Chapter 1: Kiss and Makeup

Ding-dong!

Twenty-year-old bachelor Kuroba Kaito extracted himself with difficulty from the folds of the dress on his bed. "Was that the doorbell?"

The girl beside him, looking slightly grumpy at the interruption, shrugged, her tousled dark hair spilling over her shoulders.

Ding-dong!

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Kaito leapt off the bed and hastily pulled on his discarded jeans "Who visits at ten o'clock at night?" he groused, wiping the lipstick from his mouth with the back of his hand.

He flung open the bedroom door and stalked out. "Hurry back!" the girl called teasingly as he closed the door firmly behind him, then strode to the front door, buttoning up his shirt as he went.

Ding-dong!

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Kaito opened the front door.

Hattori Heiji stood just outside his apartment. "Hey, Kuroba," he grinned. "You busy?"

"Uh…"

"That's good," Heiji said cheerfully, stepping into the small foyer. "Mind if I spend the night?"

"Yes," Kaito said flatly, one eyebrow raised. He kept the door open. "What's wrong with your college dorm?"

"Kazuha an' I had a fight."

"What else is new?"

"We had a big fight," Heiji elaborated, glaring at Kaito. "I decided I don't want to be around tonight."

"Kazuha-chan doesn't live in your building; she and Ran-chan live in the dorm next to yours—"

"Yeah, but when that girl gets angry, you gotta put a lot of distance between you and her."

"Couldn't you just lock your dorm room to keep her out?"

"Nah," Heiji sat down on the couch and crossed his arms. "Kudou's my roommate."

"Yes, and?"

"An' he an' I're fightin' too."

Kaito sighed. "What about Okita Soushi's place?"
"He's abroad for a kendo tournament."

"Your parents' house?"

"It's kinda far from Tokyo. And I had a fight with my dad."

"Good lord, Hattori, has anyone told you your relationships need work?"

"A few people," Heiji confessed sheepishly, then stood up and grinned. "C'mon, Kuroba, just let me stay tonight, I won't—" he suddenly broke off, and bent down to peer closely at Kaito's face. "Hey, is that lipstick?"
"Uh…" Kaito wiped at his mouth again. "…No…Hey, come back! Hattori!"

Heiji had already set off into the apartment. "What're you—"

"NO!" cried Kaito as Heiji flung open the bedroom door.

"Hi, Hattori-kun!" said Aoko.

She sat on the small bed in the room, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, a bag of cosmetics open across her knees. A dress lay spread on the covers next to her. "I'd get up, but I'm waiting for my toenails to dry!"

Heiji stared from Aoko's cherry-red toes to Kaito's cherry-red face.

"I can explain—" Kaito began.

"I think we need to talk." Heiji closed the door on Aoko, seized Kaito by the collar of his still-half-buttoned shirt, and dragged him back into the foyer.

"Hattori!" Kaito hissed, trying to wrench himself free from the taller boy's grasp. "What's wrong with you—?"

"What's wrong with me?" Heiji rounded on Kaito, his face flushed with anger but his eyebrows cocked as if quizzically. "What the hell, Kuroba! There's a Kaitou Kid heist tonight!"

"Not this again!" Kaito scoffed. He jerked his shirt out of Heiji's grasp and straightened his collar with an air of wounded pride. "Would you stop with your stupid conspiracy theories? I already told you, I'm not the Kid—"

"Yeah, yeah," Heiji waved his hand dismissively. "I already told ya, I don't care what you say. An' no, I don't have any evidence yet. Doesn't change the truth. But I can't believe you're bein' so stupid as to have Aoko over the night of—" He froze suddenly. Then his face lit up in an enormous grin. "Oh-h-h-h." He narrowed his eyes. "She knows you're the Kaitou Kid too, doesn't she?"

Kaito coughed. "What are you—"

"Wow." Heiji smirked at Kaito appraisingly. "I'm impressed. Hey, I'm impressed that yer still alive. Did you tell her or did she figure it out?"

"Hattori, would you get out of my apartment, please?"

"Ah, come on, Kuroba! You know, if she figured it out on her own you're just as gutless as me an' Kudou—but if you actually told her yourself, you've got more balls than—"

"—Oh my God—"

"So is it official?" He shouldered Kaito and waggled his eyebrows. "Are you an' Aoko-chan a couple?"

"Yes!" Kaito snapped.

Heiji let out a low whistle.

"Stop staring, okay?" Kaito frowned. "I started feeling…Look, you and Kazuha-chan are together now…Kudou and Ran-chan are practically married…Hakuba Saguru's got a girlfriend too."

"Hakuba?" Heiji raised an eyebrow.

Kaito laughed briefly. "Yeah, over in England."

Heiji made a face. "Thought you said he liked that creepy girl from high school."

"God forbid!" Kaito shuddered. "But if you ask me, this Morgan girl of his sounds equally creepy. But like likes like, I guess."

"I don't like that guy." Heiji gave an aggrieved sigh, then shook his head and smiled wryly. "I still can't believe Aoko-chan didn't beat ya to a pulp."

"I'm not even going to bother arguing with you anymore," Kaito sighed. "You are an insufferable busybody, Hattori."

