Title: Walking on the moon
Summary: Kaito KID was caught three years ago—bloodily, but he's a man of chance and chance comes in the form of a karmic rival: Kudo Shinichi. They are forced to work together, KID crossdresses, crime is not easy-to-predict, Shinichi deduces and nothing's really changed. [AU; KaiShin.]
. . . okay, I don't like writing the canon DC!universe but I do enjoy writing gay heterosexual life partners. Kaishin is most likely in the future. As a result, this still keeps Magic Kaito's universe relatively intact but throws Shin being a child out the window because that only works so-so well . . . I feel like a horrid fan now. /cries and lives forever in shame
Anyway, being that this is me, our gay heterosexual life partners won't get along much in the first few chapters. So I'm just going to let the world hate them in the name of sociopathic comedy until they do—like they say, the beatings stop when morale improves.
It was a motion-stain.
A gunshot crack, a cornered thief with a different hairstyle than the usual, a detective with twitching muscles and a crowd that surged; they crashed and flooded, screams from the auditorium with enough time to think, "oh, shit."
Kaito KID bled out unto the bathroom tile under the daylight, the bullet placed well enough that he had to have it wedged from between his ribcage. Shinichi couldn't tell the officers there was a good reason two of him were out scouting the hotel that morning—that he hadn't stalked him there and thought he'd won until the glass exploded in an ear-shattering screech.
He couldn't, because heartbeats before he'd given them the truth. Every face Kaito KID took on was a mystery, and Shinichi looked at him sickly under the bulb and felt like he was watching himself die on a movie screen. The hospital they found had a poison smell of chemicals and sterilizer, and he didn't say anything while he stood by the visitor's desk.
Watching the police pouring in through the doors, Shinichi felt. It was a slow, sluggish hour where they checked his blood and found their hundred billion dollar man: Kuroba Kaito, a small town twenty-one year old with a history of stage magic hidden under his top hat. They stole the magician from his mystery, and his heart juggled from loud to disturbingly silent—the line on the monitor dropping off the edge in that way no one wants to see.
Their faceless sniper was caught three city blocks from his vantage point, swarmed by the blare of sirens and named for the illegal cylinders bought from Tokyo's underground. Saguru Hakuba, who never took to anyone playing games with his thieves, made good on that promise. He was a burly man, squared jaw dusted with black hair and dark eyes.
His last free words: "Too bad I shot and missed a chance to one-hit kill the Kid."
The story swept across the headlines like everyone hoped it wouldn't. Kudo Shinichi caught Thief 1412—and although they said he wasn't going to like it, the other was officially declared still living. Japan began to turn from that ugly-quiet moment where they were positive one of the pair was walking death row. His school, his identity, his mother, and his life went under fire from two in the afternoon; the name Kuroba Kaito was public domain.
Inspector Nakamori, heralded as one-part the mastermind behind the accident that trapped the legend, refused to attend the search. He stayed behind in the lounge, pacing the tile and muttering that, "I should have watched the stupid brat, I should have—what will I tell Aoko, shit, he's—"it ended with his head buried in his thick hands, and eventually he dropped against the arm of his plastic chair and slept. Hours of nervously checking the doctors and nurses—furious, growling, desperate—did that to anyone.
And Shinichi sat, and Shinichi waited. A week crawled by before Kaito—strung up to wires and needles—was awake enough to be told he was formally under arrest. Two hundred complaints passed between countries, wanting him tried on their own soil and crossing oceans to see it come to fruition. Fans clamored for his hospital records, speculated on his fantastic and impressive roots, women gurgled if he was as charming as his father. A police line a block long went up from the front door of his house to the next street.
They expected a puff of cotton candy smoke, for their idol to escape his prison sentence and bandages. It took the KID's groggy, confused answer that he was staying in his imaginary handcuffs to convince Shinichi himself that was the end of the hunt.
Three years made it even stranger, as though his memory had holes that he couldn't place. '. . . a motion stain.' That morning, rummaging through his bag for case files with his laptop staring from the kitchen table, was a reminder: specials on KID scattered across history channels, celebrating the anniversary of his last heist.
