Author's Ramble: So, I'm pretty sure we all know the dere archetypes, right? In my spells of obsession, I've created a personal headcanon and well, I hope you guys catch glimpses of these two's archetypes in this fic.

Shinichi is a kuudere-dandere mix with a hint of tsun.

Kaito is a deredere and a tsundere but also a mild yandere.

I hope you like this even if it's been weeeeeeeeeks, Shana-Fujioka. As promised, to make up for the lack of fluff I've been dishing out lately.

EDIT: Sorry for those who have favorited, followed and left this story a review. I will admit that the omake was too awful for me to allow this.

So here's the edited version with a (hopefully) more believable ending.

Thank you and I apologize for the inconvenience.

"You are evil."

The accusation cut through the tension, amethyst eyes widening like a wound, as if the man in white they belonged to had been stabbed, registering shock, registering hurt.

"You wound me with your words, Meitantei-chan."

These moonlight matches they had on the rooftop stood at a stalemate, unsurprisingly. Yet what was surprising was what skittered and lingered in both amethysts and sapphires.

The azure eyes of the detective, in place of determination, focus, and amusement was shock, irritation, a hint of disgust, perhaps?

But what was truly evident in her usually cold, guarded eyes was fear.

Genuine fear.

The white magician tipped his top hat just so, covering the crack in his usually flawless, unbreakable façade broken by his own traitorous amethyst eyes. He didn't mean to upset her.

And the last thing he wanted was to scare her.

"You are evil." The sentence gained weight with the change in inflection, burdening the magician.

Her words were more insistent, more emphasized. Her voice was even, steady, certain, sure.

Yet intelligent, aged, wise, ancient eyes widened as if startled, her feet and legs with the power and agility and skill of a professional soccer player (even without her power-enhancing shoes), shuffled a few steps back, her back pressing against the wall.

Like a cornered bunny.

"Why the hell would you fucking do that?!"

With a lioness' roar.

Kaitou Kid sighed, relieved. He didn't scare her away, at least not as badly as he assumed. She was still his irascible, irritable Meitantei-chan.

His stern, strong Shinichi.

"The Brit bastard deserved it, Meitantei-chan." He smirked.

"Nobody deserves what you did to Saguru-kun." She sneered.

Surprising Kid was as possible as catching a falling star, but once again Kudou Shinichi proved the word impossible wasn't in her dictionary.

"'Saguru-kun'?" Kid spoke carefully, like spitting out shards of glass.

The seething detective's frigid fear heated into white-hot rage at the memory of her poor, unfortunate, undeserving friend.

Alloyed with her righteous anger was a sheen of pity.

Eyes the color of frozen rainwater, clear, cold and fresh, wide with horror yet narrowing at the edges with revulsion.

Kid was an arrogant, smug, conceited, reckless little wiseass but despite of all of that, his one redeeming quality was that despite all his tricks and pranks, he made certain that no one got hurt.

She knew that.

He never involved innocents. (Unless you count that one time as Edogawa Christie when he tasered her.)

The taskforce always got home, colorful and glittery like walking scrapbooks, but without a drop of blood lost.

The only bruises Nakamori-keibu got were on his ego.

And he always made sure to catch her when she fell off the roof.

No one gets hurt.

"Does your personal policy not extend to him?"

Kid wasn't listening.

From the second the Brit bastard's first name tumbled out of her smartass mouth, touched by her pink, sharp tongue, slipping over her soft, chapped lips, his smirk had come off clean.

His face was blank, whitewashed.

He stared listlessly, longingly at the girl as she glared at him with those eyes. Eyes he never failed to notice. Eyes he never stopped seeking. Eyes that unveiled to him what she strived to hide.

Eyes that never looked at him like that.

As an enemy.

"Since when were you on first-name basis with Tantei-san?"

He watched her expressions flicker, switch, change.

"Since when do you care?"

He had pieced together his shattered mask, built back the wall she had no idea she had breached. And held together what she didn't know she had broken.

Putting on his emotional costume and physical pose he hoped appeared devilishly debonair, he grinned.

"Of course I care about my detectives. I make it a point to keep tabs on you all."

The strange upturn of lips turned more devilish than debonair.

"Especially when they get along."

"You went too far this time, Kid."

