personally, and certainly not with the intent to see someone you verbally dubbed more important. Even if you did, you did not add insult to injury by being rude to a worried thief when he tried to contact you later on in the night, and finish off the whole ordeal by letting the 'other person' hang up on him. And if you did manage to do all of the above, you should at least try to get to the press before the thief you ignored had the chance to grab hold of a microphone. This way you could tell the world your very reasonable side of the story without getting your head chewed off by anyone's annoyingly verbose and incredibly persistent fan club.

Shinichi sighed loudly and chucked his remote down onto the floor. The carpet kept it from breaking apart into pieces, but the batteries did manage to pop out of their socket. The detective couldn't bring himself to care. Not when every news station was playing the same story over and over again, and his phone was ringing off the hook with reporters eager to know what he had to say for himself. This was one of the things he hated most about being in the public eye, and having a nemesis in that same limelight. It made anything happening between them, no matter how innocent, subject to the most scandalous observations. Meaning that Kid's pouting in disappointment at his favorite detective being absent at his latest heist, was turned into a sobbing pile of utter heartbreak at Shinichi 'deliberately leaving him so he could go find someone better to spend his time with'.

It also meant that the Kaitou Kid fan club was mad at the detective for leaving what was a supposedly 'intimate moment' between the two of them, the Hattori Heiji fan club furious at him for leaving his best friend to fend for himself, and the Saguru Hakuba fan club disgusted with him for abandoning his fellow Holmes enthusiast with such a mess. To make things even worse, his own fan club was far too slow in getting their bearings together in order to defend him. It left Shinichi in a very open spot, liable to be stopped at the drop of a dime, and mercilessly interrogated as if he had just become the world's most prolific serial killer.

It was driving him up a wall. Oh, sure, Kid hadn't done it on purpose. Neither had Heiji or Hakuba. This whole thing had been blown out of proportion by the media, and it really wasn't anyone's fault, except for the ones with cameras and microphones. But, despite all of that, Shinichi was still getting a lot of undeserved hate for something people kept taking out of context. The general public would forget it soon enough, Kid and the other detectives might try to apologize to him about their unintentional hands in his misery, but it was pretty damn annoying right now. Shinichi couldn't pick up the phone or answer the door for a good part of that week, and school had been so terrible he found himself thinking about committing a murder or two just to get some peace. The end of said week couldn't come fast enough, but people were still trying to get him to speak about what had happened. Never mind the fact that nothing had happened at all. These people were wasting their time, and taking up too much of his, for some stupid form of curiosity, and it had gotten old relatively quickly.

His cell phone rang again, and he growled as he flipped it open. He had been refusing calls for the better part of the hour, but things were getting ridiculous. Whoever was on the other end of the line was going to get quite an earful, and he wasn't going to worry about tact and censorship. "What the hell do you want?!"

He hadn't expected the laugh. "A better answering service. You kiss your mother with that mouth?"

Shinichi blinked, and after a second he let out a sigh. "Oh, it's just you Kyo."

"Just me? You don't sound too happy about that." The slightly offended voice told him.

The brunet ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry, I'm just having a bad day." In all honesty, he really was glad to hear from Kyo. The martial artist was like a breath of fresh air in a smog infested city, and the redhead was just about the only one the detective could talk to without getting ticked off right about now.

"You too?"

Shinichi immediately sat up straight, his heart jumping into his throat and threatening to suffocate him on the spot. He knew he had been given the sour end of the deal in this Kid fiasco, but he thought he was the only one suffering. Had Kyo been caught up in it too? "Are you okay?" It occurred to him that he hadn't exactly told Kyo who he hung up on a few days prior. Shinichi only said something about a big kid, which wasn't descriptive in and of itself. Why did he think that was a good idea at the time again? If he had told the truth, Kyo might have been better prepared. "Have you...been seeing the news recently?"

He heard an off handed hum. "Yeah, I saw a few things." There was a small moment of silence. "When exactly, were you going to tell me that 'big kid' equaled 'international thief', hm?"

Shinichi could have kicked himself. He should have known better than to keep secrets from this one. Kyo may not have had claims to a super-genius mind, you could get one over on him if you knew how to play his emotions well enough, but he always found out the truth. He didn't have a certain formula, or a sure fire way of tracking it down, but it always seemed to come into his possession one way or another. When it did, Kyo usually didn't pull punches with the person who lied to him, no matter how white the untruth may have been. "Uh, I was going to say something eventually." He refused the impulse to say he was sorry. If he needed to apologize later on in the conversation, he was not going to lessen its sincerity by saying it repeatedly. "Don't tell me people figured out I had gone to see you?"

"Not really." He was surprised to hear a slightly irritated, but not really angry, voice. "As of right now, I'm kind of like the unknown mistress. People know I exist, but not who I am."

Which begged the question, "Why do you sound so mad then?"

"I'm not mad at you." Kyo clarified, much to Shinichi's relief. "But Shigure hasn't stopped laughing about the damn thing since he saw it on TV. He's even threatening to make a cheesy romance book based on the two of us." Shinichi could practically see the twitch of the other's eye. "If he doesn't knock it off soon, you'll have to drag me off to prison for double homicide."