A sign from a girl in the crowd on television stayed with him. She had brown hair and wide, dark eyes and came from a little house in the suburbs to drown in a stampede of people. Hand-written in pink, black, and with broken kanji, she said that there are no more miracles.
That sign was one he didn't forget when he walked past offices, speaking prestige from the roots of his brown hair to the glisten on his shoe leather. He was a young man, the kind with a name that people respect, and police officers either nod or don't meet eyes with—but he does the same, and so they never call it envious. The cuffs of his sleeves were fixed, and he was never famous for wasting grins or smiles.
He was, however, known for his 'every-so-often' visits to room number two-fifty-six, where there is a table that brings together two worlds in Tokyo's Most Prestigious police headquarters. It sits under bulb light, naked because there wasn't a need to give money to everything where crime was at its highest, and is a black line on four legs in front of gray walls, gray chairs, and gray glass.
The place was too gray while he dug his hands in his pockets and watched the digital clock change numbers on the minute. Unfamiliar in a department rather than a crime scene, he didn't say much as an officer extended a hand, "Kudo Shinichi? The Great Detective, eh." He took note of the newly pressed suit, combed black hair and the cut on his heavy chin from shaving, and felt too welcome.
"Yes," it was curt, and he dropped that hand quicker than he shook it.
"Officer Mikichi Naoto," a cheesy grin on the face of a working husband and father. It was a nice way to think of him, and Shinichi relaxed, "You're as famous as our criminal. Probably a lot more professional company though."
He was clinically practical, and didn't laugh—but nodded, reminding himself to keep interested when he clicked the door open to see that table again. The hall went on, and went on, stretched too long. Where he saw anyone behind bars as an unfortunate mind and a number on a sheet, Shinichi was a cynic and a tourist to that chill—a frozen, empty feel that makes the hairs stand up in holding cells.
'I forget that about . . .' Shinichi was not interested in the police force, listening to procedure where it suited him and ignoring it where it didn't. Murder was only interested in red if it was congealed and leaking through the floorboards. He never could take to paperwork and procedure like them.
The officer, only worth the time enough for him to want a handshake with a legend, was evidence. Shinichi trusted in little else, and tried to forget the look in that girl's eyes. In any other hallway, he would not have remembered.
'I don't particularly like being too attached to a case,' there wasn't a point to being swept up in instinct. Room two-fifty-six was a truce he couldn't walk away from, odds and ends coming together for negotiation. 'And it never helps that none of his end well.'
They opened the door, and under the light—hair swept back, looking as young as he always had—was a shadow shuffling poker cards and stubbornly mysterious to the rest of them.
"Whoa," Mikichi murmured, his deep voice low more for the sake of respect than anything else, "In person, you two really are the spitting image of each other."
He was told that at the witness stand, outside the court room—but Shinichi only remembered him as someone with too many different faces to count. Giving him his own just made him into a stranger, and he calmly took his seat across the table while his warden was all smiles.
A wave and Kaito reclined, tipping the ace from one finger to the next. The officer cleared his throat nervously, and made a pitiful attempt at introductions, "Er, Mr. Kudo, this is—"
"I know who he is," Shinichi answered coolly, an invitation for Mikichi to stop gaping. 'Kuroba Kaito, an espionage and communications agent. "Adopted" because of his first-hand knowledge of the criminal mind at its peak. Tch.' The cell was too breakable, too improvised when the judge, the jury, the detectives and the Diet butted heads over '1412's' arrest. There was nothing in a modern prison that the thief couldn't skirt and twist and dismantle. That they might lose him on their own soil was enough to turn government heads; a cleverly engineered vanishing act would leave other countries giggling for months.
The dust settled, and a Scottish to-be college graduate who—from the time she was eight on—made a game out of taking KID apart and putting him together built a prototype with the promise it would keep him busy enough until he broke it. Kaito accepted the challenge gracefully, but told the press that it was to keep a favorite fan and a lovely lady happy. Taking it off was, testament to her glory, harder than putting it on.
In between the then and the now, he found a familiar role to explore: international crime. The National Department of Defense, when questioned, gave a very simple answer—if you have a talented man, and you put him somewhere else with the same job and a different goal, he will still be a talented man. "You could say we have a history." Shinichi's own expertise cast him as the lead to the upside-down, right-side up stage that Kaito KID built from the odds and ends of his worldwide success story.
