Sorry for the wait! I was on vacation for the past two weeks, and when I got back, I wasn't feeling inspired to write. I'm still not, actually. Maybe it's time to move on to a different fandom - I'm pretty sure I've beaten this pairing to death.
General warnings include shounen-ai, shoujo-ai, grammar mistakes / general errors, a very transparent plot, etc. The usual, basically.
Hope you enjoy. - Luna
House Advantage
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Force, for all its revered inspectors and well-meaning detectives, was infamous for one thing amongst the Japanese police, and that thing was not its morals or crime-stopping prowess or its surplus of good-looking people (although seriously, there were a disproportionate number of good-looking people in the Tokyo division).
It was for its betting pool.
And not unduly. There was an entire floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in division one's headquarters lined with tens upon tens of books detailing the many (and most certainly excessive) bets that had been placed within the past thirty or so years. Most of them had to do with the outcomes of cases, TV shows, baseball games, or, most commonly, workplace romance. Apparently the Tokyo police force bred nosiness and ill-fated attempts at matchmaking.
Regardless of whether Yamamoto from arson and Arikawa from traffic ever got together back in '98, the tradition lived on. The current police force had filled about two notebooks over the past few years, and nobody was safe from speculation about potential significant others, wedding dates, and/or when they'd ask out Machiko from theft. Nobody, not even the married inspectors. There had once been a ludicrously large bet over what Megure was going to get his wife for their twelfth anniversary (it turned out to be a lucky jade plant, which won Satou enough to reupholster her FD).
So naturally, Shinichi – a young, fairly attractive, prodigious, and single assistant inspector – was the perfect target.
Kaito was in the middle of trying to decide whether he should bother Shinichi, who appeared to be hard at work in his office, to give him the bento he'd made for him (it was lunchtime, so Shinichi was probably hungry), when he was assailed by Yumi.
"Kuroba-kun," Yumi hissed, skulking out from behind a potted plant and almost making Kaito drop the bento box he was holding. She descended on him with slightly crazy eyes. "Would you like to do me a favor?"
"Uh," Kaito stammered, blinking as one hand instantly went for the miniature canister of sleeping gas he kept strapped to his waistband. "Does the favor involve, um, being a human sacrifice? Because that's the impression you're giving me." He grinned in spite of himself. "If you're looking for a virgin sacrifice, I'll have to let you know that you'll have to take me out of the running, because –"
"Oh my God, are you twelve," Yumi said, rolling her eyes. "No, I want you to introduce Kudou-kun to someone."
"Oh." Kaito visibly relaxed. His hand dropped away from the sleeping gas. "Who is it? A client? Or, what, the new superintendent? I heard Matsumoto-san's been replaced –"
"No," Yumi insisted, doing something with her face that managed to convey volumes of irritation. Kaito was impressed against his will. "I want you to introduce him to a girl." She pulled a manila folder out of apparently nowhere and shoved it in Kaito's face; Kaito, surprised, pulled it from her grip to flip it open. The two-dimensional gaze of an admittedly beautiful girl stared up at him.
"Er, okay," he said uncomprehendingly, scanning the strangely thorough information listed beside the photo. "What does she want him to do? Does she have a case for him?" Kaito squinted down at the paper. He doubted her star sign (Capricorn) and favorite food (omurice) had anything to do with a possible case, though. Also, the description of her body type seemed a little too… detailed.
"Kuroba-kun, I don't know how you can expect me to believe you're not a virgin when you're this oblivious," Yumi remarked, as Kaito made an offended noise. She leaned in to glare at him. "This is a girl I want Kudou-kun to meet and date."
For a moment, Kaito just looked at her. He mouthed meet and date over a few times, brow furrowed in concentration as if trying to figure out what the words meant. Yumi turned her face heavenward to pray for patience as he stammered, "You want Shinichi to… what? 'Meet' – 'meet and date' her?" He somehow managed to make the quotation marks audible.
"I give up," Yumi grumbled, sighing heavily. She grabbed Kaito by the shoulders and spun him around, marching him towards Shinichi's office. "Give him the folder and tell him that Erika will be waiting at L'Effervescence at six thirty tonight."
"What? Why?" Kaito dug his heels into the carpet, turning to peer at Yumi over his shoulder. "Why are her dinner plans important?"
