CRAP ENDING BECAUSE THAT'S HOW I ROLL. (i'm sorry)
Fuming, Kaito tore off the latex mask, tapping his foot against the carpeted floor of the elevator. His suit chafed as he crossed his arms across his chest, but Kaito ignored the discomfort in favor of glaring at the dimly lit button for the twenty-second floor.
What had Shinichi been thinking? He had been minutes, an hour at most, away from getting everything out of Yamamoto, and Shinichi's response had been to send Hattori to come pick him up with some contrived "your mother's had a heart attack" excuse that had been obviously a ruse? What was he trying to say? That he didn't trust Kaito to complete the job? That couldn't be true, considering the sheer number of times they'd worked together; Shinichi knew Kaito's abilities and limitations forwards and back, maybe even better than Kaito knew them himself, and he had trusted Kaito with missions far more dangerous and delicate than this one.
There was no logical reason Shinichi had pulled back, Kaito thought, seething, and stabbed at the button again.
He was still bristling as the elevator doors slid open meekly and he stomped towards their apartment, throwing the door open to find Hattori and Hakuba arranged in all-too-casual positions at the kitchen table and Shinichi still sprawled over the couch with a small family of computers and monitors sitting on the table in front of him.
"What," Kaito enunciated, tossing the mask at the largest screen – his aim was true, and it landed on one corner with a splat, "the hell was that, Shinichi?"
Shinichi straightened, the line of his throat undulating as he swallowed. Kaito hated how his gaze instinctively narrowed in on that. "It was a tactical retreat," he answered, voice steady, and Kaito scowled.
"Oh, that's what we're calling it when you pull out of a mission that would've gone off perfectly if you hadn't interfered?" he snapped, toeing off his shoes and stalking across the room to tower over Shinichi. He felt his mouth twitch downwards. "No. Wrong. I'm not in the mood to accept bullshit. Try again."
Breathing in deeply, Shinichi retained his infuriating, neutral expression. He met Kaito's enraged stare with grace, the faintest, almost imperceptible twitch of his fingertips the only indication of any emotion. "What if I said I didn't think you could pull it off? That you wouldn't have been able to do it?"
Kaito felt his breath stutter. At the table, Hakuba and Hattori both gave sharp inhales.
It took him a moment to find his voice. "No," he heard himself saying, as if from a distance. "I just said I wouldn't take any bullshit. That's not an answer." He gestured behind him. "This? This mission was low risk, for us. Hattori was there to bail me out if something did happen. The target had no idea I wasn't the lure. We were surrounded by people. We have been on countless more dangerous missions."
On the couch, Shinichi remained wordless. His eyes didn't leave Kaito's, not for a second.
Laughing in disbelief, Kaito threw his hands in the air. "And don't you dare say you didn't think I'd be able to do the acting right. If you'll recall, I successfully pulled off a transaction disguised as Okino Yoko during our first mission together, and even then, when you didn't know me, you didn't question my abilities." He exhaled, the tension bleeding from his shoulders as he turned towards his bedroom. "I could've gotten the information out of Yamamoto in under an hour, Shinichi."
There was a tense silence for a moment, during which Hattori shifted with unease and Hakuba shook his head, prim and proper. Kaito continued to glare at Shinichi, shoveling all concerned thoughts of how odd and shaken he looked to the far reaches of his mind. It wasn't time for his stupid infatuation to act up –
Shinichi abruptly opened his mouth. "Would that have been before or after you slept with him?"
"What?" Caught off guard, Kaito blinked rapidly. Shinichi's hands were fisted in his loose sweatpants, the material straining in his hold. He bowed his head, obscuring his expression from Kaito's view. Kaito scowled. "What do you mean, 'before or after I slept with him'?"
"The information," Shinichi clarified, and maybe it was just Kaito, but it sounded almost as if he was gritting his teeth. He lifted his chin, and Kaito startled at the vulnerable dismay in his eyes. "Would you have gotten the information before or after you slept with him?"
Speechless, Kaito could do nothing but stare.
They were interrupted by the sound of chairs scraping against the floor. Kaito whirled to see Hakuba and Hattori getting to their feet, eyebrows lifted half-knowingly, half-uncomfortably.
"Well," Hattori announced, "I think that's our cue to leave, isn't it?"
Hakuba nodded, rolling his eyes. "For once, you're right, Hattori-kun," he commented, mouth pressed in a firm, disapproving line, and Hattori started squawking, even as he shoved past Hakuba to reach the door first.
"What the hell are you trying to say, you asshole –"
"Your language is appalling as ever," Hakuba tutted as he elbowed Hattori out of the way, and the front door shut on Hattori's hiss of rage.
Kaito and Shinichi were left in silence.
"Well," Shinichi began after a moment, rising to his feet without looking at Kaito, "I think that's enough for tonight, don't you? I'm just going to go to bed now." He cleared his throat, making his way around the couch. His movements were uncharacteristic – stilted, almost, the walk of someone trying desperately to hide their distress. "And I already reported in to headquarters about the mission failure. I think we should be okay on paperwork until tomorrow, at least –"
"Shinichi," Kaito interrupted, with a severe lack of politeness, but he couldn't help himself, "did you think I was going to – to sleep with Yamamoto to get the information?"