"You never opposed my teasing before, Meitantei-chan."

"You never broke anyone's leg before."

"And here I was thinking I was the only one with a taste for drama. Hakuba-san's overreacting. It was only a sprain."

"He bled."

A polka-dotted and striped Hakuba Saguru greets her at the beginning of the heist. Apparently a routine occurrence pre-Kid heist recently, yet instead of driving Hakuba away in humiliation, it draws him to the heists come Hell or high water, in search of retaliation.

She finds the unusually bright Hakuba hilarious, and to everyone's surprise and Hakuba's shock, chagrin and comfort, causing her to collapse in an attack of laughter.

Five minutes later, as the usually stoic detective manages to stifle and limit her chortles into small hiccups of giggles, Hakuba chuckles as well, finally seeing an annoying amusement despite his predicament with being the focus of Kid's "creative" energy as of late.

Hey, if something can get Kudou Shinichi of all people to laugh then it must be funny, right?

It doesn't help that she has a refreshingly lovely laugh.

His reluctant chuckling rekindles her own laughter and it boils and bubbles out of her once more.

Then and there a smoke bomb explodes behind Hakuba and the coughing and the screaming (most likely Nakamori-keibu), foot stomps (the taskforce), more screaming (the taskforce getting trapped), more stomping (Nakamori-keibu running blindly in the smoke) and squishy-sticky noises.

Kid is early.

But what concerns her is the she doesn't hear Hakuba…

… coughing…

… yelling…

…or running.

Nothing.

Then the smoke clears, pools of gum and feathers everywhere, Nakamori-keibu coated in marbles after tripping a glue trap then falling into marbles that littered the floor, the taskforce hanging here and there with pink, sticky goop, all of them in costumes of baby animals from baby chicks to kittens and… is that Yamada-keiji dressed as a whale?

She almost laughs again. That stupid thief-

Hakuba.

There was no marbles-covered, feathered, tutu-toting, polka-dotted and striped Hakuba anywhere.

And no Maiden's Ring gem in the display case.

But there was a naked and unconscious, polka-dotted and striped Hakuba dangling from a rope made of his clothes from the skylight.

"Saguru-kun!"

Everyone who had gotten a hold of their bearings looked at her. Then at the point she was staring fixedly, horrified, at.

Nakamori-keibu orders the fluffy taskforce to get the unconscious, undressed detective down and dressed.

His lip was split, a taser burn on his stomach, a black bruise behind his bangs and his leg was bent a slightly unnatural angle.

A white shadow leaps across the skylight.

She runs after him.

"The heist was short tonight. You didn't even make an appearance." The detective highlighted by the moonlight spoke in the present.

"Awwwww~ Did you miss me then, Meitantei-chan?" He cooed, mildly concerned with how much he wished she would answer him that she did.

Her retort was shoved back down her throat by that look.

Nervous, defeated, hollow.

Hopeful.

Such a human expression. The concept of the cocky, overconfident Kaitou Kid so… un-Kid like… was jolting.

Taking a softer approach, she backed off the wall, walking towards the spaced-out magician.

Touching him, actually touching him, felt surreal. An impossibility made a reality.

A fleeting, fading reality as she placed a rough, tender palm on his white-clothed shoulder.

Oblivious that her touch was just as jolting, his face downcast shot up to see such an achingly tentative expression directed at him, the pale moonlight softening her sharpened features, dulling her anger.

"Kid… Why?"

Her voice was breaking-point fragile.

He covered her hand with his own, relishing their combined warmth through his gloves.

"Ne, Meitantei-chan, I have a proposition for you."

She blinked. He sighed.

"You're being weird. And you haven't answered my question."

She was stubborn. He hesitated.

Over the years, the detective and thief had somehow established a tenacious rapport, an unspoken kinship that made them mildly more relaxed, slightly more lenient with each other.

"If I offer you a way to ensure Tantei-san's protection during my heists, will you accept it?"

She eyed him warily.

"I'm listening."

Hakuba came to class two weeks later in crutches and was smothered with affection and concern by tens of adoring girls.

Brushing them aside with reassurances and half-hearted thanks along with his most charming smiles, he swung over to the morose magician tapping away at his phone.