"Just tell him. I've got a bet placed that they'll be an item by the end of next week," Yumi snapped before shoving Kaito so hard he nearly smacked face-first into Shinichi's closed office door. She then slinked off into the shadows like the hell demon Kaito suspected she was, leaving Kaito to stare blankly at where she had been standing.
The door to Shinichi's office opened a minute later, startling Kaito into fumbling the bento he was still carrying. Shinichi leaned against the doorframe, eyes narrowed suspiciously at Kaito. His suit jacket was crinkled around his biceps, material bunched where his sleeves were pushed up his forearms. Kaito twitched, feeling an intense desire to locate an iron.
"Is there something I can do for you, Kaito?" Shinichi asked in a tone that implied he was remembering the time Kaito covered his door with glittery Post-Its.
"What a cold man," Kaito lamented, breezing past Shinichi to throw himself down into the visitor's chair positioned on one side of Shinichi's desk. He set the bento magnanimously on Shinichi's desk. "I brought you lunch – spicy curry and karage." He sniffed. "Not that you deserve it."
Shinichi, who was in the process of shutting the door, turned to grin at him. "You know I appreciate you, Kaito," he sing-songed. His eyes were doing something bright that vaguely reminded Kaito of the Northern Lights as he crossed the room to sit down gracefully in his desk chair. He pulled the bento towards him and began undoing the knot in the magnifying glass-printed handkerchief wrapped around the box, opening the case that held his chopsticks.
"Not enough," Kaito scoffed, and Shinichi smirked at him around a clump of rice. "You could stand to put away your socks by yourself, you heathen."
Shinichi swallowed and opened his mouth to protest, but Kaito squinted at him and added pointedly, "I found a pair of socks in the dishwasher last night," and he shoved a piece of chicken into his mouth in lieu of responding. It had been for a case, but he doubted Kaito would appreciate that. He certainly hadn't appreciated the time Shinichi had wrapped fishing line around every doorknob in the house in an attempt to figure out a locked room trick.
"Anyway," Kaito said when Shinichi was halfway through the bento, "Yumi-san gave me this." He tossed the folder he was holding down onto Shinichi's desk. Shinichi, still chewing, flicked it open and peered down at the papers inside.
"Who's Yukimura Erika?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow. Dubiously, he wondered, "A client?" She seemed a little too innocent and wide-eyed to be involved in the sort of thing that required a professional homicide detective. Also, he doubted that anyone seeking help would have disclosed their hip-to-waist ratio with that much detail. The measurements went to the fourth decimal place.
Kaito leaned back in his chair, looking pensive, which was an expression that generally didn't bode well for Shinichi. "I don't know, but apparently you're supposed to 'meet and date' her, per Yumi-san's orders. You're going to L'Effervescence at six-thirty tonight to meet her."
"I'm supposed to meet and…" Trailing off, Shinichi frowned. "Uh… why?"
"I think she's got a bet going in the betting pool. You know, the department one," Kaito shrugged, leaning over to snatch a piece of carrot out of Shinichi's bento. Shinichi wrinkled his nose – he'd avoided the betting pool since that time he lost ten thousand yen to Chiba over a soccer game. "You and that Yukimura person are going to be a couple by next week, apparently."
"A… couple." Shinichi looked simultaneously pained and nauseated, the way he'd looked that time he accidentally ate a whole chili pepper, before he shut the folder with a decisive snap and shoved it under a meter-tall stack of paperwork he'd been ignoring for the past four months. (He found filling out incident reports to be tedious.) "Well, is Yumi-san paying for it?"
"Probably?" Yawning, Kaito cracked his neck loud enough that Shinichi winced and hurled a pen at his head. It nearly went through Kaito's left eye socket. Shinichi really had an arm on him.
"I guess I'll go, then," Shinichi said over the sound of Kaito's indignant squawking. He paused, eyeing Kaito shrewdly. "By any chance, are you in the mood for French food, Kaito?"
"You," Yumi hissed, appearing out of literally nowhere when Kaito was coming out of the men's restroom. Kaito impressed himself by not screaming and only banging his hip against the door handle rather than falling over completely.
"Me?" he offered, tentative, when her thunderous expression didn't change. He began edging down the hall, trying to convey save me to a passing traffic officer with only his eyes. Judging from her reaction (which was to run in the opposite direction) Kaito just looked deranged.