'. . . I'm his babysitter.' Why was it that when there was apparently a "kid" to watch, detective Kudo Shinichi was called in for duty. Kaito's grin, toothy, light and never able to soften the arrogance in the glint of his eyes, stayed. 'Don't smile.' Although he would never admit to it, the blood pooling on suit-silk and pristine button-ups was a tic in his brain, repeating and repeating and repeating.
As was the urge to wipe the smirk from his face, but that was a problem with him either way. And other, even less kind urges and some entirely altogether stranger ones, stirring up along with the rivalry he buried years ago.
"Yep, it's all been done before, officer," Kaito was singsong, enough to make the pride in him squirm. "Our great detective got here all right? The man of the hour kept us waiting."
"I had appointments," Shinichi explained cautiously, swallowing what he would have said, "Sorry."
"Someone with your reputation must. I heard you have the weird ability to find a murder everywhere you go. It sort of scares the average man," apparently he had the same idea, but at least the KID had discovered the novelties of office diplomacy. '. . . No, that's giving him too much credit.' Grazed it, briefly, and then threw it out the figurative window. Mikichi just made a good attempt to be as small as possible at his corner of the table—an effect these two had when they were together.
"I didn't ask for your opinion of my reputation."
"I have an interest in the reputations of detectives," Shinichi didn't doubt that he might have kept tabs on his favorites. A complacent thief KID happily coddling his desk job was about as true as his magic itself. Even if he couldn't return to crime without some kind of God-given miracle, Shinichi didn't get the sense he would let go of it until the day he was dead.
"We don't share in that interest," and what other detectives. Shinichi earned the title genius detective of the East. He was shamelessly convinced he was the top of his field, ignoring that Kaito was making no effort to pretend he wasn't just lying. 'Nice words coming from someone who told me exactly what he thinks of what I do.'
"Um," Mikichi piped up, grasping for straws, "Mr. Kuroba here has all the details of your partnership. Uh, not sure why he picked this place to meet up—"
"Just seemed like it fit," and there was silence, a lull where Kaito should fill the gap with a thanks and the information they would have to share. Should, but didn't.
'. . . He's waiting to make me guess. So. The "thief" will be interrogating the "detective."' The inconvenience and his idea of 'setting' made that transparently clear. Shinichi's reply was bitter, "This isn't for the purpose of polite exchange. And he has a flair for the dramatic, a bad one—"
"—let me translate: he means I know exactly how to set up a scene." This explained the unusual amount of walking he had to do to arrive here. 'You. I don't know why I expected something different.' Where he wanted long discussions about investigation scenes—or at least hoped for them. It was a benefit to handle all the details before the actions—there was creative chain-jerking, a mad dash around the merry-go-round. 'Not only am I a babysitter, damn it, I've been stuck with Japan's brat.' He was told the bullet in his side and three years apart from his alterego mellowed the KID to at least one-part functional member of society. He'd been worried it had, he'd been worried about—what the hell was wrong with him. 'I'll never live it down. From now on, that never happened.' Never again.
Never exactly open to the once-KID's sense of comedy, Shinichi felt not-all-that-accommodating as he stood and nodded to Mikichi. Kaito hastily gathered his things, poking his head past the doorframe to grin when he headed after him, "Thanks for the temperamental delivery. I'll be taking excellent care of him from here on out! Japan's favorite young detective is safe with me."
When he caught up to him, Shinichi said exactly what he thought Kaito deserved: a rousing nothing.
"Come on, this isn't a very affectionate hello. Is this how you treat everybody? Not sure how you make friends," he prodded at his moody silence, "Dead bodies don't count."
Kick-able objects not within reach, Shinichi settled on a bored, "I'm not going to do a cartwheel of joy."
"Huh. You know, I can't say I wouldn't pay to see that—"
He cut him off with venom, "—Shut up."
"At least let me get you some coffee. It'll be like . . . an apology! Not something I would do for most people. Your's is a very special exception."
"It's probably poison."
Kaito stopped in the sway of his gait, looking surprised, ". . . I'm creative, a little unorthodox, maybe. If I wanted to, detective, you probably wouldn't be around anymore."