"I heard you got pretty beaten up during Kid's last heist." Kaito called out not looking up from his phone as the Brit opened his mouth.

"Yes. You were in quite a petulant mood then, Kuroba-kun. I hope you possess more self-control now." Hakuba retorted, leaning against his left crutch to ease the pressure on his dislocated knee.

"I am not petulant." Kaito glared, never taking his eyes off the screen where he was most likely busily scanning articles of the last heist.

Hakuba noticed Kaito did not refute his not-so-subtle jab at the other being Kaitou Kid, and the detective made the wise decision not to mention it.

"What have you done to Shinichi-san?"

He would have been wiser, however, if he refrained from speaking the homecoming detective's name.

"At least you have a life outside of heists now, Hakuba. You've been making some new friends." Kaito continued to scroll down his phone.

"Yes, it's very rare to meet fellow investigators of such high caliber with discriminating taste in literature and an affinity for fine coffee." Hakuba drawled, watching the magician's eyes narrow to slits, vaguely perceiving the slightly abnormal pressure on the creaking phone.

"Which is why I would prefer that she isn't targeted by an overbearing, attention-seeking criminal with no sense of decorum or maturity whatsoever, so tell me what have you done and why is she avoiding me like the plague."

During the two weeks of Hakuba's leave of absence, his only visitors consisted of his other classmates, Aoko-kun, Koizumi-san, and, surprisingly, Hattori.

He was thankful to whatever deity watching over him that Kuroba didn't deem it necessary to further torture him with his presence, though it would seem that the prankster did not take the opportunity to further drive him down the road of insanity simply because he couldn't stand Hakuba's company; even more so than usual.

Yet what concerned him was that he had not seen Shinichi since that heist.

In fact, the Osakan detective's only motive for visiting him at home was due to her. Apparently, the girl had asked Hattori to check on him for her, to compensate for her absence.

x

"Man, ya really were busted up a bit, huh?" Hattori shook his head a little at the sight of Hakuba lain up.

"Kudou couldn't come. She says she's real sorry for what happened t' ya." The tanned detective dropped himself at the foot of the bed, bobbing slightly as the cushion recoiled from his weight.

"Is she all right?" The Brit propped himself up on his shoulders.

"Yeah. Not a drop, scratch or bruise on 'er. Pretty lucky, huh? Can't say the same fer ya though." The visitor guffawed, much to the bedridden's annoyance.

"Yes, Kid has been partial to me with his shenanigans lately." Hakuba, as a matured and well-developed individual, acknowledged his quarrel was with the moonlight magician and not with the Osakan detective.

"But Kudou's been weird. I told 'er to tag along if she wants to see ya, but wouldn't hear of it. Said you'd be better off she wasn't around. Told me to tell ya to lay off 'er for a while and things'll go all smooth-like again. Trust 'er, she said. And to stop calling 'er 'Shinichi'. Just 'cause her folks and your dad 're friends and they keep on tellin' the two'y ta call each other like that, doesn't necessarily mean ya have ta, she said."

Something was amiss but then Hattori, under Kudou's orders to keep him company for the day, started a rousing debate about Doyle and Ellery and the rest of the day was spent in the library.

Kuroba replied to him with a carefully careless silence.

"You two seem to have gotten really close. So close, in fact, that you think it's okay to call her by her first name, and vice versa."

"What are you talking about, Kuroba-" Hakuba furrowed his brow, his golden-brown eyes squinting slightly as if trying to make out the image of something he could almost perceive, at the penultimate moment during an investigation where-

-then it all fitted into place.

"You know, there are other ways to get her attention rather than act like someone who is more of those Shounen Tanteidan children's age group."

In Kaito's defense, he-

-he just really hated Hakuba.

But wasn't being dangled over the ledge of a fifty-story building really a justifiably appropriate punishment for a bruise, a taser burn, a sprained ankle and two fractured ribs?

"I have no qualms of letting you hang here until Nakamori-keibu comes or Hell freezes over, whichever comes first. So I'll ask you, very nicely may I add since I can and will drop you with no real consequence to my immortal soul since this is being done in protection over my friend, again and for the last time where is Hakuba and what the hell did you do to him this time?"