"Why would you go with Kudou-kun on his date with Erika?" Yumi shouted at him, flailing her arms around. She had the kind of look in her eyes that preluded vivisection. "Don't think that I didn't hear from Erika about what went down there! She was heartbroken – do you know much she had been looking forward to going on a date with Kudou-kun? She bought a new dress just for the night. But then you two basically ignored her the whole night and she went home alone. And I ended up having to pay for three meals." Her eyes narrowed with laser focus. Kaito felt sweat drip down his forehead. "I heard you ordered the lobster."
Kaito pondered whether all the women Shinichi knew were secretly terrifying and then, with dawning comprehension, wondered if that was the reason Shinichi tended to start twitching at the mention of dating girls.
"He wanted me to go with him," he managed to get out when he unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. When Yumi donned an expression that could've wilted an entire botanical garden, he hurriedly added, "And I agreed! It wasn't his fault! Please don't kill him! He's got a lot to live for!" He put on a pitiful expression, one that hopefully said something like killing Shinichi would be tantamount to drowning a puppy. For a moment, he felt sure Yumi was still going to haul him off and strong-arm one of the coroners into bisecting him, but instead she just rolled her eyes and scowled hard.
"Fine. I'm still pissed off. You two are going to pay me back and apologize to Erika." She huffed, turning on her heel and stalking down the hallway, but not before she muttered, "You're lucky you two are cute," and gave him one last glare before she disappeared around a corner.
Kaito kept looking over his shoulder for the rest of the day, even when he got home. Shinichi called him paranoid, but Shinichi hadn't had to face Miyamoto Yumi on his own, so he didn't get an opinion on the matter.
"So I heard you turned down Yumi's niece," Takagi remarked, pseudo-casual. He kneeled carefully beside where Shinichi was hunched over the latest victim (a company president who had been found dead in her plushy penthouse apartment by a cleaning lady). "Why was that, actually?"
"Yumi-san has a niece?" Shinichi mumbled, plucking a stray thread off the victim's lapel. He examined it with narrowed eyes. It was a nylon thread – but the victim's blazer was made of wool. Could it have come off of the killer's clothing?
Takagi laughed and patted him on the shoulder. "Of course she does! You met her – Yukimura Erika, remember? I heard you went on a date with her."
"Oh, you mean that time Yumi-san bought Kaito and me dinner for hanging out with some random girl?" Shinichi asked absently before he called Tome over to show him the thread and order an analysis to be done. After Tome had lumbered off with the thread in an evidence bag, Shinichi made an effort to pay attention to Takagi. It was a sacrifice, breaking his concentration in the middle of a case, but Takagi was starting to look as if he was on the verge of a stroke. "What about her?"
"I just wanted to know why you didn't end up dating her. If you want, you can tell me why you didn't like her and what you would like in a girlfriend," Takagi explained. He had a hungry gleam in his eyes and was holding his police notebook aloft, ready to take notes. Shinichi squinted at him. He'd never seen Takagi so excited about anything, except maybe when Satou had accepted his marriage proposal.
"Uh…" Shinichi rocked back on his heels, considering for a moment. "I guess someone with a good sense of humor who doesn't take themselves too seriously and can think on their feet?" He scratched his head before he gave a definitive nod. That sounded about right.
"All right," Takagi said, scrawling something down and nodding fervently. Shinichi looked at him with suspicion. He hadn't said anything related to the case, so why was Takagi writing any of it down? Abruptly, Shinichi wondered if Takagi was going to sell his answers to one of those terrifying magazines that had one word titles followed by an excess of exclamation points (for example, Lipstick!) that kept trying to get interviews with him. (For whatever reason, some editor had decided that Shinichi was a reasonable idol for teen girls, and everyone else had shrugged and gone along with it.) "Okay. I got it."
"Um, okay," Shinichi agreed when Takagi snapped the notebook shut and tucked it away. He eyed Takagi warily, but Takagi just smiled cheerfully at him, and Shinichi decided that Takagi wasn't rude enough to sell him out. He turned back to the corpse. "Anyway, I'm thinking that the cleaning lady may have something to do with this. See how the knife is stuck at this angle?"
Shinichi didn't realize anything was wrong until Kaito pointed out that they were being stalked.