Shinichi felt an incredible need to simply laugh at all the worries ripping apart his chest. He wasn't quite sure how to name all of them in politically correct terms, but he knew each and every one of them had their place, and a common purpose meant to drive him crazy. But it hardly mattered right now. Kyo wasn't mad at him. Kid had no idea who Kyo even was. And, sure, the general public knew he was out in the world somewhere, but the important thing was that they had no specifics or suspicions that would lead them to Shigure's door. If Kyo didn't just up and strangle him, the writer would not have to deal with anything out of the ordinary because of the detective. This was...great.

"Why would that end up being a double homicide?" Shinichi asked just to get a bit of normal banter in his system. "His canine form doesn't count as a separate person."

"It'll count because I'm going to kill him, find some way to revive him, and then kill again for good measure."

This time Shinichi did laugh outright. It was all too much not to.

Kyo must have noticed that the sounds coming from Shinichi's mouth were not of genuine happiness. "How stressed did this whole thing make you, anyway? You sound like a wreck, and considering how good you are at lying to me when I don't have to see your face, that's saying something."

It was saying something else entirely that Kyo could make deductions based on nothing but brief vocal responses. "Pretty stressed, if I'm completely honest with you. This guy is something of a local celerity, and blowing him off for anyone or anything else is, apparently, something that marks me for destruction."

"Destruction? Has anybody threatened you because of this?"

Shinichi thought better mentioning the hoards of rabid fangirls waiting to tear his throat out for making their favorite thief upset. Kyo was not one to care who was talking too big, or what gender they happened to be. If someone was willing to throw a punch, the redhead was willing to break the arm attached to it."I'm just getting legally stalked is all."

"Because that sounds so much better." Kyo's tone said as much. "Why is this happening exactly, and why aren't your police friends running to the rescue?"

Shinichi laughed again. "Reporters and the like are all over this story. I have no idea why, but you know the media likes to make their facts up. The police can't do much." Well, they might have been able to do something, but Shinichi didn't want his pride to be any more compromised than it already was by trying to talk to them about this situation. He could handle things on his own just fine. He hoped.

Kyo hummed. "Doesn't give them any right to follow you around and annoy the hell out of you. How is a guy supposed to breathe with something like this hanging over his head? Have you even been going to school?"

"I didn't have much of a choice in that department."

"You've probably been sneaking in and out."

He had been. "What can you do?"

"Take a small vacation. We have a few days off this next week, don't we?"

Shinichi did, but he hadn't been aware that the same could be said for those living in the Sohma household. "I do." There was just one thing wrong with taking an unexpected vacation. "I don't intend to get any rest though. Two Kid heists are planned, one right after the other, and this time I'm fully expected to attend."

"Do you have to be there?"

Shinichi furrowed his brow. "What do you mean have to? Am I being forced to, you mean?"

"I mean, is anything bad going to happen to your careers, professional or academic, if you don't show up?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Good. Come stay over at my place."

Shinichi blinked. "But...I said...I told you..."

"Am I going to get a full sentence?"

As soon as the detective could remember how to form one, he was. "The Kid heists. I'm supposed to go."

"But you don't have to?"

"...no."

"And do you even want to?"

"...no I don't. I really don't."

When Kyo spoke again, he sounded a bit smug. "So why not go to a place where you actually get to enjoy yourself, with a guy who's a hell of a lot more fun than Kid, if I do say so myself. And, in fact, I am going to say it. I'm better company than Kid, so why not come see me?"

Shinichi not only did not have an argument, he didn't even want to think of one.

"If you're worried about people harassing you on the way, I could come and get you from Beika. I still remember where your house is, since you told me you're still living at the same place, and I doubt your little stalkers want to have a run in with me."

The offer was tempting but it was a bad idea. If anyone caught sight of Kyo now, the proverbial jig would be up. "I can get there on my own. I've been sneaking around all week anyway. One more covert trip isn't going to make much of a difference."

Kyo gave an amused chuckle. "Whatever."

"I guess I'll see you soon then." He couldn't stop the smile, and he couldn't keep the happiness from his voice.

Kyo found great satisfaction in this. "That's what I like to hear. And bring some extra blankets with you! If you're going to be hogging my bed, the least you could do is make sure we can both be warm."

And that was the beginning. That one phone call was all it really took to change everything. Shinichi took every free moment he had and spent it at Shigure's house, and Kyo never failed to bring up some emergency the detective had to take care of right away. Especially when there was a Kid heist scheduled. As far as the martial artist was concerned, he was in a battle against the thief for his best friend's attention. Kyo did not back down from a match, and he had only ever lost to one person when it really mattered. He wasn't about to make a habit out of it.

Shinichi didn't feel the need to say anything about it. A part of him was flattered that he was the one being fought over, as opposed to him doing the fighting for someone else's benefit. And, honestly, if he was going to have someone fight for him, he was glad Kyo was the one stepping up to the plate. The arrangements made didn't bother him, and he liked spending time over at the Sohma house. It wasn't as empty as his was, and he had good food with good company coupled with a warm bed and a wonderful roommate. He didn't have anything to complain about. He didn't think it was a problem.

So, naturally, it quickly became a problem.

AN: I don't want to promise anything because of how this thing has shifted from what I wanted in the past, but I think some rivals are going to end up meeting each other come next chapter.