"Kudo-kun, your guest is awake. Think twice next time before you bring home a curious thief," were the words that greeted Shinichi upon his return to consciousness. He immediately noted that he was in his usual semi-formal attire and that Shiho sounded decidedly annoyed. He wondered vaguely how she always seemed to know the instant he became awake, but it didn't register as important.

"Can't you deal with one thief?" he asked, not even bothering to hide the amusement in his voice, slowly opening his eyes. He didn't feel the urge to recoil from the lights that seemed almost too bright and glanced toward the still dark window. It had either been a very long time that he had been out or a short one. He hoped for the latter and assumed the former, mind already making excuses for his absence to give to the school, different ones depending on how long it had been. He noticed Shiho had already put both a splint and sling on his arm.

"It's only been four hours," Shiho said, and his mind stopped. It was completely quiet for a few moments before he was standing, ignoring the slight vertigo he experienced as he began to head toward the door. "You should have your arm properly checked in a hospital."

He stopped once again, ignoring the second remark. The hospital was secondary to the immediate concern of the thief in his neighbors' house. "How are we to explain their current location?"

Shiho smirked and said, "His current location." His suddenly indignant expression made her chuckle. She knew he had refused to gather information about the thief outside of their odd games and telling him the gender of the thief was a petty yet satisfying form of revenge for the entire situation he had created by being shot, breaking his arm and bringing a thief to her home. "I'll leave it up to you," she told him flippantly, already walking off toward downstairs where she had set up her lab. She probably knew how irritating it was to suddenly have no choice but to find out more information about the thief, if only to help the man out while he was injured.

He glared at her retreating back for a moment before opening the door, gritting his teeth against the pain of using not the broken arm but the one where his shoulder had taken a bullet. He would have to remember to ask Shiho for some painkillers later. She probably had forgotten on purpose.

He briefly considered donning his disguise as Truth once more, but decided that if Kid was being forced to reveal some of his secrets, it wouldn't be fair for Shinichi to hide himself. In the end though, he knew he was just stalling due to reluctance to unmask the thief.

No use delaying the inevitable though, and it was probably best to not leave the thief alone for long. He didn't want to think of the sort of mischief a thief like Kaitou Kid could get up to in the home of a slightly mad professor.

He needn't have worried. Agasa was currently regaling an increasingly confused teen with tales of some of his more spectacular experiments (all of them failures, which was why the stories seemed to feature a disproportionate amount of explosions).

"Professor, it's nice to see you again," Shinchi said, interrupting a burgeoning rant on the solar panels that the man was working on for a new skateboard for him and how they wouldn't stop exploding when charged for thirty minutes.

Agasa turned toward him, a grandfatherly smile on his face as he exclaimed, "Shinichi-kun, you're awake! You should still be asleep. It's not good for your health to be wandering about right now." The smile had morphed into a slight frown by the end of the scolding and Shinichi was smiling.

"Most of the things I do aren't good for my health," he said, affecting a nonchalant manner as he shrugged. "What's one more?"

"Shinichi-kun, you have to keep in top form. Imagine what the soccer team would say if their top player was out for the season!" They both knew that the soccer team was the least of Shinichi's worries, but Agasa had a habit of using trivial concerns to make his point. Shinichi was sure it was because Agasa understood that Shinichi could sometimes only see the bigger picture to the exclusion of all else.

Shinichi simply smiled at the man and turned his attention to the suspiciously quiet thief. He stared for a few moments at the all too familiar face. It took a few moments before he realized that he had been hit on by Kaitou Kid's civilian persona and reciprocated, and then he was blushing.

He worked his mouth for a few seconds, and Agasa subtly excused himself from the room. The door clicked shut as Kaito said, "Kudo Shinichi?" Shinichi took little comfort in the fact that Kaito sounded just as disbelieving as he himself felt.

He nodded numbly and asked, feeling redundant, "Kuroba Kaito?" Kaito nodded and they lapsed into silence, staring at each other.

He had known the man had been at the bank heist, but, somehow, it hadn't occurred to him that Kid was Kuroba Kaito. Shinichi felt like a bit of an idiot, but he had assumed Kid's civilian identity avoided attracting attention due to the man's nightlife. Instead, it made sense that the thief grabbed attention no matter what identity he was assuming.

After a few minutes, Kaito attempted to shift into a more comfortable position, an ill-disguised grimace overtaking his features, and Shinichi crossed the room, positioning Kaito and the pillows he had. "This doesn't count as our meet up, right?" Shinichi asked, vaguely surprised that he said anything at all and even more surprised at the words that came out of his mouth.

Kaito froze for a second before staring directly at Shinichi, face unreadable before he grinned. "Nah," he said, drawing the word out in a manner that would seem lazy if not for how tense the teen was. Shinichi wasn't sure if Kaito was just feeling paranoid or if he was trying to avoid aggravating his injuries with careless movements. He wasn't sure which he preferred either as the former was Kaito being uncomfortable but the latter was Kaito possibly being more seriously injured than he let on.

Shinichi didn't sigh, but it was a close thing. Things were so much less complicated when Kuroba Kaito was just a cute guy who flirted with him during a failed bank robbery and Kaitou Kid was just a mysterious thief who Shinichi had a cordial professional relationship who was trying to stop his own criminal organization.

Still, Kuroba Kaito was grinning flirtatiously at him, regardless of any secret identity. Perhaps it didn't need to be as complicated as Shinichi was making it in his head.

AN: So, this is the end of it. This entire thing kicked off because I wanted to write the interactions of their different identities, which is why it ends when the identities are revealed. I might be able to write more, but it'd probably be in a different story and delve into things like how Shinichi ended up as Truth. This story's focus was on their interactions, not their backstories or goals, so it wouldn't fit here if I do write anything more.

Leave a review to tell me what you think of the story! I had fun writing this one, and I hope you enjoyed it as well. Thank you for reading.

Ja ne!
~J. DCF