"Have you noticed that there's a girl following us," Kaito asked under his breath as they walked into Poirot. Shinichi froze, a jolt of fear shooting through him (he was still a little jumpy, even after he got his body back), until Kaito added, "She has pink hair and a nose ring," with something like awe in his voice. Shinichi tentatively decided that a Black Organization operative would choose something a little less conspicuous.
"How long has she been following us?" he hissed as he sat down at the nearest two-seater. Azusa waved at them from behind the counter.
"For about four blocks," Kaito answered, eyebrows lifted. He smirked delightedly at Shinichi, leaning forward. "I can't believe I noticed her before you did. Are you losing your touch?"
Shinichi frowned at him, perturbed. "I was a little distracted." Kaito was wearing a deep green sweater that did… things… to his eyes and made his skin seem ethereally pale, like bone china or – or handblown glass or something that deserved to be filigreed and stuffed into a display cabinet for all to see. All things considered, it was Shinichi's right to be a little off his game, okay.
"I bet you were." Kaito went back to looking smug, fingers tapping out a syncopated rhythm against the tabletop. Shinichi was assailed by a sudden, strong urge to hit him with a rolled-up newspaper. He was debating whether he should settle for clipping him around the head when Kaito announced, "Behind you."
Scowling, Shinichi swiveled in his seat. A girl with long, curly hair dyed a dark pink stared back at him, halfway into her chair. She had disconcertingly bright eyes and a very red mouth and a somewhat classy diamond stud in her nose, and she looked far less like a teenager in her rebellious punk phase than Shinichi had been secretly expecting when Kaito had mentioned a nose ring and pink hair. Shinichi felt his eyebrows go up.
"Have you been following us?" he asked. Across the table, Kaito groaned something about tact (specifically, how Shinichi was lacking in it). Shinichi ignored him.
"Are you Kudou Shinichi?" the girl retorted. Shinichi blinked, caught off guard. He thought his days of fending off stalkers were long over, but maybe he was wrong.
"Um, maybe?" he hazarded.
The girl nodded. "My name's Kawashima Emi. I'm twenty-six years old. I'm an EMT. I participate in stand-up comedy events and play chess competitively in my spare time. I like all types of food except for Chinese. In the future, I would like to have at least one son and one daughter. Please date me."
There was a silence.
"Um…" Shinichi finally managed. He goggled at her for a moment longer before he looked back over at Kaito, who was looking similarly blank-faced. "Is… there a reason you were following us?"
Emi sighed, rubbing her temples. "My sister's boyfriend's aunt's dad's son's friend's cousin – I think his name is Takaki? – told me to try to ask you out. Apparently he wins a lot of money if we end up dating. He said he'd split the pool with me if he ended up winning." She gave him a critical once over. Her eyebrows were somehow disapproving. "I don't think you're my type though."
Shinichi wondered if he should be offended. "Uh, that's okay. You're not really my type either."
"Hm," Emi hummed thoughtfully. Her gaze flickered to Kaito, and she gave a knowing smile. "I assume it's my lack of dick?"
"Excuse me," Shinichi squawked, mortified, but Kaito just laughed.
"I like her," he announced, patting Shinichi on the forearm. He took good care of his hands – he had smoothly filed nails and slender fingers. "We can keep her."
Takagi sidled into Shinichi's office once lunch break, leaning against the doorframe. Shinichi was behind his desk, waving his chopsticks at Kaito, who was in the visitor's chair across from him, and declaring something about – whose turn it was to wash dishes? Takagi didn't really understand their friendship.
"So, Kudou-kun," he began. Shinichi's gaze instantly snapped to him before he relaxed (Takagi winced; he suspected Shinichi had some unresolved trauma from dealing with that crime syndicate he'd taken down). Kaito leaned over to touch the back of his hand, brow furrowed. It was a surprisingly perceptive gesture, and for a fleeting moment, Takagi wondered just how well Kaito knew Shinichi.
He cleared his throat, though, when he realized both Shinichi and Kaito were looking at him with expectant expressions. "I heard you went out with Emi-san. How did that turn out?"
"Emi-san? You mean Kawashima?" Shinichi blinked at him, then smiled. "Oh, she's great." Just as Takagi was about to run for the main office to announce his magnanimous victory, he continued blithely, "We set her up with Hondou. I think they make a great couple, even if Kaito thinks she's going to break him." He rolled his eyes at Kaito. "Hondou is a CIA operative. He'll be fine."
