Happy Halloween, everyone! Here's the last part. - Luna

day five.

Shinichi trudged up to Kaito's temporary dressing room with misery boiling in his stomach. He hadn't slept well the previous night, lying on his side staring at his alarm clock until nearly two in the morning with the whole thing with Kaito playing on loop in his mind's eye. He felt partially dead as he knocked on the door and let himself in.

Himari was fixing Kaito's hair, chattering on as Kaito fiddled with his phone. Miho was sitting on the couch watching them, her bag a conspicuously different color and style than usual. Shinichi winced and cleared his throat.

"Good morning," he said, trying for a weak smile.

Both Miho and Himari turned to glance at him and offer him varied greetings (Himari smiled and waved; Miho made a point to pull her purse into her lap with a protective glare). Kaito, on the other hand, didn't as much as twitch, remaining intent on whatever he was doing on his phone without bothering to look up. Himari gave him a puzzled look, which he also ignored. Shinichi felt as if someone had kneed him in the stomach.

"Kai-chan, your boyfriend's here," Himari sing-songed and prodded him in the cheek. Shinichi cringed so hard he worried that he'd pulled something. Kaito made a noncommittal noise.

"Not my boyfriend," he replied coolly, and tapped at the screen of his phone hard enough that Shinichi heard the sound of his finger hitting the glass from across the room. It was like a gunshot. Himari's eyebrows skidded up her forehead. She glanced between Shinichi and Kaito with growing unease before she twisted to look at Miho, who was appraising the scene with a visibly rising degree of concern.

"Well, this is awkward," Himari commented after a minute of stony silence. She shook her head as she went back to working handfuls of gel into Kaito's hair. "And just yesterday you were so loved up." She sighed. "I don't understand men and their emotional immaturities."

"Neither do I," muttered Kaito under his breath, lifting his eyebrows pointedly. Shinichi felt overheated all the way up to his ears.

"Anyway," he cut in, trying to pretend he wasn't feeling stupidly and arrogantly hurt—he knew, better than anyone, that he deserved everything Kaito was and wasn't giving him. "Watanabe-san, could I talk to you when…" He glanced at Kaito, faltered at his vacant expression, and finished, timidly, "when you're free?" Himari caught his eye in the mirror and nodded. She was wearing less makeup than usual today, just lipstick and a hint of eyeliner.

"Yeah, sure," she answered, tongue sticking out of her carmine-painted mouth as she worked at a stubborn curl behind Kaito's left ear. "I should be done here in about ten minutes, but then I have to supervise the shoot because Kai-chan's doing a bunch of different looks and I have to restyle him a few more times. Oh, and then he has that midmorning talk show afterwards, so I'll definitely have to fix him up then…" She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "Uh, how about nine-thirty? We can meet in here."

"That would be fine," agreed Shinichi, relieved, and made to leave the room. He paused, though, with his hand on the doorknob. "Would you happen to know when Suzuhara-san is free, by any chance?"

Himari dropped the bottle of gel she'd been holding, narrowly missing her foot. She turned to give Shinichi a confused look.

"Why… would I know that?" she asked slowly, and Shinichi shrugged.

"I was just asking on the off chance that you did," he replied before he left, closing the door behind him. He stood in the hall for a moment, catching his breath. Faintly, he heard Himari ask, "What was that all about, Kai-chan? Why are you so mad at Shin-chan?" and decided to leave before he heard Kaito's response. It would only depress him.

After he made it back to the lobby, he hesitated for a moment before he started down the hall opposite the one leading to Kaito's. He'd only been down this way once before, one of the first days he'd started coming to the station, but he was fairly certain that one of the doors on the left side of the hall lead to Suzuhara's dressing room.

Standing at the entrance to the corridor, he tried to decide how to go about it—knocking on every door would undoubtedly be an annoyance to anyone inside who wasn't Suzuhara, but otherwise he didn't have much of a choice, as he couldn't remember which room exactly was Suzuhara's—but he was saved when a far door opened and Suzuhara stepped out, thankfully fully dressed this time. He started at the sight of Shinichi, though, before he pasted on a hesitant, questioning smile.

"Insp—Shinichi-kun," he greeted, clearly wondering why Shinichi had sought him out. He shut the door behind him and jogged over. "You're a ways from Kuroba-san, aren't you? Was there something you wanted?"

Shinichi nodded, putting on his most disarming expression.

"Oh, nothing big. I was just wondering if you were free around nine-thirty? In about"—Shinichi glanced down at his watch—"an hour and a half? I have some things I want to go over with you." He studied Suzuhara's face, casual. "Watanabe-san will be there, too."

If he hadn't already been looking at Suzuhara's face, Shinichi might've missed the hint of panic that flickered across his handsome features like a fish darting through shallow rapids. As it was, though, he saw Suzuhara corral himself within an instant and nod nonchalantly, his Hollywood smile firmly intact.

"I think I'll be able to make it. I just have a little errand I need to run, but I should be free at nine-thirty," he said, affecting casual interest. "Where are we meeting?"

"The dressing room beside Kaito's. You know the one." Shinichi gave him one last nod before he waved and started back down the hallway, dodging an intern who scurried past him on the right. "I'll see you there. Remember, nine-thirty." Suzuhara waved back.

"Right. See you later, Shinichi-kun."

An hour and a half. With a sigh, Shinichi pushed through the front doors of the station and headed down the front walk. He probably could manage to get to the police station, pick up and discuss the results of the analyses he'd sent in to the forensics lab, make it back to the studio, and have time left over to agonize over the Kaito situation.

Just what he needed. More time to hate himself.

Nine-twenty found Shinichi sitting on the couch in the dressing room, rubbing at his forehead and staring unseeingly at the lab report in his hand. He'd had his suspicions, of course, but having them proven true like this was a different story. What was he going to do? Especially when Kaito—

Unexpectedly, the door to the room creaked open, and without thinking, Shinichi looked up just in time to make eye contact with Kaito, who look shocked and also slightly traumatized at the sight of him. Shinichi, for his part, was so startled that he inhaled too quickly and choked on his own saliva, breaking into hacking coughs that had him doubled over.

Wow, Shinichi thought with some revelation, he had never truly realized how embarrassing he was as a person until this very moment.