Shinichi gave no verbal response, but the flush that began to creep upwards from the neckline of his shirt spoke volumes.
"Unbelievable." Kaito gaped.
"In my defense," Shinichi retorted, casting Kaito a wounded glare, "You were hanging all over him, okay, and you were receptive to his advances, and there was all that – that petting and leaning in close –"
"Shinichi," Kaito cut in with deliberate slowness as he tried to understand what was happening, feeling out of sorts and a bit as if he'd been clobbered with a two-by-four, "I was acting like Takeda. You know, the lure I was disguised as? He's kind of an airhead, from the file I read on him. I mean, it hadn't said anything about – er – Yamamoto's obsession with him, but I figured Takeda had probably just been playing hard to get with him. So I… just…" He broke off into a bewildered laugh. "Did you really… think I'd…?"
Yet again, Shinichi didn't say anything, but from the way his ears were turning steadily redder, Kaito figured he'd hit the target.
"You do realize," he said, still a little disbelieving, "that if he even kissed me, he'd realize I was wearing a latex mask?" Shinichi's head shot up, eyes wide, and Kaito took that to mean that he hadn't, in fact, thought of that.
"Considering that," Kaito went on, eyebrows climbing his forehead with every passing second as he began to question his partner's sanity, "how could I have slept with him?" He slanted his head at Shinichi. "Also, my physical stature is different from Takeda's. I mean, I did well enough wearing the suit because it kind of hid the fact that I've got, like, actual muscle, and I sort of bent a little to make myself look shorter, but if I were naked, it would've become obvious that I wasn't Takeda. And then there would be the whole difference between the skin color of the mask and my actual coloring."
"Well," Shinichi mumbled, but didn't seem to be able to get any farther.
Kaito sighed. None of this made any sense. Shinichi had halted the mission because he thought Kaito would actually sleep with Yamamoto? That was ridiculous – surely Shinichi had been aware that Kaito didn't do honeypot missions; it was one of the stipulations he'd had added into his contract when he'd first joined – so why had he done that? It almost sounded as if – as if he cared who Kaito slept with, which implied –
Wait.
Something warm filled Kaito's chest, and he took several cautious steps towards Shinichi. Shinichi didn't move, neither flinching back nor leaning in, allowing Kaito to come to a stop in front of him. Shinichi had insanely long eyelashes, he noticed in a distant sort of way.
"Shinichi, why," he began, then found he couldn't continue when Shinichi met his eyes at this distance. He licked his lips – and Shinichi's gaze darted down to watch, ugh – and tried again. "Why would it matter if I slept with him?"
The abrupt anger that unspooled in Shinichi's eyes almost made Kaito retreat, but he managed to hold his ground. "Shinichi," he prompted, softer now, and Shinichi narrowed his eyes with something close to agitation.
"It's not – right. I don't want to think about you doing that kind of thing," he grumbled, eyes skittering over Kaito's face, passing down his neck and chest and torso before returning up, and Kaito shook his head.
"That's not an answer," he murmured, taking a chance to lift one hand and cup Shinichi's cheek – Shinichi tensed in his hold, and Kaito, crestfallen, almost let go, but then Shinichi relaxed, pushing into his touch the slightest bit. His expression, when he locked gazes with Kaito, was somehow both helpless and all-consuming, stealing Kaito's breath and the remnants of his sanity.
"You know what I mean," he told Kaito, who was becoming more and more conscious of Shinichi's proximity in too many ways – the fan of breath over his skin, the silk-softness of Shinichi's cheek under his thumb. "You always know."
"Do I," Kaito managed, and for one breathless moment, neither of them said anything.
And then Shinichi lunged forward, his hot, hot mouth biting into Kaito's with a total lack of finesse or restraint or refinement, the opposite of Shinichi himself, and Kaito let himself drown in it, let himself be overwhelmed by the searing sensation of Shinichi's hands gripping at Kaito's hips and the assertive press of Shinichi's tongue to his.
They broke apart gasping, Kaito's hands tucked into the warm places behind Shinichi's ears and Shinichi's thumbs working at the twin juts of Kaito's hipbones, and for half a second it was awkward, a moment in which Kaito wondered if he was dreaming.
Then Shinichi mumbled, fingers pinching and tugging reverently at the bespoke suit Kaito still wore, "God, this suit alone is going to kill me, I swear," and Kaito laughed, swooping in to steal another kiss, which inevitably led to another, and another, and another.
There was a brief scuffle over which bedroom they would use, but in the end, Kaito managed to manhandle Shinichi onto his bed. He managed to make Shinichi's frown disappear by promising, "Next time we'll use yours," directly into Shinichi's ear, which made Shinichi shudder and make a quiet sound.
But then Shinichi leaned up, smiled crookedly, and corrected, "Next time we'll use ours."