"Kawashima is actually terrifying, though," Kaito reminded him, apparently forgetting Takagi's presence in favor of leaning across the table to lift his eyebrows at him. "She drank an entire bottle of hot sauce." Takagi wondered, wildly, in what context they had discovered that.
"True," Shinichi agreed, serene, and went back to eating the bento on his desk. After a minute, he glanced back over at Takagi. "Did you need anything else?"
"No, that's it. Enjoy your lunch," Takagi muttered before he stumbled away to go find Miwako and cry for a little.
"See, I've figured out where you and Yumi went wrong," Chiba announced in the breakroom the following Wednesday. He sipped pensively at the watered-down airplane fuel that passed as coffee at the Tokyo police station. "You keep setting Kudou-kun up with people he doesn't know. And the thing is, Kudou-kun doesn't open up to new people easily. He needs to be set up with someone he's already comfortable around."
"You're saying that Kudou-kun has trust issues, basically," Takagi muttered, rolling his eyes despondently. He sighed dejectedly. "I was going to get Miwako a new waffle iron."
Chiba regarded him for a long moment, at a loss, before he shrugged and said, "Anyway, that's why I'm going to win the pool." Takagi squinted at him as he drained his cup and tossed it into the trashcan.
"Are the profits going to your ring fund? Miike-san will be happy."
The way Chiba flushed was answer enough.
Ran's karate dojo had been thriving ever since she'd opened it two years ago, but ever since she'd won that national championship last spring, classes had been full. She'd had to convince Sera to teach a few jeet kune do classes (to be fair, all Ran had had to do was wear a few revealing outfits and pose over various pieces of furniture around the house, and Sera was instantly on board) and Sonoko had agreed to manage the dojo's finances, but even so, Ran barely had time to breathe in between teaching beginners' classes and arguing with karate mat suppliers.
However, when Chiba showed up apropos of nothing and point-blank asked her to date Shinichi in exchange for money, Ran decided that certain things required attention.
"Explain to me why Officer Chiba asked me to prostitute myself out to you, Shinichi," she demanded as she stomped into Shinichi's office without pausing to knock. She was about to go on (she had a whole thing about respect and betrayal that she'd been practicing on the way over) but then she realized that Kaito was in the process of feeding Shinichi a strawberry and her resolve wavered. "Oh. Uh…" Kaito was awfully close to Shinichi. "I can come back later, I guess."
"No, no, don't worry about it. Kaito was just helping me, since I didn't want to get juice on my hands." Shinichi sat back in his chair, chewing obliviously. Kaito smiled peaceably at Ran and skirted around the desk to sit down in the "visitor's" chair, flicking the stem of the strawberry into the trashcan in the corner. Ran had the sneaking suspicion that the chair might as well been called Kaito's chair.
"Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Shinichi asked, smirking at her in his familiarly irritating way, and Ran sighed. She'd lost most of her steam, anyway.
"Officer Chiba came by and asked me if I would date you for an obscene amount of money."
"Oh." Shinichi frowned at her. "Did you say yes?"
"Shinichi," Ran ground out, and Shinichi shrugged.
"We could've split the money," he insisted, and Ran took a moment to fully appreciate how glad she was that she had never gone out with him, regardless of what her sixteen-year-old-self had thought would happen between them.
"I just wanted to know why Officer Chiba would even suggest that." Ran eyed Kaito with slight suspicion. She'd seen him lock an inspector in a cleaning closet just because the guy had looked at Shinichi the wrong way one too many times. "Did you put him up to it?"
Kaito looked wounded. "Do I look like the kind of man who would try to rent out Shinichi's friends?" Ran had to admit that in this context, Kaito, tufty-haired and sticky-fingered from strawberries and curled up in Shinichi's visitor's chair in a Touto University sweatshirt, did not look like the kind of person who pimped out their best friend's friends.
"Okay, maybe not," Ran agreed, subsiding. She leveled Shinichi with a squinty look. "Was it you, then?"