"You okay?" Kaito asked, sounding more amused than angry, which was a far better sign than Shinichi had let himself hope for. Still making strangled sounds into his elbow, Shinichi hazarded a look up into his face. Kaito was still hovering in the doorway, now watching Shinichi with one eyebrow creeping upwards. He was in a very editorial pair of patched-up jeans and a slouchy beanie with PUNK embroidered across the front in violent red, and he was wearing a pair of round, clear-lensed glasses, which he plucked off his face and began to fidget with when Shinichi continued to stare at him for a solid minute.

"I'm fine," wheezed Shinichi when he had regained the ability to breathe. He cleared his throat a few times. "Uh, I just wasn't expecting you. Sorry."

A heavy silence descended, filing the room like so much poison gas.

"I didn't think you'd be here yet," Kaito admitted after a moment. He shuffled towards the makeup counter to pick up his phone, which he must've left before going to the shoot. "Otherwise… you know." He pocketed his phone before he made for the door, oozing discomfort.

Shinichi bit his lip, fighting down the urge to say something. In the end, he couldn't stop himself from calling, "Wait," just as Kaito reached the door. Coming to a jerky halt, Kaito paused to tilt his face towards Shinichi.

"I," began Shinichi before he took a deep breath. "I don't…" He couldn't figure out how to get the right words unstuck from the back of his throat. He didn't even know what the right words were. The longer he sat there with his mouth open, the more shuttered Kaito's expression turned. With a groan of frustration, Shinichi put his face in his hands.

"I don't want you to hate me," he mumbled, muffled. He would've been worried Kaito hadn't heard him if Kaito's breath hadn't hitched.

"I don't hate you," Kaito murmured, his voice soft. Shinichi peeled his fingers away from his eyes to find that he was looking at Shinichi with a sad, slanting curve to his mouth, eyebrows swept together. "Shinichi, I don't know what you think of me or who you think I am, but I'm in love with you." Shinichi flinched, but Kaito continued without stopping. "For me, that means that I don't start hating you overnight. Even if I think you're making a mistake."

"I'm sorry," Shinichi said helplessly, and Kaito dragged in a breath.

"No, I'm the one in the wrong," he sighed, which wasn't what Shinichi had wanted or expected him to say. He tugged the beanie off his head, revealing the dark sutures still stark against his forehead. "I know I can be—uh—overbearing. After yesterday, I talked to someone about it, and she pointed out that you were right, we've only known each other for a little, and I was moving too fast. I just—I fell really hard for you, is all." He met Shinichi's eyes squarely. "But I'm willing to wait for you to catch up."

Shinichi stared at him for a second, feeling his face doing something strange, before he let out a breathless laugh. Kaito smiled hesitantly.

"Of course that would be your conclusion when faced with me and my hang ups. You want to wait me out?" Shinichi shoveled a hand through his hair. He didn't realize he was smiling dopily until he glanced up and Kaito's expression flashed with pleasant surprise. "You know I'm not going to make it easy."

"I don't want easy; I want Kudou Shinichi," Kaito replied, so unapologetic that Shinichi flushed. The grin he gave Shinichi wasn't exactly the same as it had been yesterday morning, but at least he wasn't refusing to meet Shinichi's eyes like earlier. He moved away from the door, sitting down on the couch beside Shinichi, though he left a respectable amount of space between them. "You're worth the wait, darling."

"And you're an incorrigible flirt," Shinichi retorted, though there was no heat in his voice. Kaito laughed.

"I think you like me like that," he answered, nudging Shinichi's knee with his. His expression clouded when he realized what he'd done. "Hey—is it all right if I…" He huffed in the back of his throat and scraped a bit of hair out of his eyes when Shinichi blinked at him. "How do you want us to act, going forward?"

"I want us to be friends," Shinichi said, hesitating. He didn't want Kaito to stop touching him or holding his hand, but at the same time, that wasn't exactly the behavior of friends, was it? He shot Kaito a tentative look. "The way we've been is fine with me, if you're all right with it." Kaito eyebrowed at him, incredulous.

"You do realize I've been flirting my hardest, right? I don't know if you missed all the roses and ogling, but there's definitely been non-friendly flirting happening here."

Shinichi blushed.

"I know, but." He couldn't quite unglue his tongue enough to admit that he was a horrible, selfish person who wanted Kaito to act like nothing had happened. And what even did he want, if he wanted Kaito to flirt with him but still keep him at a distance? Wasn't he the worst, begging for attention while insisting that he wasn't ready for a relationship? Why were feelings so hard?

Kaito seemed to recognize his internal struggle, because he laughed a little, shaking his head.

"You drive a hard bargain, Shinichi."

"I just—" Shinichi began, but he was interrupted by a hesitant knock on the door. A moment later, Suzuhara poked his head into the room, expression going vaguely uncomfortable when he saw the two of them on the couch.

"Uh, we were supposed to meet now, right, Shinichi-kun?" His gaze honed in on Kaito. "Not that I'm not absolutely thrilled to see you, Kuroba-san, but don't you have something to film? I thought you were going to be on that morning show with that blonde lady. The Wake-Up Call or whatever it's called." Kaito shrugged.

"I would, but apparently one of the talk show hosts managed to land a last-minute interview with some American musician guy who's only in Japan until his flight leaves at one—how they did it, I don't know—so I've been pushed over, since I'm just a boring domestic actor. Some staffer ran over from their station to apologize to me and give me a consolatory fruit basket." Kaito eyed him for a moment before he got to his feet, slow and reluctant. "I guess I should go and let you two have your private conversation."

The way he said "private" as if it were a dirty word made Shinichi want to roll his eyes and, in a distant part of his mind, wonder if Kaito was actually still managing to be jealous of Suzuhara. He reached out and caught Kaito's wrist, dropping it quickly when Kaito jerked and whirled to look at him with wide eyes.

"Actually, you might want to stay for this," he said, resolutely avoiding Kaito's eyes. He sensed rather than saw Kaito frown in bemusement, glancing between Suzuhara and Shinichi and blinking quickly.

"Is this the part when you tell me that the whole conversation we just had was a joke to get my hopes up and the truth is that you're actually going to ride off into the sunset with Suzuhara and leave me heartbroken?" he asked cagily.

Shinichi stared at him, suddenly sure that he had been dropped on his head as a child. Suzuhara looked as though he were feeling similar sentiments.