"That's a nicely disturbing comment."
"Thankfully you're the murder expert!" He grinned cheekily, trekking along, "I just happen to be very good at impersonations."
"Are you done making a joke out of my time."
"I fully intend to make the biggest joke out of your time. You could say I'm doing it just to see how many times I can."
". . . Give me the briefcase so I can examine the case details," cases would make better company; Shinichi trusted cases.
"Will you let me take you downstairs and get some coffee."
". . . . . . . fine."
"Take it, I don't want it anyway," he said, Shinichi digging his hands into the insides of his pockets, "And, of course you've guessed it, I call that a victory. Myself, one, yourself, somewhere in the negatives."
"Fantastic counting."
"Only the best. Then again, it is me," and his voice was musical, "You've guessed that, too?"
He felt like his entire body was twitching in refusal, 'He's exactly the same. Exactly, hahah, damn it.' And he was damn positive fate was laughing. They took the elevator—a cramped, thin rectangle with a distinct hint of cologne that went up five floors—down to the third, Kaito shooting off fast complaints at the expense of his current employers while Shinichi made very little effort to catch up. He tugged the glass doors open, introducing him to a polished mahogany desk crowded with police data and a doorway that apparently hid his fellow's decidedly worse working conditions.
"Would you be quiet," Shinichi managed finally, having heard nothing but Kaito talking to himself for the last ten minutes. The room was busy, larger than it looked—clicking nails and computer keys buzzed from long, thick lines of gray tables, their hassled owner's handling cases from across the Tokyo area and with no time for polite hellos. Or even bad ones. Turning at another junction and rounding the corner, they came to a cove that gave them a table, four chairs, a coffee maker and a refrigerator for company. The hiss of office work died down, but Kaito's voice didn't.
A spectator to his circus act as he played with the grinds, Shinichi discovered that he had other long-standing rivalries.
Apparently with the third floor coffee maker. In his short stay with criminologists, sociologists, data analysts, intelligence officers, and policemen, Kaito mentioned that he almost accidentally launched it out the window—twice, specifically, but he also believed 'documentation' was a polite term for paper weight and that one could handcuff themselves to the office chair to prove nasty iron bracelets took less than five seconds to remove.
". . . this is an average day for you, then."
"Just a second," and when Kaito handed him the plastic cup, steaming rolling to the ceiling, he gave it a sharp look and made a note to dump it into the nearest wastebasket. "What? I go to this effort and you don't feel especially grateful? I put my soul into that."
Where was his own, "I'll pass."
Kaito was smug when he muttered his, "That's really boring, you know." Shinichi tipped the briefcase, laying it on the tabletop and tugging out the first creamy folder he found. Flipping the pages, suspicious drinks left untouched to his left, he couldn't help the dry, '. . . This seems normal. Hmm, better than I'd guessed.'
"You like to organize?"
There was a considerate silence, "I like to be able to find things." Far from saying he was impressed, Shinichi was satisfied—even enjoying—that all the warrants, court orders, legal procedure and waivers were in their proper order.
"I'll be going over it," but he wasn't optimistic enough to believe a criminal didn't know exactly how to twist the life out of a loophole in writing. 'Politicians, eh.' His expertise were usually reserved for when the morgue declared the target dead, but this man was still flesh, blood, and beating heart. 'Apparently his under-the-table business dealings have attracted the interest of a crime syndicate. Forty-nine, married, likely to 'more than one wife' if his phone record is right, plans for renovation aren't good for the drug trade . . .' Never one to waste time, he was comfortable in his seat until he hit a very loaded sentence.
"—to stay together in room three-hundred-twenty-one of the nearby Hachirou Hotel for an undisclosed amount of time, to observe and apprehend any suspected to either A.) endanger the lives of civilians and/or damage private property or B.) otherwise be acting outside of Japanese and Tokyo law. The expenses and funds of one Kudo Shinichi and one Kuroba Kaito are respected and to be provided according to and abiding by the contact signed by the following: . . ."
Shinichi read it again, absolutely certain that first line was not there when he was negotiating his contract work. 'What the hell.' Whipping his head Kaito's way, watching as he jerked backwards nervously, his voice was dangerously calm. "Explain this."