Shinichi sniffed. "I have better things to do than sic Chiba on you, Ran." He shuffled papers around on his desk, probably trying to look professional. (It might've worked better if Ran hadn't seen the stack of sudoku puzzles that he was hiding underneath a case report.) "And anyway, I know better than to do anything to get between you and Sera." He shuddered. "Both of you could probably break all my ribs with one hand." Kaito was giving him a slightly concerned look. It was strangely intimate. Ran abruptly felt like an outsider.
"I'd protect you," Kaito insisted.
"I know." Shinichi smiled at him, and there was a surprising amount of warmth in his eyes.
"As long as you know it," Ran said after a long, uncomfortable moment. She edged towards the door, trying to be quiet, but there really wasn't any need. They'd both forgotten she was there.
Takagi was on his way back from the bathroom, about to go found Miwako so they could head home together, when he tripped over something and smacked into a wall. Scowling, Takagi looked around until he realized that he'd tripped over Miwako, who was kneeling on the ground and peering around a corner. People were starting to stare.
For a moment, Takagi wondered if marrying her had been a mistake.
"Um… Miwako?" he ventured, and Miwako just waved a hand at him without looking away from whatever she was so entranced by.
"I think I've solved it," she announced, eyes gleaming. Takagi blinked.
"What… have you solved?" He got the feeling she wasn't just talking about the doll-themed serial killings that division one was working on.
"The mystery of the betting pool," Miwako explained, and when Takagi stared at her blankly, she heaved a sigh and gestured at the adjoining hall. "Just look."
Takagi craned around the corner to see what she was looking at. He felt his eyebrows lift when he discovered that she was watching Shinichi talk to one of the younger inspectors – Yamazaki, Takagi thought his name was. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary about the two of them, though, as far as Takagi could see.
"I've figured out how to win the betting pool," Miwako said, looking slightly manic, and Takagi resisted the urge to take a step back.
Yamazaki Kotarou was a man of simple wants and needs. He enjoyed having Fridays off and knitting in front of the TV, he loved good sake and subtitled foreign films, and he appreciated a good heart and an overabundance of intelligence.
He also liked having his limbs attached to his body. So when Inspector Satou approached him, her smile one molar away from being distinctly serial killer-y and her expression communicating threats of agonizing bodily harm, Kotarou decided that he would do whatever (likely insane) thing she wanted from him.
Which, apparently, was to ask out Kudou Shinichi.
"Excuse me?" Kotarou goggled at her. Sure, Kudou Shinichi fulfilled the aforementioned "good heart" and "overabundance of intelligence" requirements, and he was also hotter than the sun, but Kotarou wasn't stupid. Asking out Kudou Shinichi tended to end in heartbreak or getting mysteriously locked in a cleaning closet for four hours. (Kotarou winced, thinking about poor Shinsuke, who was mildly claustrophobic now and couldn't even ride in elevators.)
"Yamazaki-kun," Satou said in a low, dangerous voice, reminiscent of the purr of a mountain lion right before it chewed your face off, "ask out Kudou-kun or I'll hide your body where no one will find it." She had a disturbing gleam to her eyes. "Ever."
So that was why Kotarou found himself standing in front of Kudou Shinichi's office, palms sweating and breathing strained. He tapped on the doorframe as loudly as he dared. His leg twitched towards the hallway.
Shinichi opened the door a moment later, eyebrows raised. "Yes?" He was wearing a dark green sweater with sleeves that swallowed his hands down to the knuckles. His hair was also sticking up in several suspicious directions. Kotarou squinted behind him to see Kuroba Kaito, Shinichi's famous stage magician friend, lounging in the visitor's chair.
"I… uh…" Kotarou winced, glancing back at Kaito with some trepidation. The man was looking at Kotarou as if he'd like nothing better than to push him off a fifteen-story building. Kotarou had the lingering, terrifying feeling that Kaito would do it, too. "I, uh – Satou-san told me to, uh, ask you out?"
"Uh." Shinichi stared blankly at him before he glanced back at Kaito. Kaito somehow managed to go from murderous to doe-eyed in the amount of time it took for Shinichi to look at him. Kotarou was unwillingly impressed.
"That's, er, nice of you," Shinichi said after a very uncomfortable eight seconds of silence. He coughed, shooting Kotarou an apologetic half-smile. "But I, uh – I'll have to decline."
Kotarou felt an uncanny sense of relief wash over him. He nodded frantically, backing away from the door.