"No," Shinichi answered, the you idiot going implied. "You were there when I asked Watanabe-san to come here at nine-thirty, weren't you?" He paused. "Where is Watanabe-san, by the way?" Kaito shrugged.

"I don't know. After she styled this last outfit," he gestured down at what he was wearing, "she disappeared. I think she got a call or something? She didn't tell me what was going on before she left, at least." Shinichi frowned.

"Well, okay. She might just be late. We can catch her up when she shows," he decided, even as suspicion bloomed in a far corner of his mind. Clearing his throat, he pulled the report out from where it had gotten crumpled underneath his leg. "Yesterday, I was informed that someone left an envelope for me in Kaito's dressing room. Considering that there had been an attempt on my life the previous day and there was no sender specified on the envelope, I took the cautious route and had the forensics lab at the police station open and inspect its contents." He looked meaningfully at Suzuhara. "The envelope was stuffed with broken glass. The only reason the lab techs didn't get cut was because I specified that they were to wear thick gloves and be very, very careful when opening the envelope. If I'd opened it barehanded…" He raised his eyebrows pointedly.

Kaito had gone still beside him. When Shinichi hazarded a look at him, he was staring at Shinichi with horror, his face drawn and pale.

"Shinichi," he whispered, looking terrified. One of his hands scrabbled around for a second before it latched onto Shinichi's. It was the tiniest bit clammy. "I'm s—"

"If you apologize for something you didn't do, I will honest to God slap you," announced Shinichi, but he let Kaito continue to hold his hand, because it felt nice and Kaito tended to inspire weakness in his control. He turned back to Suzuhara, who was politely pretending not to witness the scene in front of him. "Before, I asked you why I saw you coming out of Kaito's dressing room the same day the envelope was supposedly left. You gave me a non-answer. I want a real one now. Otherwise the only conclusion I can come to is that you're the own who left an envelope full of broken glass addressed to me, and, by extension, the person who dropped the chandelier."

Suzuhara's face went white, though if that was from what Shinichi had said or from the way Kaito was looking at him as if he was praying for the ceiling to collapse on Suzuhara's head was unclear. Either way, he looked borderline ready to run out of the room.

"You tried to kill Shinichi?" Kaito hissed. His grip on Shinichi's hand was starting to cut off circulation to Shinichi's fingers. Shinichi sighed and considered the logistics of extricating himself from Kaito's grip. Losing a few digits seemed more likely. "Suzuhara, I swear to God, if that was you, I will—"

"Don't get the wrong idea!" Suzuhara burst, taking several rapid steps backward as if Kaito was a ravenous alligator and he was a raw chicken. He lifted his hands in an attempt at placation that Shinichi felt was most likely futile, seeing as Kaito looked ready launch the nearest pointy object at him. "I have no idea what the envelope thing was about, honestly! I promise that I don't have anything to do with that! I would never try to hurt Shinichi-kun."

"Right," snapped Kaito, intensely unconvinced. "You know, Suzuhara, I'll admit that I'm not your biggest fan, but I always thought you were a decent enough human not to do something that shitty—"

Shinichi silenced Kaito by placing his free hand on Kaito's knee. Kaito was so surprised he almost bit his tongue off when his jaw clamped shut with an audible click. He swung around to gawp at Shinichi. Shinichi raised an eyebrow at him and pointedly flexed the hand Kaito was still holding, letting out a sigh of relief when Kaito, eyes guilty and cowed, loosened his grasp and thankfully stopped using Shinichi's hand as his personal stress ball. Rubbing at his palm, Shinichi turned to meet Suzuhara's eyes.

"No, I know it wasn't you, Suzuhara-san," he told Suzuhara, who looked immensely relieved. Kaito frowned, deflating.

"It… wasn't him?" he asked hesitantly, and Shinichi gave his knee a last squeeze before he pulled his hand back and refocused on Suzuhara.

"Nope, I know it wasn't Suzuhara-san," he confirmed. "But I still need to know what you were doing. Because there are just a few things I need cleared up before I can say that everything's been solved."

Suzuhara peered at him for a long moment, worrying at his bottom lip between his front teeth. His expression was conflicted, but his defense seemed to be weakening.

"I didn't kill Hamasaki-chan," he said, apropos of nothing. The way his face tightened gave Shinichi the impression he was trying to convince himself rather than Shinichi. Shinichi nodded in understanding.

"That's right," he agreed, gentle. "It wasn't you."

Kaito was looking between them. Shinichi could tell he was starting to get frustrated, understandably.

"It would be nice if someone stopped talking in riddles right about now," he remarked without bothering to hide the passive-aggressiveness in his voice, giving Suzuhara a narrow-eyed glare. Shinichi nodded in agreement.

"I need you to confirm why you went into Kaito's dressing room while everyone was out." When Suzuhara still looked tentative, Shinichi added, "Anything you say will be kept in confidence. Kaito won't say a word." He buried an elbow in Kaito's liver as extra insurance. Kaito grunted and sagged to one side.

"If you're sure he won't say anything..." At Shinichi's nod, Suzuhara's tongue darted out to wet his lips. He took a deep breath "The truth is that I've been in love with Himari-san for over a year."

There was a moment of silence.

"Well now I feel stupid about being jealous," said Kaito, and sunk lower in his seat. Shinichi patted him on the head before he turned back to Suzuhara.

"If I'm not wrong, Suzuhara-san, Watanabe-san used to be your hair and makeup artist before she was reassigned to Kaito a few months ago, wasn't she?" When Suzuhara nodded, surprised, Shinichi sat back against the couch, nodding to himself. "Watching your interactions, it became pretty clear that the two of you are too close not to have a past. Watanabe-san also hinted at knowing Hamasaki-san, which meant that she used to work in close proximity to you. And the timing of you and Kaito suddenly having a rivalry makes sense." Kaito, who had been on the verge of falling off the sofa, sat up with a start.

"Wait, was that what the whole thing was about?" He laughed incredulously. Shinichi considered elbowing him again. "You were jealous because you thought I stole your girl?"

Suzuhara blushed neon.

"Himari-san has always been a pretty big fan of yours! She was so excited about getting to work with you," he insisted, flailing around in a manner that contradicted his many appearances on Sexiest Men Alive lists. "And you're such a goddamn flirt, anyway, Kuroba-san! You seduce people without meaning it! You're in the wrong here too!" Kaito goggled.

