Chapter Three: Improvement

A/N: As promised, here's another update! This story's gotten much more attention than I thought it would, especially since I really only wrote this story for my own entertainment, but I'm loving all the reviews so-far, so thank you again to all my readers and reviewers!

Shinichi had seen many gruesome sights in his life. Violent murders, murder attempts, kidnappings gone wrong... He himself had been on the receiving end of violence once or twice, when he'd confronted the suspect on a whim or without proper back-up. But the sight which greeted him then would forever be one of the most horrifying he'd ever be able to recall.

There was a lot of blood. Not more-so than a usual murder case, but a substantial amount. It wasn't the volume of it that worried him so much, but rather who the blood belonged to. Laying slack-bodied in the center of the floor was a young, terribly pale boy of about Shinichi's age. His hair was a messy mop of brown atop his head that hung down into his face and covered his eyes. His limbs were resting beside him as he lay on his right side, blood still soaking into the white carpet before him. Shinichi was moving before he could even think, his fingers searching desperately for a pulse on the other boy's porcelain neck. He cried in relief when his fingers found a faint pulse, sluggish and weak, but still there. He pulled out his phone with numb attention and dialed for an ambulance. He reported the address and state of the patient before promptly hanging up, not needing an operator to stay on the line with him.

Once the call had been made in fast haste, he searched his Soulmate for the bleeding injury. He found it rather quickly, using his instincts on the location of wounds and based on blood flow around them, locating the source of the bleeding. Kaito's left forearm was a mess of jagged cuts; Shinichi noted the knife sitting just next to his Soulmate's right hand with stunned horror. Had his Soulmate tried to kill himself because of what he'd said...? The thought was almost enough to make Shinichi pass out, but he forced himself to stay awake and focus. He needed to stop the blood which was still trickling to the floor.

Shinichi stood and grabbed a towel from the bathroom in the hall, returning quickly and moving to hold it against the wounds on Kaito's arm. He paused when he noticed a shimmer of blue.

"What? NO! I don't want YOU as my Soulmate!" Shinichi knew that Soul Marks were something magical, and that even through damaged skin and blood, they would show through. Some people in the world had their marks on their head, under their hair, yet the marks would show on their hairs as if they were a projection of light. Seeing the words glowing over the red blood on his Soulmate's arm now made Shinichi's insides churn as he realized that, no, Kaito likely hadn't been aiming to kill himself. As intelligent as he was, he probably could have come up with a much better way than slitting his own wrist, especially since people rarely died of a slit wrist, provided they received medical attention, and it often took hours to bleed out from an injury like that. What Kaito had been trying to do, most likely, was cut his Soul Mark off of his own skin with a blade.

Shinichi pressed over the wound with the towel he'd grabbed and turned his eyes to his Soulmate's face. Dry tear tracks left red marks down the other boy's pale cheeks, and Shinichi flinched. Standing on that rooftop last night, Shinichi had seen KID as something larger than life, his white silhouette stark against the dark night sky, positively glowing under the light of the full moon hanging above them. He'd been a criminal, a con artist, confident and graceful and powerful. To see him now as a heartbroken, shivering, half-dead form on the floor, and to realize that he had done this to him, once again threatened to send Shinichi into unconsciousness as his stomach twisted with guilt.

When the ambulance finally arrived and loaded Kaito up, Shinichi had asked if he could ride with them. The medics asked if he was family, a relative, or anything like that, or else they couldn't let him in. He'd pulled up his shirt to reveal the faded words on his side and that'd been enough to get him a ride to the hospital, his hands firmly clasping Kaito's right one as the medics worked around them.

….

When Kaito had gotten home from the heist that night, he'd changed out of his KID attire on autopilot. He ultimately found himself laying on his bed, dressed in a pair of black cotton pants and a pale gray T-shirt, staring blankly up at his ceiling. He rolled onto his side after a time, his eyes landing on the words written in pretty cursive along his left forearm. His eyes lingered towards four words in particular. "I don't want you."

And, well, really, of course the great Kudo Shinichi wouldn't want the Kaitou KID as his Soulmate. Shinichi was amazing, in Kaito's mind. He was perfect, so... So Kaito really couldn't blame him. What detective would want to be with a criminal anyway?

Kaito found that he couldn't bring himself to hate Shinichi for what had happened... But he did hate those accursed words on his skin, a sharp blue reminder of what he loved but couldn't have. Without really thinking about it, Kaito went down to his kitchen and grabbed a knife before going back up to his room. He stood in the middle of his bedroom, not bothering to sit back down as he turned on the lights and drew the curtains.

Kaito had always avoided reading about Soul Marks. He didn't like hearing stories about them, didn't like thinking about them, because it reminded him of his own horrible markings. Having said that, he didn't know much about how they worked, but he'd always vaguely wondered if one could be cut off or marred past the point of recognition. He never actually tried it because he thought he should at least meet his Soulmate before giving it a try. And met him he had, so... Kaito lifted the knife in his right hand and began making long horizontal cuts, down from an inch below his inner elbow where the words started to within an inch of his wrist, where they ended. He could still feel the uncomfortable burn that lingered from when Shinichi had spoken those words to him, but he was pleased when the burn and sting of the cuts began to overpower the tingling of the spoken words. 'Maybe this will actually work...'

He had no such luck.