"This was not of my own volition," he announced as he edged down the hall. Kaito was looking at him with a frightfully steady smile. Kotarou was reasonably certain that smile was the last thing you saw before you died. It was somehow scarier than Satou. "I don't actually want to date Kudou-kun. This was all Satou-san's idea." He swallowed a whimper. "I have a lot to live for."
Shinichi just lifted an eyebrow at him, but over his shoulder, Kaito's expression was unchanging. Kotarou suppressed a shudder.
When he got home that night, Kotarou made a point of checking every lock in the house. He still woke up with his hair dyed bright green, somehow.
"This is ridiculous," Satou groaned. She hurled a pen across the room and instantly regretted it when it broke open and splattered ink all over the wall. That was definitely coming out of her paycheck.
Beside her, Takagi just sighed. He was face down in a case report. When he spoke, his voice was muffled by paper. "I don't know what else to try. We've set him up with basically everyone eligible. How picky can someone get?"
Satou dropped her face into her hands. "It's because Kuroba-kun is always around," she muttered. "He's always getting in the way and messing everything up."
Because Kaito was blessed with superhuman hearing and/or was an android sent to make everyone's lives harder, he materialized between them at that moment.
"Heard my name and came running," he said with a shit-eating grin, once Satou and Takagi had recovered from the shock (confirmed that neither of them had died of a heart attack). Satou gave him a sidelong look, narrowing her eyes at him.
"You know Kudou-kun pretty well, don't you?" she asked carefully. Kaito had been a permanent fixture around the station for years – if you wandered into Shinichi's office on any given weekday, there was a ninety-three percent chance that he'd be there.
(The only time Satou knew for certain Kaito hadn't been somewhere around the station was when he'd gotten involved in a hostage situation/bombing at a local theater a year ago. The only reason she was positive was because Shinichi had spent most of his time yelling at his subordinates and denying accusations that he'd been crying in the bathroom. It had been blatantly obvious that Kaito must have been doing a show at that theater and gotten involved.)
"Yeah, I know Shinichi pretty well," Kaito agreed easily, sitting down on top of Satou's desk and blatantly ignoring the confidential papers he was wrinkling. He swung his legs casually back and forth. "What, is there something you need to know about him?"
"We were wondering what kind of person he would date," Satou answered.
Kaito's eyebrows went up. "Are you sure it's okay to ask that in front of your husband?"
"Kuroba-kun," Takagi said in a pained voice.
"There's a betting pool," Satou explained, before Kaito could say whatever irritating thing he was thinking. "We're placing bets on who Kudou-kun will end up dating. So far, we've all failed. The pool's gigantic by now."
Kaito got a dangerous look in his eyes. Belatedly, Satou recalled the one time Kaito had joined in on the betting pool – it had been something about whether it would rain the next day, even though the weather forecast had been a zero percent chance of precipitation. Kaito had bet that it would, everyone else had bet that it wouldn't, and then the biggest storm Japan had seen in years hit the next day. Satou had a working theory that Kaito wasn't entirely human.
"I don't think it's fair for you to join," Takagi announced, lifting his head. He had a cagey look on his face. "You know Kudou-kun even better than all of us do."
"That's exactly why I want to join!" Kaito pouted, looking utterly heartbroken. He batted his eyelashes, expression forlorn. Even Satou had to admit that it was kind of convincing. "I want to show how well I know him! I want to prove our friendship!"
Satou exchanged a look with Takagi. She was crumbling, she knew, but Kaito seemed so… genuine. Takagi looked as if he felt the same, if his slowly thawing scowl meant anything.
"Well… maybe we can let you join, just this once," Satou allowed, hesitant. She felt a strange mix of unease and amusement when Kaito's face lit up. His smile was wide when Satou pulled the record book off the bookshelf and handed it to him, along with her spare pen. It stayed that way when he scrawled something down underneath Satou's last entry (Yamazaki ) and shut the book. It stayed that way when he grinned at Satou and Takagi, saluted them, and skipped off in the direction of Shinichi's office, leaving the book on Takagi's desk.
"What did he write?" Satou asked as Takagi scrambled to find what he'd written. She leaned back in her chair, pensive. "Is it Hattori-kun? No, he's engaged, isn't he. Uh… oh, then maybe it's the Sera girl –" Her rambling was cut off when Takagi threw the book across the room, narrowly missing Megure's head. "Um… Wataru, are you okay?"