Kaito glanced over it before sinking back in his chair, "Explain what, detective."
"This. If we're staying in the same room and you're in disguise, it's going to be incredibly difficult to investigate on my own terms," for two reasons. One: because it would be terribly suspicious to leave your roommate alone during the day and two: the name Kudo Shinichi was already suspicious to criminals as a general guideline.
"Er, hey," he added lamely, shrugging and not being particularly sympathetic, "Partners are supposed to be stuck together, it's in the job description. Besides, I couldn't talk my way out of that! It was added to avoid extra cost, even though I did make a good attempt."
Checking it over a fifth time, he growled a final, "This is why I prefer to work alone."
"Funny, I've got kind of the same idea."
'Calling and asking for an amendment won't work. Whether Kuroba arranged it without my knowledge or not, they won't be interested in telling me the details now. Not being able to keep tabs on their own agents is never easy to explain away, tch.' Leaning back thoughtfully, he snapped the clasp closed again and stood up, "We're going to go get an idea of the perimeter and area." The anger had cooled to impolite boredom, and Shinichi yawned as he shuffled his suit jacket around his shoulders until it was snug.
". . . we're?"
"Since you had all the time to do this," he answered dryly, "I thought I'd waste some of it. Call it fair trade."
Kaito swung his head back and looked at the ceiling, ". . . All right, all right." Shinichi reasoned that he may as well take the good with the bad, accepting that it was a temporary arrangement when he balanced his cup—easily, too busy lovingly caring for the casework—and threw it away.
Upon which it promptly exploded into pink smoke in the garbage bin.
' . . . . . . . It's got a signature scent. You're original.' This was going to be a long "undisclosed amount of time."
Kaito was a quick learner—he knew his trade, and his trade was simple: a specialist of human behavior. Tricking the senses and playing with memory, using "unusual" methods to fool people, and, without a doubt, looking good while doing it. He prided himself on mastering trades, and, in the hour drive, he discovered a shocking truth. Something that could save a man's life if he used the information skillfully.
Shinichi's ideas on how one handled the sensitive curves of the road arose from an enduring, shamelessly-immoral-for-a-detective philosophy: namely, that he didn't have one. Whoever gave him his liscence was either A.) a very confused, confused gentleman, perhaps lady if he was lucky or B.) dead. Most likely the last one, with the owner's long history of interesting deaths as evidence.
'He's a maniac!' Pressed against the cardoor and clinging to the cupholder as though it might anchor him down, Kaito was on Tokyo's oldest battlefield—congested city streets, and terrified that his driver was the metropolitan hazard they made traffic laws for. ". . . U-urgh."
"Something wrong?" Shinichi asked, watching and honestly confused as Kaito sagged in his seat, slyly gathering the broken bits of his Poker face.
"Take it easy on the wheel," grumbled and low when he closed his eyes, still wrapping his mind around the fact the car was stopped. On his obituary, he would be sure to make out a special note that he didn't have a death wish; fate was just unusually cruel. '. . . Look at that. He doesn't know. That's a relaxed life, that's actually—actually textbook horror.' Finally able to sit up straight and trust the momentum not to fling him back into the leather, he lazily stretched out as Shinichi browsed his cell phone in one hand and tossed away the seat-belt with the other.
"Going in?"
"I didn't come here to appreciate the scenery," he was brisk, Kaito taking distant interest in how he dropped his keys in his right pocket, ". . . Stay here. You're too recognizable today." He expected that Shinichi wouldn't be gone for any longer than he needed to be; enough to memorize nooks worth hiding in and where a vehicle with equipment was simple enough to forget about.
"I don't have anywhere to go, exactly," nuzzling against the window and propping up an elbow, cheek in one hand, he faked tired while Shinichi scanned him over; once, and then twice before he was grudgingly satisfied. There was silence as the lock clicked into place—always the suspicious one, he assumed. Sleuthing and combing for potential murderers did that—and Kaito waited, his back dipping behind cars in the lot before Shinichi melted into the scenery.