Kid steadfastly contemplated how did his hat stay perfectly in place, askew on top of his head, as Kudou Shinichi held him over Tokyo's city lights by his collar, her grip and her lower body slung over his abdomen, which was sprawled on the rooftop ledge, the only things keeping him from plunging 1,500 feet to the concrete sidewalk outside the corporate building the Muses' Tear was kept in.

"Kid." No one should be able to inject such a potent promise of unspeakable horrors worse than death in one word.

Kaito really, really hated Hakuba Saguru.

"I have done nothing to your most precious, Saguru-kun, Meitantei-chan, as per our agreement."

The next thing that registered in Kid's brain is the sting of the scratches on his cheek when the detective pulled him back onto the rooftop only to push him to the ground.

"Then why isn't he here?" Shinichi hissed accusatorily, aiming her infamous tranquilizer wristwatch at the notorious thief. Kid winced and he liked to believe it was because of his bleeding cheek and not because of the unofficial officer of the law silhouetted by the moon's light, appearing like a high archangel in God's courtroom, he was kind of sort of smitten with.

A polka-dotted and striped Hakuba Saguru greets her at the beginning of the heist. It has become an unhealthy habit of his lately, Kaito admits to himself if not to anyone else, as he blends into the shadows high above the two detectives.

His most precious and cherished Meitantei-chan was a treasure, all right. And his alone. After all, a thief, of all professionals, must know how to protect what is valuable to them.

Yet instead of deterring Tantei-san, it would seem he has egged him on. Tantei-san comes even more often and even earlier to his heists than he did before Kid began this unspoken war.

Though Kaito still can't help but conclude the return of the esteemed Heisei Holmes has something to do with Hakuba's increased drive.

Kid will not be defeated in this showdown.

She seems to find the unusually bright Hakuba hilarious, and to everyone's surprise and Hakuba's shock, chagrin and comfort, causes her to collapse in an attack of laughter.

Kid feels a tenaciously blooming pride that she finds his work entertaining, and grins in the shadows, relishing her laughter.

Five minutes later, as the usually stoic detective manages to stifle and limit her chortles into small hiccups of giggles, and the thief somehow strives to contain his loopy, dopey grin, Hakuba joins in on their (unknowingly) shared moment of mirth.

It wouldn't be that bad if she didn't find the object of her amusement's approval permission to laugh even louder and harder than before.

It doesn't help that she has a refreshingly lovely laugh.

Okay, since you two are soooooo "busy", then let the show begin!

Then and there a smoke bomb explodes behind Hakuba and the coughing and the screaming (most likely Nakamori-keibu), foot stomps (the taskforce), more screaming (the taskforce getting trapped), more stomping (Nakamori-keibu running blindly in the smoke) and squishy-sticky noises.

In the chaos, even Meitantei-chan doesn't notice the quick spark as he zaps Hakuba in the side. The fallen Casanova falls into his arms and Kid whisks him away as the lovely lady squints into the clearing fog, shifting side to side, most likely in search of her missing colleague.

As he swiftly weaves the Brit's brown overcoat, trousers and sweater into a series of long, coiled knots, he has half the mind to snatch the jewel as well.

Leaving Hakuba suspended over the jewel's former glass case like bait on a hook, Kid slips into the open skylight.

Then the smoke below dissipates and it is only Meitantei-chan is the only one who remains unscathed, like the lone survivor on a battlefield.

For a moment, he allows himself a brief look at her as she assesses her surroundings. The right side of her lips twitched as the left side creased in suppression.

Smile for me, Meitantei-chan, he thinks.

When she spots Yamada-san dressed as a whale, he sees her bite her inner right cheek, the flesh visibly sinking between her inner teeth.

Always the tease, he groans in his head yet simpers all the same.

Then she stops.

Her blue eyes never went so wide.

"Saguru-kun!"

Everyone who had gotten a hold of their bearings looked at her. Then at the point she was staring fixedly, horrified, at.

Kid, however, focuses on the high-pitched panic she calls out the name of his rival with.

Nakamori-keibu orders the fluffy taskforce to get the unconscious, undressed detective down and dressed.

As they lowered him down, Meitantei-chan does a quick examination.

He sees sorrow.

Then she whips her head to the glass ceiling, and he knows he has been discovered.

She runs after him.