"Kaito? Hattori-kun!" Aoko called from through the closed bedroom door. "What's going on?"

"Coming, Aoko!" Kaito shouted back. He looked askance at Heiji. "Look, would letting you stay the night convince you that I'm not the Kid?"

"Not likely," Heiji smirked.

"Aw, c'mon, Hattori! I'd have to be crazy to go on a heist with a famous detective staying over at my apartment!"

"Evidence already suggests that both you and the Kaitou Kid are crazy," Heiji said. "—B-but if you let me crash here, then sure! I won't say another word about it." He was already heading back into the bedroom. "Heya, Aoko-chan! Sorry for the intrusion!"

"That's okay!" Aoko said cheerily, giving Kaito a swift, significant look which he ignored by stripping off his jeans. "Want me to paint your toenails?" She wiggled her toes at Heiji.

"Uh…" Heiji glanced over his shoulder at a sweetly smirking Kaito folding his jeans. "That's okay, Aoko-chan…Kuroba, did you shave your legs?"

Kaito glanced down at his shins. "Ah...Yes."

"What the—"

"It's for my performance tonight!" Kaito snapped. "I'm cross-dressing as part of my act, and Aoko's helping me get ready." He grinned abruptly. "I'm going to be my own lovely assistant."

"Performance, huh?" Heiji said, absently picking up and touching everything on the dresser.

"Magicians are allowed to disguise themselves every once in a while, Hattori," Kaito said, blithely unbuttoning his shirt. "Nothing culpable about that."

He and Aoko exchanged glances, he smiling, her faintly frowning.

"Oi, Kuroba!" Heiji interjected from the other side of the room. "Does Aoko-chan live with you?"

Kaito and Aoko both turned instantly bright crimson. "No!"

Heiji opened the closet door for them to see. "Then what's with all this girls' clothing?"

"I just said. Costumes," said Kaito, now down to his boxers and a tee-shirt.

"Oh-h-h-h…." Heiji tugged open a drawer with his finger. "So does Aoko-chan know you have ladies' panties in here?"

The furious outburst Heiji had been expecting never came. Instead, Aoko said defensively, "I bought those for him!"

Heiji hadn't been expecting that. "Excuse me?"

"He's a perfectionist!" Aoko explained, hands on her hips. "What would happen if men's underwear came poking out the top of a skirt?"

Kaito's face was scarlet. "Thanks for painting that picture, Aoko," he muttered.

"Oh, come on, that's exactly how you explained it to me," Aoko said briskly, grabbing Kaito's hand and beginning to paint his nails pink.

"You forgot buffing crème," Kaito mumbled.

"Oh, yeah!" Aoko beamed, seemingly unaware of the way Heiji's jaw was swinging off its hinges. She rubbed the back of Kaito's hand against her cheek. "Kaito's got such delicate hands, when you put the right lotions on he could pass for a woman!"

"How—how interesting…" Heiji stammered. "Uh…I'm gonna go see what's in the fridge."

"Make yourself at home," Kaito groused.

When the door to the bedroom closed behind Heiji, Kaito sighed. "Well, that was awkward."

Aoko giggled. "Oh, it was funny." She grew serious as she peered over his hand to start painting the nails. "Why hasn't he busted you if he's so sure you're Kid?"

"Eh..." Kaito shrugged as he watched her work. "He knew me first as Kuroba Kaito, whose dad was murdered by the same guys that shrunk Kudou a few years ago. I met him doing research on the Black Organization—that was a few weeks after Kudou got his body back and brought down that branch of the Black Organization, so everyone was really happy and friendly. It was only after we'd hung out a few times that he started to suspect I was Kid, so he knows I'm not a bad guy. I guess as long as I return the stuff I steal and don't hurt anybody he's not too worried." He grinned. "And I think Hattori likes being in the know about these kinds of things."

"Hmph," Aoko said mock-sulkily. "As long as you didn't tell him before you told me."

"I didn't tell that guy anything," Kaito insisted. "I've still got plausible deniability with him. You were the first person I told. And the only person. But you know," he added with a grin, "it would probably have been easier to confide in Hattori than you."
"What?" Aoko cried.

"Yeah," Kaito grinned. "You hit a lot harder than he does."

Aoko blushed humbly. "Harder than Hattori-kun?"

"Hell, yeah," Kaito said fervently. With a wink, he Aoko's chin in his unpainted hand and pulling her in for a kiss.

Aoko giggled when they broke apart. "You got lipstick on me!"

"Sorry," Kaito laughed, sheepishly running a hand through his tousled hair.

From outside the door, Heiji, who had been about to reenter with a carton of ice cream, decided he'd be better off on the foyer couch with a beer. Hopefully there was a baseball game on TV.

**Next Chapter: "Later That Night"

A/N:

**Gasp! Aoko knows! And Heiji suspects! And Shinichi's apparently big again! Just how do Heiji and Kaito know each other, anyway? Does this plot make any sense? …Well I promise it will soon! I have this entire story already planned out—it'll have 27 chapters, plus bonus chapters, and over half of them are already written. So I'm going to try to update every Wednesday before noon, starting this Wednesday. I can promise a conclusion to Kaito's story, so please bear with me!**