Author's note: I guessss this is more KIDxAoko than KaitoxAoko… then again, the two of them will probably mingle at the end

Author's note: I guess this is more KIDxAoko than KaitoxAoko… then again, the two of them will probably mingle at the end. Anyway. Nothing more explicit here than a simple kiss, but everything your creative imagination can come up with is implied at the end. x3

Disclaimer: Peanuts, peanuts, peanuts, oh, look, cookies! peanuts, peanuts…

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Balance

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Your world – now you've come to understand – is governed by balance.

Balance, between a mother dead and a father always absent, off on the traces of a phantom; balance, between your witty friends and lively life at college, and the lone, gaudy evenings at home; balance, between the thunders of the heists and working with the Task Force, and coming home at night to find your apartment cold and deserted.

(A pizza, a sofa, and nothing good on TV.)

And so you feel like a tightrope walker, always treading the thin line between and between, always wondering whether it's best to go or stay, do or die, stand or fall – and most times ending getting neither for all your efforts.

You do know that other people are equally treading that thin, sharp razor's edge; and there are some who, at the spur of a moment, just because they want it so, decide to go instead of stay, to do to avoid dying, to stand so that they can stop falling – people to whom balance means more than anyone else, because they're existing just at the crack between complete genius and general insanity. Like one infamous phantom thief whom your father and the Task Force and yourself have been trying to catch all night, carelessly sitting on your balcony window just as you come home.

You stare for a bit. "What the hell are you doing here?" you mumble, sliding the tall pane open.

"Just resting my wings, m'lady," he says cheerfully, his long, white-clad legs dangling in the air. That smirk of his isn't going to improve your headache. He's balancing lightly on the railing, completely oblivious to the three stories below.

Balance. And yet not, something must somehow have overcharged one way or another, because in your normal mind you would certainly never lean up, grab his tie down to you, and kiss him. Once. And hard.

"Payback," you whisper, pulling away. Definitely not in your normal mind. You see his grin as he leans down to kiss you again.

Balance.

But the hand in your hair, gently tilting your head up so that your lips fit more perfectly together, the arms sneaking around your waist to press your body more intimately against his, your jacket falling off to the ground and his cloak joining it there soon after that, the both of you stepping further inside the shaded room until the back of your knees finally hit the side of your bed, they all manage (somehow) to pull you off the razor's edge of reason, to make you go away from where you've always stayed, make you die by the most beautiful means of doing, make you stop standing and start falling.

You fall together.

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I'm updating this in the course of the evening in my time, and the next chapter should be posted tomorrow morning, so some of you would be reading both at once. (gives some more KID-shaped cookies to anyone who asks)