"Just look," Takagi mumbled, putting his face in his hands. Blinking, Satou crossed the room to retrieve the book (and give Megure an apologetic look). She flipped through it for a minute or two until she came to the entry, which she read silently. Then she tore the book in half.
It was late – nearly past one – when Shinichi heard the front door open in the distance. He considered trying to sit up and pretend he hadn't fallen asleep on the couch while waiting for Kaito to get back, but gave it up as too much work. Kaito would be able to tell, anyway.
A moment later, a hand, gentle and familiar and warm, pressed against Shinichi's cheek, and Shinichi pushed insistently into the touch.
"Where were you?" he mumbled, rolling onto his back and opening his eyes. Silhouette against the dim light spilling over from the entry area, Kaito was a jumble of familiar shadows and laughing eyes, and Shinichi couldn't help but smile when he looked at him. It used to scare him, the fact that there was nothing Shinichi wouldn't do for him, but now it was a comfort.
"I had to do some clean-up after the heist," Kaito answered lowly, sitting down on the edge of the couch. He smelled like adrenaline and hints of faded cologne, the same way he always smelled after a heist, as he slid a hand around the curve of Shinichi's neck to better cup Shinichi's head. "And then I had to work up some nerve."
"For what?" Shinichi hummed, rubbing his eyes. He struggled up into a seated position, catching Kaito's hand when it threatened to escape and holding onto it with both of his own. "What are you planning, babe?"
Kaito blushed charmingly (he always did, when Shinichi brought out the pet names). "I… well…" He cleared his throat noisily, chewing on his bottom lip. Shinichi almost missed the way his free hand went for the back pocket of his jeans. Shinichi had barely a second to think wait what before Kaito pulled a black ring box out, opened it to reveal the largest diamond ring Shinichi had ever seen, and extended it towards him.
"Shinichi," Kaito said, and yes, he really was sliding down onto one knee. His eyes were earnest and hopeful, the way they had looked the first time he'd stutteringly asked Shinichi out, because despite his assumed playboy persona, he was actually the most adorably awkward loser in the world and Shinichi loved him for it. His voice was shaky when he asked, "Will you marry me?"
For a moment Shinichi was speechless before he pressed a hand to his eyes and gave a shaky exhale. "I hope you didn't steal this." He plucked the ring out of the box and inspected it critically. It looked as if it could singlehandedly feed a country for several years. There was no way he'd be able to wear it in public.
"What?" Kaito's expression went confused and slightly plaintive. "Wait, Shinichi, are you saying n –"
"Of course I'm saying yes," Shinichi sighed, sliding the monstrosity onto his finger. It fit perfectly, although his hand was about eight pounds heavier. He groaned. "If you stole this, I'm going to be pissed."
Kaito was smiling so hard Shinichi wondered if his face was on the verge of breaking. He dove forward, knocked Shinichi down onto the couch, and wrapped him up in the tightest hug Shinichi had ever experienced. "I didn't steal it. I won the longest-running betting pool at the police station," he murmured against Shinichi's neck.
"Oh?" Shinichi said breathlessly, pulling back to look directly at Kaito. He probably should've cared more that he was smiling ridiculously and alarmingly light-headed, but he didn't. Kaito tended to do that to him. "How'd you do that?"
"By loving you," Kaito explained unhelpfully, and Shinichi frowned at him, narrowing his eyes.
"That tells me absolutely nothing."
"Did you know that everybody thought you were single?" Kaito answered instead, apropos of nothing, and Shinichi blinked at him.
"What? Why would they think that?" He couldn't help but grin at Kaito, leaning up to kiss him. When he drew back, Kaito's eyes were the slightest bit glazed. "You've been hanging around my office for years. We live together. And didn't Yamazaki almost walk in on us that time?"
"Can we not talk about Yamazaki right now?" Kaito asked, eyes darkening as his gaze flitted down to Shinichi's mouth, and that was Shinichi's cue to pull him down and kiss him.
Takagi won the bet on Shinichi and Kaito's wedding date. He bought Satou three new waffle irons.
If you enjoyed, please consider dropping me a review, and I'll see you (hopefully) soon! - Luna