"For doing—what? When have I ever seduced anyone without meaning it?" Improbably, Suzuhara turned even redder. Kaito looked conflicted between hysterical amusement and abject horror. He had started clinging to Shinichi's hand again. Shinichi could practically feel his own ulna crying from the force of Kaito's hold. "You're kidding me. When did I seduce you?"

"When we first met, the first time we met to film Heartline," answered Suzuhara in a small voice before he threw his hands in the air. "That's not the point, though! The point was that I knew Himari-san would inevitably fall for you!"

"You know, it's actually kind of flattering, that you have so much faith in me," Kaito commented after a second of thought. He actually did seem kind of flattered when Shinichi glanced over at him, shrugging when Shinichi made a face. "But no, Himaricchi and I are just friends." Suzuhara jabbed a finger at him, red down his neck.

"How was I supposed to know any better when you have cutesy nicknames for each other?"

"Setting that aside for now," Shinichi interjected when Kaito looked ready to retaliate, "let's return to the original point. I have an idea of why you were in Kaito's dressing room, but I want to hear it from you." Suzuhara nodded and swallowed. He dragged a hand down the length of his face.

"I left a note and a box of chocolate for Himari-san," he began, "telling her to meet me the next morning at the studio. I was going to take her out for breakfast and maybe confess my feelings if she seemed like she'd take it well. I think I put the note and the box somewhere on the counter, but I don't exactly remember where. I ran into you, Shinichi-kun, on my way out. I probably seemed flustered, because I'd been debating whether I should leave the note or not for a week. I didn't want to just tell you what I'd been doing because I didn't want anyone else knowing it was me." He exhaled shakily. "And then…"

"And then?" Shinichi prompted softly when he seemed disinclined to continue.

"I thought about whether she'd found the note even after I left the station," Suzuhara said miserably. He looked like he was on the verge of tears. "She hadn't said anything at lunch, and she didn't message me later, so I thought she hadn't found it yet. Or if she had, she was just being polite and turning me down gently. I was thinking about it so much that when I was drinking with Yamada-san—my agent, I mean—I finally got it in my head that I should call Hamasaki-chan and make her go retrieve the note. So I did—I called her and I told her that I'd left something important in Kuroba-san's dressing room. She was still at the studio at that time, setting out everything I'd need for the next day, so she said it wouldn't be a problem and she went to do it." Suzuhara's breathing was coming faster. "Did I—did I send her to—to die?"

Shinichi couldn't answer that. He stayed silent.

"Wait, so… what are you saying?" Kaito was scowling hard at the ground. "The killer was waiting in my dressing room for Hamasaki-san…?"

"No," Shinichi said. "Think about Hamasaki-san in comparison to the other two victims. Hamasaki-san had nothing in common with them, other than being a young woman. She had no connection to you, Kaito, her body was not moved after she was killed, and she was not found at a place connected to your past. Which means that Hamasaki-san wasn't the killer's intended victim. She was killed because she saw something she shouldn't have."

"What… do you mean?" Kaito's eyes were wide. His hand was tight around Shinichi's.

"This whole time, we've been trying to decide if the killer and the person who's been trying to hurt me are the same person. If we say that they are, in fact, the same person, it stands to reason that there's only one thing Hamasaki-san could've accidentally walked in that night. Something to do with that envelope of broken glass." Shinichi leaned forward. "Forensics originally found some dust and pieces of glass by the counter that seemed unrelated to the case, but it's highly probable that someone was putting that envelope together in Kaito's dressing room, and Hamasaki-san interrupted them, so they killed her to eliminate the chance of Hamasaki-san connecting the envelope—and by extension the murder attempts on my life—with them."

"But didn't you say that the killer could be an outsider?" Kaito asked. He looked slightly seasick, as if he were coming to his own conclusions. "If they were, there wouldn't really be enough risk to warrant killing her, would there? Because as long as they stayed away from Hamasaki-san when the truth about the envelope came out, she wouldn't be able to identify them and they'd be fairly safe."

"I said that, but what you just said and where the murder took place mean that the possibility of the murderer being an outsider is unlikely," Shinichi replied. Kaito and Suzuhara exchanged commiserating looks, and Shinichi clarified, "The killer had to leave the envelope in Kaito's dressing room in order for me to find it, or so the plan went. If they were someone completely unconnected to Kaito and the station, they wouldn't have known where Kaito's dressing room is without asking someone for help, since unlike some of the other stars, his dressing room is unlabeled. And even in the unlikely event that they did know where Kaito's room was, this TV station is arranged so confusingly that they would've gotten lost or again needed to ask for directions, which someone would've remembered and probably reported when the murder was announced. No, it's far more likely that the person was someone who frequents the station and whom Hamasaki-san would instantly recognize."

"So Hamasaki-chan knew the person… well?" ventured Suzuhara, the color rapidly draining from his face. "Do you mean…?"

"Well," Shinichi began, but then he looked down at his watch. It was nearly ten fifteen. A sudden wave of gut-wrenching panic washed over him. It couldn't be—

"Okay, change of plans," he said, bolting to his seat. "Kaito, from what time to what time were you supposed to be on the show?"

"Ten thirty to eleven," Kaito told him, blinking quickly as he clambered to his feet and hurried after Shinichi. "Wait, Shinichi, what's going on?" Shinichi, halfway to the door, barely stopped to look at him.

"We need to catch the killer before someone else dies."

The TV volume was on too high, high enough that the neighbors might start complaining in another hour. It didn't matter, though. By then, it would be too late anyway. On screen, the talk show was just beginning, the two hosts—a bottle-blonde woman and a dark-haired man with a pretty face—were working references to their surprise guest into their opening banter. The clock face over the kitchen sink said that it was only five minutes to ten thirty. Not long now.

Other than the sounds coming from the TV, there was silence. The room was dark, curtains pulled shut against the sunlight. On the walls, pictures of various unmatched objects stared blankly out over the scene. Everything was still and quiet. No interruptions. Good.

Onscreen, the hosts were about to reveal their guest. Almost time, then. The motionless body sprawled out across the ground, one arm draped over the edge of the area rug. It was a shame that there wouldn't be enough time to do the usual with the body. That goddamn inspector was suspicious enough after the last girl. That had been a little messier than necessary, but it seemed to have turned out all right. And nobody would figure this one out.