After a while, when the blood began to cover his arm more thoroughly like a velvet curtain, Kaito realized that the words shouldn't be visible anymore, but there they still were, azure and glowing and elegant and wonderful and horrible all at the same time. Frustrated, Kaito cut deeper, poking at the words, unable to see exactly how much damage was being done through the blood and his tear-filled vision. It was just like a tattoo on his skin, according to people he'd heard discussing them. Surely it could be cut off.

Kaito's sight grew a bit blurry around the edges of his field of vision, but he didn't notice, still focusing intently on the blue words front-and-center in his line of sight, letting out a frustrated growl. When black spots began to dance in his eyes, obscuring bits of his eyesight, at first, he thought the words were finally going away. When his legs grew weak enough that he found himself sitting on the floor, not remembering having fallen, he pulled the knife away from the words.

Maybe... Maybe he should stop for now. Kaito frowned and went to stand. His vision blacked out again, and the next time color swam into his view, he realized he was laying on the floor. He was on his right side, his hands loose in front of him, the knife a few inches away. He could see the white walls of his ceiling and the floor past red blood. White porcelain skin at his fingertips where the color had been drained from them and poured out onto the floor... And blue. He could still see a soft, glowing blue.

He almost smiled. 'Ah, well. I guess I can't get rid of it after all.' He actually wasn't sure if he was happy about that or not.

It didn't once occur to him that he was dying as his dulled indigo eyes fluttered shut and he fell back into unconsciousness, his phone buzzing up on his nightstand as somebody called him.

….

A continuous beeping sounded somewhere off to the side, seemingly intent on waking Kaito up. He wanted it to shut up, stop hurting his head, and let him sleep, but the monotonous beeping didn't heed his wishes. Kaito groaned softly, frustrated by the noise, and something moved. It was the movement and tightening of hands that alerted him to the fact that someone was holding his right hand in their own fingers.

But who? Kaito didn't remember much...

"Kuroba-kun? Hey, K-Kaito? You okay?" Whoever it was sounded worried... And sounded like an angel, Kaito thought with some amusement. He kinda wished they would say his name again, because his name sounded heavenly on their tongue. Kaito also didn't want them to sound so worried though, so he tried to figure out what was causing this angelic person's concern. He realized after a moment that maybe it was the way Kaito's own brow was crumpled in slight distress. Was this person worried about him?

Confused and wanting answers, Kaito worked desperately on prying his eyes open. It took much longer than he thought it should... Had it always taken so long...? But eventually he managed to get them open.

At first all he saw was white. White, and then a bit of very dark brown as someone's soft-looking hair came into view, and then vivid blue. The same vivid blue which haunted his dreams and made him squirm. The same blue that the words on his arm were written in, unmistakable to him, sharp and intelligent-looking.

Kaito blinked to see if the blue would leave, but it didn't. He belatedly realized that the blue wasn't on his arm, but rather in a pair of eyes which peered down at him in a mixture of concern and relief. And something else that Kaito's drug-hazed mind recognized as love, and that he would have been in denial over if he'd had a clear enough mind to realize who the eyes belonged to.

As it was, all he could do was voice his current thoughts one-at-a-time, starting with: "You have beautiful eyes."

The eyes blinked in surprise, and some of the worry eased from them. Kaito was glad to see it go as the eyes softened and smiled. "Do you always say nice things?" There was that endearing voice again.

"I wouldn't dream of saying something rude to an angel," Kaito responded easily. He forced himself to try and look at more than just the eyes, taking in now the whole face of the person above him, the hair and the features and everything, his mind clearing enough to take in the bigger picture but not enough yet to place where he'd seen it before, other than perhaps in a mirror.

The man above him creased his brow, a look not of worry this time, but resentment crossing his face, and Kaito's heart nearly stopped when he thought that perhaps the resentment was directed at him. Despite thinking that his heart had skipped a few beats in horror, the monitor next to Kaito seemed to disagree, the beeps speeding up a bit as Kaito's own features turned downwards into a frown. Why is this angelic man looking at him like that?

"I'm no angel," the man finally spoke, pulling away a bit. Kaito instantly held the man's hands tighter, not knowing who he was and not liking the look on his face, but wanting the blue-eyed boy to stay all the same. The only thing worse than seeing that disgusted look on the other's face was not seeing him at all, Kaito imagined.

And still drugged as he was, Kaito decided to say as much.

"The only thing worse than seeing that look of disgust on your face would be not seeing you at all. So, even if you don't like me, if you're going to keep looking at me like that, just, don't go anywhere, okay? Please?"

The blue eyes softened again, a small smile creeping onto the other person's face, a look of distress almost overtaking the smile. "I don't not like you." Kaito's fuzzy mind couldn't make sense of that at all, and it showed on his face, so the other person continued for clarification. "I like you. I like you a lot. So... Hurry up and get better so I can properly tell you how sorry I am and how much I like you... Okay?"

Kaito tried to form a response, but his eyes were already drifting closed. He wanted to force them to stay open, but he just didn't seem capable of managing it. He nodded weakly, the only thing he could do, as his eyes slid shut and sleep began to take him again. He barely registered the soft brush of lips on his forehead sending an easy calmness through him as he drifted off.

A/N: Reviews appreciated. Hope you enjoyed the chapter. ^^