A/N: Thanks to everyone who read the first part. I hope you enjoy this next one. Answers to my two reviewers will be at the bottom for those who don't want to see them.

As an additional note, the next chapter probably won't come out quite so quickly. I had this one half written when I uploaded the first and I have exams next week.

This is completely unbeta'd. I've read it through a few times myself, but if you see any mistakes, please don't hesitate to point them out. Also, this is sorta my first time really writing anything serious for DCMK, so if the characters don't seem right, please tell me that too. I know it's a pretty subjective thing, but I do enjoy feedback.

Song: Into Your Arms – The Maine

I bet you didn't expect that / But she made me change my ways / With eyes like sunsets, baby/ And legs that went on for days

It was, Kid reflected as he walked down the unfamiliar road, a risky venture to visit his favorite critic outside of heists. Of course, the higher stakes, the more fun the phantom thief had. Still, he couldn't help but feel that visiting the detective in broad daylight in his own home was a bit more than a risky bet. He might as well pop in on Nakamori-keibu and ask to be cuffed. Fighting with the urge to run very, very far away, Kid lifted his fist and rapped hard on the door to the Kudo residence.

"Oi, Kudo!" He called, adopting the rough, brash tone of Hattori Heiji. The Osakan was the perfect disguise as he liked to show up unannounced and drag his fellow detective off for cases or to whatever new restaurant he wanted to try (plus Kid had made sure he was sufficiently distracted). Secretly, Kid just thought that Hattori had a little crush on meitantei, but it seemed to be a reoccurring trend with detectives that they were just as oblivious to their own feelings as they were to the feelings of others. Case in point being Hakuba who had yet to realize that Aoko had been subtly coaxing him into pseudo-dates with her for the past three months. Who knew such a law-abiding girl could be so devious? But that was neither here nor there. Right now, he had his own detective to coax out. "Kudoooooooo! Open up."

Meitantei was being a bit slow. Eight in the morning wasn't so early that he should be taking this long. Kid jimmied the lock (Only a deadbolt, meitantei? Tsk, tsk.) and slipped inside. Now, the room he wanted was just up stairs and to the left. The bedroom door was open a crack, but the inside was dark. Was his rival even home? Kid pouted. He was sure that his doves had spotted the fully grown detective in his house. The door swung open silently as the thief stepped into the room. It took only a second to spot the owner of said room. The detective was sprawled across his bed, face buried in his pillow, in a pair of boxers with magnifying glasses on them and nothing else. Kid fought back a snicker as he crept closer. Of course the detective would have…Wait. Kid rewound that thought. Meitantei. Only wearing boxers.

The thief's eyes slid up the pale arch of the detective's spine to the sloping shoulders. It should be a crime for meitantei to be so pretty. One falsely tan hand reached out to touch when the sleeping boy's only visible eye snapped open to focus on the thief. It was only due to years of practice that Kid's yelp of surprise (Poker Face! Poker Face!) was still in Hattori's voice as a dead-pan stare fixed on him. The detective sat up while giving him the evil eye, although the effect was mostly lost due to his sleep rumpled hair and appearance. Kid couldn't help the snickers that left him.

"What do you want, Hattori?" Well, someone wasn't a morning person. The detective looked positively evil (and sexy) with his hooded sleepy eyes glaring up at the disguised thief from under dark bangs. Not that it would deter Kid who'd faced witches, angry inspectors, and a man out for his blood. Really, he just found it a bit cute. So Kid shrugged, grinning his smuggest as he'd seen Hattori do on occasion while observing (not stalking) the duo.

"Y'need to get out more, Kudo, and there's this great okonomiyaki place that I've been wantin' to try, so get up," He drawled, in a masterful performance (if he did say so himself) of flawless Kansai-ben. He'd heard one of the chibi-tantei's attempts at it and couldn't help but feel more than a little smug by this little one-up he had on the detective. For a second, it looked like Shinichi would leap up and strangle his "friend," but instead he slumped over and gave a resigned sigh. Score one for the thief!

"Fine, fine, but there had better be coffee," grumbled meitantei as he gracelessly rose from the bed, stretching in ways that displayed the muscles of his shoulders and back almost obscenely. Kid had the sudden urge to run his hands along the arch of his spine and- Poker Face clamped down before his decidedly perverted thoughts could show on his face. He needed to leave. As in right then. If he stayed, other parts of his body were going to start responding to the half-naked and oblivious teenager. With a hastily muttered excuse, the thief escaped from the bedroom. Poker Face efficiently took over and handled the task of getting back to the foyer to await the detective, but underneath that Kid's mind was jabbering about long, long legs and hooded blue eyes that burned through him hotter than the sun.

It was fortunate that Shinichi took his sweet time, because the not-so little problem Kid suddenly found himself with stubbornly hung around even through thoughts of Nakamori-keibu and the whole Kid Task Force in speedos. In the end, he was more than a little horrified by the time his problem faded (perhaps never to return because that was a horrific image) and probably would have nightmares for weeks to come along that train of thought. He shuddered before schooling his face into a Hattori Shit-Eating Grin (guaranteed to give Kudos the heebie-jeebies at over ten paces) as his unwitting date clomped down the stairs.