"And now, we'd like to invite our special guest to the stage! Everyone, give it up for—"

It was time. The knife was ready, the alibi was confirmed, and it was time—or so she thought until the front door banged open, shattering the stillness.

"Miho! Stop!" shouted Kaito, because that was Kaito, Kaito tripping over the genkan towards her, Kaito looking at her with unadulterated distress and nausea and disgust as he came to a stop a few feet away from her. "Miho, what the hell are you doing?"

Miho froze where she was holding the knife to Himari's throat.

Shinichi, who was right behind Kaito—of course he was the one behind this, the goddamn life-ruining bastard—pushed past where Kaito was frozen and came to stand right beside her, his gun pointed at her head. There wasn't any doubt in her that he would hesitate to shoot her, if it came down to it. That was the kind of big damn hero he pretended to be.

"Let go of Watanabe-san," he commanded. Miho, numb, did just that, shoving Himari out of her lap and sitting back on her bare feet. Shinichi put himself between the two of them, gun never wavering. He frowned, taking in the scene before him, and then he squeezed his eyes shut, exhaled, and pushed his hair out of his face.

"Motoyama Miho," he began in a resigned, firm voice, holstering his gun. Miho was almost angry about that, that he would think she wouldn't attack him, but she knew she wouldn't. Not with Kaito standing there watching the whole thing with confused revulsion all over his face. "You are under arrest for the murders of Sawada Yumi, Nishimura Mayuko, and Hamasaki Chiyo, along with the attempted murder of Watanabe Himari."

"How," Miho whispered. Her hands were shaking, growing more and more unsteady the longer Kaito looked at her with those horrified, accusing eyes. She couldn't bear to look at him, not when he so clearly hated her now. This wasn't how she wanted things to go. This wasn't what she'd planned. Her voice was raspy when she demanded, "How did you know?"

Shinichi ignored her in favor of kneeling and pulling Himari towards him to check on her. A perfunctory check showed that she had been knocked unconscious, possibly with some kind of sedative.

"Watanabe-san will be fine, Kaito. She's just passed out," he informed Kaito before he laid her back down on the ground. Kaito nodded shakily without looking away from Miho. Wiping a hand across his face, Shinichi finally deigned to look over at her with clear, tired eyes. A surge of hatred spilled through her, burning like a shot of alcohol.

"How did I know you were the killer?" A wry smile curled Shinichi's mouth upwards. "I've suspected you since the day I met you. And I've known"—he paused to pull a sheaf of crinkled papers out of the inside of his jacket—"since I got the lab results testing my handkerchief back."

"What are you talking about?" stammered Kaito faintly. He couldn't seem to bring himself to look away from Miho, Miho and her bowed head and trembling hands still locked tight around her weapon. "What—what about your handkerchief? What's going on?" His voice went hollow and high near the last few syllables.

Shinichi looked at Miho with an expression that asked for permission, as if he would wait for her to give it before he told Kaito everything. She bit down on the inside of her cheek and looked away, glowering down at Himari's unconscious face, rather than responding. Shinichi, watching her, huffed out a long breath and turned back to Kaito.

"The truth is that Motoyama-san has been madly in love with you since she first met you," he said evenly. Miho twitched at his phrasing. Even without looking at her, Shinichi could tell that she wanted nothing more than to bury her knife in his jugular. "I don't know if you've noticed, but she's kept every single rose you've ever given her." He nodded at her bag, which sat curled by her ankle. "They're pressed in a book that she carries with her all the time. You remember when I spilled coffee on her purse? The first thing she checked was the book full of the flowers you've given her, not her phone or her schedule, which, objectively, are much more important."

"Miho," Kaito managed around a dry throat. Miho didn't move, though she did twitch violently.

"She figured out that you communicate your feelings with the roses you give, and she studied the color meanings of roses so she could find out what you feel for her. Most, if not all, of the roses she has are yellow, for friendship. When she saw you had given me a lavender rose, that first day we all met, she immediately despised me. Because she knew that lavender roses mean 'love at first sight.'" Shinichi rubbed at the side of his face. "And because of that, she tried to kill me not ten minutes later." Kaito started. He had been staring unseeingly at Miho, but that brought him out of his trance.

"What?" he asked. "How—wouldn't Himaricchi and I have noticed if she tried to kill you?"

"She brought in coffee and tea for all of us, remember?" When Kaito nodded, his gaze flickering between Miho and Shinichi, Shinichi gave a little shrug. "She brought coffee for both you and Watanabe-san, but tea for me, which struck me as strange. In actuality, that was so she could be sure which drink was poisoned and make sure it got to me."

"But the drinks were all in mugs," Kaito pointed out. "She could've just remembered the pattern of the mug that the poisoned coffee was in."

"Motoyama-san didn't want to risk making a mistake," Shinichi answered. "If she accidentally poisoned you, for example, she would've hated herself forever. She wanted every assurance that she would get the right cups to the right people, hence why she gave me the tea in a particularly distinctive mug that could never be confused with the others." Kaito's face was going paler and paler.

Shinichi continued relentlessly.

"She wasn't expecting you to offer me your coffee in exchange for my tea, which is why she knocked the mug off the counter. Motoyama-san is not clumsy enough for that to have been an accident. I helped clean up the tea with my handkerchief and forgot it in my suit pocket. I had that handkerchief analyzed yesterday. It tested positive for poison." He directed his gaze to Miho. "I don't know how you were expecting to get away with it or why you were carrying poison in the first place—perhaps you used it in small doses to immobilize your victims before you slit their throats?—but it's fairly compelling proof that you were trying to kill me out of jealousy."

Miho's whole face compressed as she finally managed to look into Shinichi's face. Her lips pulled away from her teeth. Nothing of her usual put-together, no-nonsense persona was left, just a bitterness that twisted her into something angry and violent.

"Serving different drinks in different mugs should've hardly tipped you off," she sneered. "Unless you're a paranoid freak, there's no reason why that alone should've made you suspect me."

Shinichi regarded her with a calmness that made her teeth creak from how tightly she was clenching her jaw.

"The other reason why I suspected you immediately, Motoyama-san, is because you were the one who brought me the case files that had been left behind. Hakuba would've likely stayed in Kaito's dressing room, same as I had, so if he left the files anywhere, they would've been there. The fact that you had to bring them to me suggested that you had moved them or maybe even stolen them to see how the investigation had been progressing."