"Stay away from Tantei-san."

"What?"

Kid brushes off dirt only he could see from the sleeve of his blazer, adjusts his top hat, straightens his coat, anything to avoid looking her in those all-knowing eyes and reveal his shameful, selfish motives.

"Tantei-san will remain untouched and unhurt- at least by me- if you my dearest and most darling detective, stay far, far away from him."

"And stop calling him by his first name. Unless you two are dating," He spits out the word as if the thought is a personal affront, which it kind of is. ", then you two shouldn't be on first name basis, for propriety's sake."

He jumps off into the night's embrace without waiting for a response and allows the wind to cool his heated face.

"As per our agreement," Shinichi quotes his words with thinly veiled vehemence. ", I stay away from Hakuba-kun, and you stop making him your personal buttmonkey. And if you stalk all of us as much as you say you do, then you should know that I've kept up my end of the bargain. Now I have a missing friend, and the guy who's responsible for making his life ten times worse underfoot. What do you think is the most probable conclusion?"

Well, technically he's under-forearm, Kid remarked wryly in his head as she applied even more pressure on the limb over his neck, the entirety of her slight, slim form weighting down his own body.

"I've followed your stupid rules. And now I don't even know where Hakuba-kun is. You could've encased him cement and dumped in the Atlantic Ocean for all I know."

"Do you really think I wanted to keep you away from Tantei-san because it would give me a better chance to get rid of him?" Kid choked out. Did the person he (very mildly) crushed (a bit, okay, just a tiiiiiiny bit) on really think that low of him?

"Well, why else would you practically blackmail me to reverse the day Hakuba-kun and I met if I could?" Shinichi spouted, simultaneously irritated and logical.

Which Kaito countered quite elegantly and poetically with his own brand of frustrated irrationality.

"Maybe it's because I happen to hate seeing the person I like being with someone else?!"

… okay, that may have not been the best way to confess to the girl you've been in love with for three years that you're jealous but let's just roll with it.

Shinichi sat up, rigid with surprise as her usually lightning-quick mind began to process.

Kaito lacked the ability to enjoy having his death goddess so delectably distracted sitting on top of him as his own brain sputtered and faltered, struggling between what the fuck did I just say and what the fuck is she going to say.

"I… Uhmmm… Okay… Wow." The girl muttered, her boiling anger now evaporated, a mist of confusion in its wake.

Kaito concluded that Kudou Shinichi was both the most adorable and also the most horrible person in the world if that's all she had to say to his confession.

"I didn't know you liked Hakuba-kun… like that."

Wait what?

"Excuse me?" Kaito propped himself up with his elbows, unwittingly sending the detective into the trough between his torso and his legs.

"I mean… It's okay that you do, but pranking him just to get him to notice you is a bit counterintuitive. Not to mention highly juvenile."

Remember when Kaito's brain almost became the first to actually die of mortification? Well, it succeeded the second time around.

"You don't have to worry about me. Hakuba-kun is just a really good friend, though I'm not sure if he swings that way. I could help you out though."

Kaito slid back into a laying down position, not caring at all about keeping his uniform immaculate, taking the matchmaker with him as she aligned herself on top of him, the top of her head snug underneath Kaito's chin.

It was both a wonderful dream and an awful nightmare.

"You could just tell me straight, you know. I can handle it." Kaito interjected miserably, contemplating giving up on the search for Pandora's Gem, packing up and living in Atlantis or Pompeii, because seriously, having the girl of your waking dreams all snuggly in your arms at three a.m. on a random rooftop underneath a blanket of stars while she thinks you're gay for the guy you've been torturing because you think they're dating is kind of the worst kind of romantic purgatory ever.

She couldn't possibly be that dense, not with a full-out love confession right there in the open.

"But it'll be tricky, since I think he has a thing for Nakamori-keibu's daughter." Shinichi mused, tapping a finger to her chin, carefully crafting a variety of ways to get the detective and the thief together. Maybe some of Sonoko's old manga inventory during the rise of Kid X Hakuba slash might give her some ideas…

"He-What?" Kaito wasn't sure what was more alarming: That Shinichi seemed to seriously believe he was gay for Hakuba or that the Brit bastard was making moves on his best friend behind his back.