And, well, Kaito had always been weak for crooked smiles and Kudou Shinichi, so he bent forward and agreed, "Damn right."
(He never quite forgave Shinichi for pulling him out of that mission, though.)
– omake –
"Remember the time –" Kaito began, conversationally, as he stirred sugar into his coffee, but before he could finish, Shinichi threw a heavy volume of The Complete Sherlock Holmes at him. Kaito, predictably, dodged, managing not to spill a single drop of his coffee even as he made ridiculous, indignant noises.
Shinichi glared, going to retrieve the book and slot it back into place on the bookshelf. Sometimes he really hated his fiancé.
Spluttering, Kaito placed his cup down on the coffee table in front of him. "How rude," he gasped, and Shinichi rolled his eyes.
"You're starting to sound like Hakuba," he commented, and Kaito made a mock horrified sound.
"Why, I never!"
Sighing, Shinichi made his way to the armchair situated across from Kaito's. He swept his gaze across the familiar rows and rows of books of the old family library. Even though he was in his own home – ancestral home, at least – he felt on edge, discomfited. It made sense, though, all things considered.
Kaito took a sip of his coffee before setting it back down, adopting a prim air. "Anyway," he began again, "as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, do you remember the time you pulled me out of that mission with the drug overlord even though I could've gotten the information because you thought I was going to sleep with him?"
God, sometimes Shinichi wondered why he'd ever bothered to start dating this idiot.
"Yes," he answered, "I do, in fact, remember. Because it led to the start of our relationship. Three years ago."
"Sure, sweet thing," Kaito shrugged, imperious, "but it was also a very terrible assumption to make, especially when you knew I didn't sleep around for mission. Well, at least Hattori and Hakuba went back in and cleaned it all up. Though there were a lot more explosions and potentially lethal arguments because of that, I suppose." He gave a shit-eating grin. "It could've been so much cleaner, love. Neater. If only you hadn't been so jealous."
Shinichi looked at him askance. "Why do I do this to myself," he mumbled. "Why do I voluntarily commit myself to a pet-name-using, grudge-holding, stupid-looking former criminal?"
"Because you love me, sunshine," Kaito grinned, and Shinichi groaned.
"Unfortunately, I do," he agreed blithely, and was rewarded when Kaito flushed, clearly not expecting that response. It was Shinichi's turn to grin. Flustering Kaito was one of his favorite pastimes.
"So," Kaito said, hurrying to find a new topic, "when – when are your parents going to come?" He shifted, straightening his posture. "I can't believe this is the first time I'm actually meeting them. I've known you for what, six years?"
"They'll be here soon," Shinichi answered, glancing at his watch. Any moment, now. He cringed a little, though, at the thought of his parents actually arriving. He probably should've told Kaito, but… He cleared his throat. "To be honest, um… it's not the first time you're meeting them. Sorry."
Kaito didn't have time to ask what he was talking about before the door to the library swung open and Yukiko came barreling through the doorway, hair swinging behind her in perfect curls. Yuusaku was right after her, adjusting his glasses across the bridge of his nose and tugging his tie into place.
"Kai-chan!" Yukiko squealed, and swooped in to kiss Kaito on both cheeks. Kaito was frozen in shock, understandably, as Yuusaku smiled politely at him and held one hand out.
"Hello again, Kuroba-kun," he greeted, inclining his head as Kaito reached out to shake his hand numbly. "Nice work on the Dubai mission. I read the report personally – although I've been doing that ever since you partnered with Shinichi."
"Shinichi," Kaito choked out. Shinichi resisted the urge to rub at his sinuses.
"Yes, Shinichi," Yuusaku confirmed. "My son." He raised his eyebrows. "I believe you're acquainted?"
"Oh, Yuusaku," Yukiko chided, swatting at her husband with a giggle. "You're scaring the poor boy. Now, now, Kai-chan, let's talk about the wedding! How about May? I hear we might be able to get Bell Tree Tower on a Saturday!"
"Shinichi," Kaito managed, reaching out to grab at Shinichi without breaking eye contact with Yuusaku. "Shinichi, your parents are the heads of Night Baron."
Shinichi winced. Yes, he probably should've said something, at least during the year they'd been engaged, but, well, was there any good way of saying, "My parents run the spy agency we work for" without sounding insane? No. There wasn't.
He debated how to answer the question (statement?) before settling on a casual, "Yes."
"And you didn't tell me," Kaito affirmed. He blew out a breath. "Thanks. So much." He coughed. "Uh. Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Kudou. I, ah… it's nice to… talk to you about things other than terrorist attacks and, you know. Bombs. Mass murder." He laughed awkwardly.
(Incidentally, Kaito never forgave Shinichi for not telling him about his parents, either.)
...aaAND that's it. I got to the end and realized that I didn't actually have that much... spy...ness? Spying? Yeah. Sorry. I may revisit this idea later on so I actually write spy!Shinichi and spy!Kaito in action.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this story even just a little (if you did, please consider dropping me a review!) and I'll see you all later! - Luna