Miho's glare intensified. She wished he was wrong.

"My next clue was when the chandelier fell," added Shinichi. "Analysis showed that the chandelier had been tampered with, and we assumed that had been done beforehand and the killer had not been present at the time the chandelier fell. But when I thought about it, the sequence of events was as follows: the strings holding me up snapped, and then the chandelier fell. The falling chandelier had no relation to the string mechanism, so why did they break in the first place? The answer is that the killer was in the catwalk, with the intention of watching the whole show and making sure that the chandelier fell at the right moment.

"You knew that Kaito, interested in me as he was, would be sure to make me participate in a trick. That wouldn't be out of character for him at all. You knew there would most likely be a point where I would be somewhat centered beneath the chandelier, but you couldn't be sure when that would happen. You stuck around to make sure that the chandelier didn't miss its target or hit the wrong person." Shinichi tilted his head toward Kaito. "Again, you wouldn't have been able to live with yourself if you hurt Kaito.

"But when you realized that the trick I was involved in was the levitation trick, with lines that were strung right past the chandelier chain, you couldn't resist the urge to make me fall on my face." He raised his eyebrows at her, matter-of-fact, and Miho had never wanted to kill someone more. "It's a pity, really, because if you hadn't cut the lines holding me, I wouldn't have been able to escape. I would've definitely been trapped beneath that chandelier. And we would've all gone on thinking that the killer hadn't been at the theater at the time of the incident. Out of the circle of people of people most likely to be the killer—Suzuhara, Watanabe-san, and you—you were the only one who didn't have an alibi at the time of the chandelier incident."

Shinichi paused, looking at her squarely. Miho was still glowering at him as if she were imagining him being squeezed through a meat grinder. Her chest was rising and falling jerkily as she breathed. Her fingers were cramping where she was still gripping the knife.

"After your attempt failed—and hurt Kaito more than me, to be honest—you were so outraged that you decided to go back to the TV station and fill an envelope with bits of glass to leave for me to find. I don't know what you broke and how you crushed it, but you were in the process of making that envelope when Hamasaki-san came in to retrieve Suzuhara-san's note. She saw you and instantly recognized you as Kaito's manager. You killed her to make sure nothing would get back to Kaito or me and kept the envelope, realizing that leaving it at the scene of the crime would guarantee that it was taken as evidence instead of making it into my hands. That's why you hand-delivered it to me, pretending that you had found it far earlier than possible and, incidentally, throwing suspicion on Suzuhara-san.

"I was certain the killer was you the second I saw that you weren't wearing your usual heels that day Hamasaki-san was discovered." Shinichi nodded at the shoe that Miho was holding. In the dim light from the TV, the heel, a thin, uncapped stiletto knife, gleamed dangerously. Miho cradled it to her chest, as if trying to obscure its deadly point. "I knew the weapon had to be something that was kept close at hand without causing suspicion, since Hamasaki-san's murder wasn't planned. You didn't wear them the day after the murder scene on the off chance that I did a body search. Your shoes always struck me as impractical for someone who does a lot of running from location to location, although perhaps that was just an opinion on my part. When I realized that Watanabe-san was gone, I knew that you must've taken her somewhere else, expecting that Kaito would get his alibi from the talk show that's airing right now." Shinichi nodded at the TV, which was still blaring the interview. "And I knew that the only location with ties to Kaito left that I hadn't already saturated with police officers was Kaito's apartment."

He straightened and cocked his head at Miho, challenging.

"Was any of that wrong?"

Miho remained silent, her hands clenching into fists so tight her nails cut into her palms. The only sound was the TV and her heavy, labored breathing. Kaito, who was still standing behind Shinichi, cleared his throat and sucked in a shuddering breath. He had been frozen ever since Shinichi had started talking, but now he managed to speak.

"Miho," he said, shaking. Miho's whole body jerked as if she'd been struck. "Why—why would you do this, Miho? Especially if you love me?" He swallowed wetly. Those other girls, especially Hamasaki-san—they did nothing wrong." A single glance confirmed that he was on the verge of tears, his eyes glistening and his whole body racked with fine tremors. "And Himaricchi? You're friends with her, aren't you? If you really—if you were really in love with me, then I can't see how you could've even have done anything like this—"

"I did it because they betrayed you!" Miho's voice was nothing like how Shinichi had heard it before. It was cracked and fragile and razor-sharp, clinging to the edge of sanity. When she looked imploringly up at Kaito, there was a manic, hysterical light to her eyes. "That Sawada girl—she closed down her forum, you know! She gave up on you! Someone who'd said she was a true fan!"

"Miho," Kaito whispered, but Miho ignored him.

"And that Nishimura woman?" She let out a scoffing laugh, a brash, hard sound wielded like a blunt weapon. "Anyone who respects you wouldn't throw themselves at you! She acted like you were a piece of meat! Someone who ran a fanclub, thinking that rubbing herself all over you was the way a fan should act!" She rolled her eyes, waving the knife dismissively. "Hamasaki, sure, whatever, that was unfortunate. Too bad about her." Her eyes went vaguely starry. "Then again, if she wasn't even a fan of yours, something was clearly wrong with her."

The look on Kaito's face would stay with Shinichi until the day he died. It was haunting, the sight of tears rolling down his cheeks, the visceral, sharp disbelief in his eyes. Shinichi was struck with the thought that if anyone had betrayed him, it was Miho.

"And Himaricchi?" he asked. The syllables wobbled unsteadily on the way out of his mouth. "Why would you try to kill Himaricchi? You were friends with her, weren't you?" Miho gave him a bewildered look, as if she couldn't understand why he didn't get it.

"Don't you see?" she demanded in a voice like broken needles. "Watanabe wasn't faithful to you. She never was. She was always after Suzuhara, that little bitch. This whole time, she was in love with Suzuhara while pretending that she was your fan. And you don't think that's a betrayal? You hate Suzuhara, don't you? If she cared about you, she wouldn't have been chasing after Suzuhara!"

Kaito stared at her. A tear caught in the corner of his mouth until another knocked it free.

"And Shinichi?" he whispered. "Why would you try to hurt Shinichi?"