He lifted his head only to let it fall back with a loud thump. Leave it to Shinichi to have everyone else's feelings all figured out.

Except for his.

"Hey, don't be jealous." Her friendly, it's-going-be-okay-pal pat on his shoulder made him want to go through with the Atlantis and/or Pompeii plan.

"Aoko, was it? Aoko-san likes her childhood friend, at least that's what Hakuba-kun told me, so you still have a shot. May-"

On second thought, getting out of the friendzone by kissing her might also be the most upfront way of proving you are a hundred percent heterosexual for her as well.

OMAKE

"Drat."

Kaito fumbled with the same card trick for the fifteenth time in a row.

"Drat." He cursed as the cards flew out of his hands and showered his room.

He tossed himself into the unmade bed and groaned.

Great job tonight, Kid.

A tapping on the veranda door made Kaito curious enough to get up instead of lamenting his great and epic fail with the love of his life.

What happened to suave and debonair? What happened to the unattainable and unreachable? What happened to the being that was more mystery than man? More legend than substance? More myth than human?

You completely captivated her with that move, Kid. Way to go. Five stars. A+.

It didn't completely sink in with Kaito to question why anyone would be on his tiny second-storey balcony at five a.m. as he slid the door open.

He stumbled back into his bed in shock as the full moon silhouetted the detective leaning against the balcony's ledge, her arms crossed over her chest.

"You don't kiss someone you've shot at multiple times before and even tasered once, then leave without so much as an explanation, Kid. And you've got everyone thinking you were a gentleman thief, which is still contradictory but whatever, you fraud."

Kaito blinked brilliantly and gaped quite eloquently in response.

"How did you find me?"

"Evading the question."

She stepped quietly into his bedroom, her shadow looming over him.

Kaito felt very dominated and it wasn't even in the sexual-innuendo type of way.

He officially deemed his status as "future torture victim".

"Hakuba-kun has often spoken to me about a classmate of his who (1) matches Kaitou Kid's physique, (2) looks very much like him, which is slowly being conclusively decided to be his real face and not just a clever mask since he still looks quite a lot like he did eight years ago (3) is a passable magician and (4) is a "smug, arrogant and conceited egomaniac with no decorum"."

Kaito gulped hard. Why do I love this girl again?

Shinichi tipped her head to the right, moonlight shadowing half her face while making the other half glow, her silver-sapphire eyes following the smirk of her lips.

Okay, I remember.

"Maybe we can work out an arrangement." She offered enigmatically, her bangs shielding her eyes from his scrutiny.

Kaito collected the shattered shards of his cool.

"Well, there's this Edgar Allan Poe Phantasmagoria this coming Saturday..."

A bouquet of white chrysanthemums grew from his arms.

"... would you like to go?"

Shinichi eyed the flowers, then the magical gardener.

"Magic and mystery in one?" She arched a delicate eyebrow in amused consideration.

Kaito continued to futilely dazzle her with his grin.

"Hakuba-kun mentioned that show before. Maybe we can all go together, along with Nakamori-keibu's daughter."

Kaito felt a part of his dignity die.

"It could be like a double-date."

The word "date" revived his hopes.

"So you trust me not to kill Hakuba?"

Tilting her head to the other side, her long raven-brown locks following their mistress' dictations as Kaito knew he would as well.

"I trust you to behave if you want this to work out." Shinichi took one star-white flower from the bunch.

"Deal?"

Kaito slipped the bloom from the girl's finger tips and slid it over the shell of her ear.

"Deal."

Author's Ramble: So, what do you think, Shana-Fujioka? I hope you liked this.

I feel like that omake was shit. (EDIT: Well, not so much anymore.)

Another headcanon of mine is that Shinichi is a closet yaoi fangirl that may sometimes cause her to have the most hilarious misunderstandings.

Also, Kaito goes into creepy stalker mode when he gets jealous. Like Juvia from "Fairy Tail".

I apologize for my shitty kansai accent. Like Shinichi, I can't speak, write or even think in a way that gives the dialect justice. I truly do apologize.

I'm currently getting all the other fics I have jumbled up in my head, out of my system first, before I begin posting the sequel to "Hate".

Also, does anyone here have any fanart suggestions about these two? Something dramatic and angsty, maybe?