The still jabbering part of his mind pointed out how nicely those dark jeans hugged every inch of the detective from the waist down. It was a good thing that he had Poker Face, because meitantei looked downright molsetable. Seriously, in Kid's book anyone who dressed that neatly on a daily basis was just asking to have someone ruffle them. A button down and a sweater vest? Was he serious? Of course with all of the cases he ran into, the detective probably had to always be prepared for the press that was sure to follow. Who would respect a detective in scruffy jeans and t-shirts?

Well, Hattori seemed to manage, but then the Osakan had the Osaka Police Department backing him up whereas Shinichi had had to convince the Tokyo Metropolitan Police to listen to him on his own. Even if he had once told meitantei that detectives were nothing but uncreative critics, Kid's opinion had since been revised, at least for the most part. He could be rather… creative in his criticisms (like pretending to fall from a building just to dart him, the little brat). And the thief respected the detective despite their differences. Although, "respect" hardly seemed to cover all of his thoughts toward meitantei, but to label it as anything else would be to acknowledge it (if he didn't, things could stay the same, right?).

The detective reached the bottom step, forcing Kid out of his musings. He looked better than he had that night on the rooftop, though he was a bit paler than his shrunken self, a side-effect of his growth spurts perhaps. The thief mentally revised some of his plans for the day to be less physically intensive. He didn't want their time together to end with meitantei passed out on the floor. That would just ruin everything.

"Isn't it too early for okonomiyaki, Hattori?" Shinichi groused as they left the house, locking the door behind them (and giving it a curious glance). He didn't seem particularly angry though and Kid had seen him enough times in the morning via his doves to know this was just pre-coffee grouchiness. The route he had planned for their trip included passing by a little coffee shop, so that would be quickly remedied.

"Okonomiyaki is for lunch," answered the disguised thief, grinning over at the other teen. Shinichi gave him a look that was all too easily interpreted as 'Then why did you wake me up so early?' Kid easily ignored the pointed stare and continued to lead the detective along, chattering about a baseball game that had taken place in Osaka a few days before. He missed the speculative glare that the other gave him as he recounted a particularly close home run. If he had seen it, Kid would have recognized it as the face that his favorite critic made when he was close to figuring out his disguise.

"You know," said Shinichi, breaking into the one-sided conversation and Kid looked over at him questioningly. The speculative glare on the detective's face softened into fond exasperation. "If you wanted to see me that badly, you could have come as yourself."

Startled, Kid could only stare wide-eyed as he was passed by the other teen. How had…? The thief pouted, for sure he thought he'd pulled one over the detective or at least could have kept him in the dark for a little longer. Meitantei was getting too good at sniffing him out. "What gave me away?" asked Kid after a moment of silence.

Shinichi smirked back at him, eyes glittering with glee at having ousted him. The thief had been doing a good job, but he really should have chosen someone else for his disguise. Hattori couldn't keep anything to himself, especially not when he had something to rub in Shinichi's face. Honestly, he'd forgotten about it in his pre-coffee haze, but Hattori had called to gloat over being invited to speak at a Mystery Novelist Convention in Kyoto just the night before. Likely, that had been Kid's doing (and, secretly, he hoped it was fake just so he could get a little revenge for Hattori's gloating.)

"Hattori called to gloat," answered the detective after a few minutes of letting the thief squirm. He shrugged and turned back around to face forward, making no moves to grab the thief when he picked up the pace to match strides with the detective. Oddly, Shinichi didn't feel the need to start their usual game of cat and mouse. It didn't feel strange to have the other walking beside him in contemplative silence. In other circumstances, he knew that he and Kid could have been friends. Coming to a decision as they stopped in front of the coffee shop the thief had been leading them to, Shinichi gave the nervous disguised teen a piercing look. "No tricks?"

Kid stared back at him with a solemn expression (and it was really hard to keep his face straight when all he wanted to do was grin.) "No tricks," swore the thief, one hand resting over his heart. That seemed to satisfy the detective as he nodded once and headed into the shop, but not before throwing out one last comment that finally destroyed Kid's control over his grin.

"And change your disguise."

When Shinichi returned with his cup of black coffee, there was a blue-eyed, tanned blonde boy waiting for him with a familiar pair of glasses perched on his grinning face. He didn't bother patting the pocket he had been keeping the tracking glasses in. When had he…? No, Shinichi decided, he really didn't want to know. In companionable silence, the duo left the little shop behind, anticipating the day ahead.

I'm falling in love / But it's falling apart / I need to find my way back to the start / When we were in love / Oh things were better than they are / Let me back into / Into your arms

Things had been going so well. Why did this have to happen? He clutches the circle of metal and glass tighter in his hand. What more would they take from him? He fights the tears threatening to come. If he cries now, he won't be able to stop. With a shuddering breath, he curls up, protectively tucking the hand grasping the monocle tightly in the space between his torso and knees.

"Why?" He asks, but there isn't an answer no matter how much he hopes for one. His father stares silently down at him. It was comforting once, but now it is only a reminder of how much he's lost. "Tou-san… Meitantei…"

It's his mother who finds him curled up in front of the portrait of his father. She doesn't say anything, just cards her fingers through his hair until he can find his Poker Face.

A/N:

Foreverandeveralone: Thanks! I hope you'll stick around to see~

Yuu3: Well, here is more!