Miho recoiled as if he'd planted a knife in her chest. She looked at him blankly.

"I've been with you for four years, Kuroba-san," she said, and she almost looked like the Miho Shinichi recognized, the one with the stern, beautiful face and unfaltering elegance. "You've never fallen in love. I've been waiting for so long"—her voice shook like resonating glass on the brink of shattering—"for you to love me back. I was doing my best, being a good friend and a good manager and trying so hard someone worthy of your affections. I would've waited forever." Her face twisted into something dark and bitter. "Then this stupid inspector with nothing but a pretty face and a few more brain cells than the rest of us shows up, and you're head over heels for him in half a second. You're asking him to call you by your first name and looking at him like he hung the goddamn stars and the moon and you're giving him roses that mean you love him and you want him and he's beautiful?" Miho laughed, a sound so edged it hurt Shinichi's ears. "Why wouldn't I want to hurt Shinichi?"

Something in Kaito's face hardened as he took a step back, then another.

"You know," he began, almost eerily calm, "if you loved me, if you understood me the way Shinichi does, you would've known that murdering three people and trying to kill two more isn't the way to win my heart. It's how you lose it. You didn't think about how I'm going to have to live knowing that because of me, three people are dead. You didn't even understand that much." He shook his head, chin lifted as he looked down on her. Even with tear tracks striping his cheeks, even in patched-up jeans, even with his face blotching and stitches in his forehead and his hands quaking, he looked more regal than anything else Shinichi had ever seen. "You've known me for four years, Miho, and you couldn't even understand what Shinichi did the moment he met me."

The expression on Miho's face crumbled like wet sand, and she loosened her grip on the knife, and she bowed her head and didn't move until the police officers Shinichi had stationed outside Kaito's apartment came in to take her away.

"I think I have trust issues now," Kaito mumbled. Shinichi had taken him back to the station with him, and now he was huddled in Shinichi's visitor's chair, hands wrapped around a cup of the jet fuel they pretended was coffee around the station. Shinichi, sitting across from him with his own mug of battery acid and a stack of reports to fill out, sighed.

"Understandable," he agreed, scrawling his name in the INVESTIGATING OFFICER section on the top form.

"I was so sure it wasn't any of them. Hell, I thought if it were anyone, it'd be, like Tachibana or something, trying to ruin my reputation before I left the agency. Now that I know it was Miho…" Kaito shuddered and downed half the coffee in the cup before he set it on the edge of Shinichi's desk and dragged his knees up to his chest. "I can't believe it. She was always so… normal. Hypercompetent, if anything. I had no idea that she felt anything for me. She…ugh."

Shinichi eyed him, tapping the pen against the paper. He was in the process of deciding whether he should go find a shock blanket for Kaito when Kaito swallowed and rested his face against his bent knees.

"God, I'm going to have to find another manager who won't even be half as good as my serial killer one," he said mournfully. "Nobody else will know exactly when I need my suits dry cleaned and what I want for breakfast. Or exactly how I take my coffee. Everyone always puts too little sugar in. Miho got the perfect ratio every time."

"I feel like that's not the most pressing issue," Shinichi was compelled to point out. Kaito flapped a hand at him.

"Let me grieve in my own way," he muttered, and rubbed at the back of his head until his hair stood on end. "Oh God, I don't want to make a press statement about it. When is it going to hit mainstream media, you think? 'Kuroba Kaito's manager is actually a raging, mass-murdering lunatic.' When am I going to have to field questions about that?"

"The news about Motoyama-san's arrest will probably go live within the next twenty four hours," Shinichi admitted. Kaito groaned and bonked his head against his knee, sulking.

"How many calls do you think I'm going to get now?" He groaned. "It's going to be insufferable. 'Hey, so, can we get a statement on how you're dealing with your manager? You know, the one who killed three people and dropped a chandelier on your head?' It'll never blow over. Every interview I do for the next ten years will have questions about how I didn't realize my manager was a complete psychopath even after four years of friendship." With a complicated sound, Kaito dug his phone out of his pocket. "Let's see, has it hit the web yet? I wouldn't put it past those bloggers…" He fiddled with his phone in relative silence for a few more minutes, during which Shinichi filled out the first part of the report.

"Oh, huh," Kaito said after a moment. Shinichi glanced up to see him staring at his phone with an unreadable look.

"Is it already headlining?" Shinichi asked, and Kaito shook his head.

"Uh, I think they're starting to spring up, but that's not what I was looking at." He swallowed. "I just—I ran across this picture." With a hesitant smile, he slid his phone across the table to show Shinichi.

At first, Shinichi wasn't sure what he was looking at. It seemed to be a fairly typical photo of two people standing in a field with an oversaturated blue sky overhead. Then he glanced at the date—it was from two days ago—and who posted it—HIMAwaRI005, apparently—and realized that this was the photo Himari had taken of them the day Kaito had shot the ad for the car insurance. In the picture, Kaito was offering Shinichi a rose, the light pink one, his expression so fond it almost hurt to look at.

What struck Shinichi, though was his own face looked like. Ran had said that she known that he was in love by looking at this photo and seeing his expression. At the time, Shinichi had doubted it, but now that he was looking at it, he couldn't deny that she was right. He'd never seen himself look so happy. He wasn't even smiling, just looking at Kaito with a put-upon scowl, but somehow—somehow he could tell that at that moment, he'd been the happiest he'd felt in a long time.

The thought made Shinichi still. Taking a deep breath, he set down his pen and cleared his throat.

"This whole thing made me… think about some things," he mumbled, eyes so focused on the paperwork in front of him that his vision blurred. In his periphery, Kaito lifted his face to blink at him with curiosity. "You were friends with Motoyama-san for a long time, but you never actually, well, knew her. And she never got that you wouldn't want her to do what she did. Maybe—maybe it's possible to meet someone and understand them, even without spending so much time with her. Maybe there's some kind of… I don't know, instinctual knowing."

When he met Kaito's eyes, Kaito was frowning slightly, as if he didn't know what Shinichi was getting at.

"You're probably right," he agreed, one eyebrow creeping up his forehead, "but…?"

Shinichi coughed and wrapped a hand around the back of his neck. He could feel himself flushing all the way up to the tips of his ears.