Fitting himself with a pair of disposable gloves, because all good agents had them hidden on them somewhere, Kaito frowned. 'It would make things a whole lot easier on me if it hadn't been a cynic,' someone without a freakish eye for detail and an enigmatic understanding of his methodology wouldn't have hurt, either, but Kuroba Kaito took his stage in a carnival, where nothing goes exactly right but everything goes wonderfully wrong. He was open to the strange and exciting and different, and had the habit of making it up as he went along. 'He's never failed to show up where I don't want him, though. Trial and error. So . . .' he glanced the interior, struggling for leg room before he flipped open the compartment under his arm. 'Let's see if you've got anything worth knowing about in here, shall we~.' Impolitely going through a person's things wasn't a crime—that was curiosity towards the unknown, and surely a detective couldn't complain about investigating a mystery in the making.
The wallet was gone where he pried apart receipts, yen coins, and ballpoint pens wedged under crisp envelopes and a black-leather bound phone book. 'Advent reader, eh, detective? . . . Huh, he buys manga, too. And likes his coffee.' More than what was healthy, since the times it appeared left Kaito wondering if he was operating on a permanent caffeine rush. Tittering backwards, he felt for the paper-pad in his inner pocket and fingered the pen under his nail, plucking it out and scribbling. 'Bought a new tuxedo?—bills aren't around. Not a problem, he seems like the type who's thorough.'
Rearranging them, he popped the pen in his mouth to keep it steady and paged through a very small assortment of numbers. 'Not social, are you. Business contact, business contact, business contact . . . mom, Yukiko, dad, Yusaku? Huh, wasn't he—er. Don't want to dial that number on accident—Mouri, Mouri, all kept nice and up-to-date for someone who probably doesn't have a good relationship with his phone. Must be important. And some Hattori, I wanna say guy is related to the head of the Osaka Police Department, the name—but not really competent though, I won that one without much work.' Dropping it back and carefully rearranging whatever felt out of place, Kaito reached for the glove compartment.
Only to discover it was locked. 'Weird. I'll have to take a look when I've got the chance.' The minutes were ticking down and he clumsily checked CD cases and rummaged through envelopes, getting a feel for the elusive; the detective never did enjoy the thrill of his obviously excellent company. 'But it's kind of fun to take you apart for that reason.' Knowing was an art as essential to a disguise as improvising, and what could he say? The once-upon-a-time-KID had a secret, perverse love for touching other people's things. Reaching behind the seat, he thought it was annoyingly well-kept and clean before a book—old, endearing, the sort a person took for the moments he didn't have anything to do—caught his eye. 'Sherlock Holmes? Pretty worn out. What is this, his dirty reading material.'
There was much predictable snickering at the other's expense when he sifted through it, noticing very articulate notes written on the margins. '. . . . . a mystery novel freak, and not just any, a Conan Doyle mystery novel freak. And you were calling me a classic. Well! I've got nothing on you, sir, the battle seems lost.' Leaving the trunk alone for now, he figured his twenty minutes of creative "studying" were racing to a close.
'I've been out of commission for a while.' Bullets might have proved unfairly painful, but only in that they had him itching to get back out on the front-line. A nine-to-five job and a creative kind of freedom hadn't suited him. Kaito swung one leg over the other and yawned, making himself right at home when he tucked the gloves away. 'Nothing better than the now to get caught up. But . . .' As fast to drift off—believably, the door lock ringing in one ear—he waited in muted horror for when Shinichi's driving would nearly throw him into the dashboard again.
Thankfully, Kaito always took himself as nothing less than invincible-with-unfortunate-side-effects, glossing over that bit about the obituary.
Way to go through that car. Creeper be creepin'. AND FOR THOSE OF YOU—YES, YOU, THE SKEPTICS—WHO SAY KAITO WOULD NEVER GET CAUGHT. I actually agree, but that's the canon. Been there, done that. This is a bit more original, don't you think? /brick'd
As for Shinichi's roadrage, take a child that drives his skateboard up and over walls, and imagine giving that child any vehicle that an eight year old cannot have access to. Now excuse him as he runs over the criminal with his car. Sometimes, that's all a good boy detective can do to solve his case. (Plus, I wanted to give our creative thief new reasons to fear for his life.) Also, why in the hell is he so hard to write. B'I Tell me if I did as horribly as I feel, please.