"Before, you know, I thought that, uh, getting together would be moving too fast, because we haven't known each other for that long. But then I was thinking about it earlier, and… I don't know." He made a frustrated noise. "I feel like I know you, somehow, and more time might not change that. I think… I think we might work well together, even if we are different." Shinichi took a deep breath. Kaito was starting to grin. "So I've decided that we should give things a try, even if I don't know your birthday or your favorite color or your star sign."

"Google it. I'm sure you'll find all of that on one of my fanpages," Kaito suggested, and Shinichi went to glare at him, but he had to stop at the sight of Kaito smiling. It was the old, familiar smile, the smile that made Shinichi feel as if he were something actually worth that much affection. Kaito dropped his knees, straightening so he could lean forward over Shinichi's desk. "Let's not forget that there are things we know about each other."

"Oh, really?" Shinichi gave him a look. Kaito grinned.

"For example, I know how old you are and what your blood type is and that your favorite TV show is Detective Samonji and what you look like when you're embarrassed. And you do know how I take my coffee and where I live and what my hair looks like in the morning and how to handle me when I'm falling apart and that you're wrong and Spirited Away is the most iconic Ghibli movie."

Shinichi scowled.

"I keep telling you—" he began, but the way Kaito's smirk faded shut him up.

"And you know that I'm in love with you," Kaito finished, softly. Shinichi warred with his instincts, which were telling him to either fling himself at Kaito or find a nice rock to hide under. In the end, he didn't get the chance to do either, because Kaito got up and skirted around to desk to box Shinichi in against the back of his chair. He pressed his forehead to Shinichi's, expression turning serious.

"Hit me if I'm going too far too fast," he murmured. He was so close that Shinichi could count his eyelashes as his eyelids lowered. His gaze flicked down to Shinichi's mouth. The skin on his arms was warm and soft where it brushed against Shinichi's cheeks. He hesitated for long enough that Shinichi clamped his hands around the arms of his chair, swallowed, and surged forward, catching Kaito by surprise as he pressed their mouths together.

It was a chaste kiss, closemouthed and cautious. Kaito was gentle when he cupped Shinichi's face in his hands, holding him in place as he sucked lightly at Shinichi's bottom lip. Shinichi held back a truly embarrassing sound and stopped white-knuckling the chair in favor of stumbling to his feet and pulling Kaito against him until they were chest-to-chest. Kaito gasped at the back of his throat, a sound that made Shinichi lightheaded, and he pried Kaito's mouth open in hopes of hearing it again.

Needless to say, the kiss did not stay chaste for much longer.

Kaito's hands had progressed to his hair, his tongue to Shinichi's mouth, his leg to the space between Shinichi's, and Shinichi, for his part, had untucked Kaito's shirt and was digging his fingertips into the smooth muscles of Kaito's back, fighting to contain the tiny moans that kept bubbling up every time Kaito tugged at his hair or ground his knee upwards, and everything was progressing in a very linear fashion towards a mutually agreeable destination when the door to Shinichi's office flew open and Hakuba's scream of terror descended upon them like so many gallons of ice-cold water.

"You could knock, God!" Kaito hissed, detaching his mouth from Shinichi's with an audible sound that made Shinichi flush bright red as he hurriedly tried to tuck Kaito's shirt back in and not look as if he'd been about to have office sex (with varied results).

"And you could've locked the door! Oh my God I did not need to see any of this," Hakuba was saying when Shinichi flailed and nearly knocked over his desk lamp. He had his hands pressed to his face. "I mean, I knew this was coming, but did you have to do it here? At a police station? And right after his murderous manager got arrested? How is that a turn on?"

"Uh," Shinichi said, and traded a look with Kaito. It was kind of hard to argue with that.

Hakuba shook his head, muttering under his breath about some people didn't have any professionalism and rubbing at his eyes. When he dropped his hands, his face was flushed red, but the look he gave both of them meant that pointing that out would result in their immediate demises.

"I was just here to tell you that Superintendent Matsumoto wanted to congratulate you on solving the case, Kudou-kun." He paused, mouth twisting as if he wasn't certain how to continue. "He also wanted you to bring Kuroba-kun. He was very—excited when I told him that you were also at the station. I think he has a figurine for you to sign?"

"Oh, the one I released for the new season of Heartline?" Kaito looked surprise. "It's limited edition. I think only fifty were made." His face turned speculative before he glanced over at Shinichi, who was in the process of fixing his hair so it looked less I Just Made Out with a World-Famous Actor During Work Hours (a goal which seemed to move farther and farther away the longer he tried to achieve it). "Is this the same guy whose poster you had me sign?"

Shinichi nodded, then got distracted by the flush still sitting above Kaito's cheekbones. Hakuba coughed meaningfully.

"Well, I'll leave you two to fix yourselves up," he announced, backing towards the door. "Congrats on solving the case and not giving in to the urge to kill Kuroba-kun, Kudou-kun, which may actually be the bigger accomplishment. I don't know how you did it." Ignoring Kaito's squawk of outrage, he gave them a last condescending smile. "And congrats on getting together." He closed the door without so much as a click.

Kaito and Shinichi stared after him.

"You know, maybe he's not actually the spawn of Satan. He might just be a lower-ranking demon," Kaito said after a moment, sounding considering, and Shinichi laughed and reached up to straighten Kaito's skewed collar. It was only about seventy percent an excuse to touch him.

"Keep talking like that and you might have to admit he's your friend," he remarked, patting Kaito on the chest, and Kaito made a face like he'd bitten into a lemon expecting it to be an orange.

"You know, Shinichi, I love you, but you're wrong about a lot of things a lot of the time." He was smiling when he said it, though, senselessly content, and reached up to brush Shinichi's bangs out of his face. His fingers lingered along Shinichi's temple. Shinichi caught his hand, holding on even after Kaito let it fall back to his side.

"Whatever you say," he said before he grinned, stupidly and illogically. "Ready to go, Mr. Famous Actor?"

Kaito laughed and lifted Shinichi's hand, brushing a kiss like a promise across his knuckles.

"Always, Inspector."

And that's the end! Hopefully there weren't too many plot holes (if you see any... suspension of disbelief?). If people are interested, I'd love to come back to this AU for another case (and more development of the relationship, obviously).

Updates will probably start being a lot less frequent, as I've a) been struck with writer's block and b) gotten much busier with real life, but I'll still try to post! See you soon! - Luna