Basically, it's 2k words of terribly written fluff because I'm going through some minor writer's block. That's it.

Warnings include shounen-ai, grammar mistakes / general errors, Kaito being lovestruck and stupid, Shinichi being pretentious and adorable, etc. Title from "Burn" by SomeKindaWonderful, because it's a pretty upbeat song and therefore fits the mood of this fic. In my eyes, at least.

Won't You Burn for Me

When Kaito realized he was in love with Kudou Shinichi, of all the arrogant assholes in the entire universe he could've fallen for, he was in the middle of a heist, performing a delicate magic trick that involved intense concentration and a lot of potentially eyebrow-singeing fire, all the while hovering twenty meters above a police-officer-infested street.

He then proceeded to ruin the trick by catching his gloves on fire and tripping unceremoniously off the thin glass ledge he'd managed to suspend in between buildings.

"Shit," he muttered on the descent down, and snapped his hang glider open, ignoring Nakamori and Hakuba's twin expressions of fury as he extinguished the fires crawling up his sleeves and swooped off to sulk in peace.

Half an hour later, Kaito was safely ensconced in a cocoon of blankets on his couch, the TV deliberately turned off (he didn't need to see reminders of his terribly failed heist) and the Kid suit stowed away in the secret room. He had almost gotten a bowl of chocolate ice cream, but in the end took the entire tub. Being in love with Kudou Shinichi warranted that much at a minimum. Kaito felt that, given his situation, he was entitled to buying out an entire ice cream truck.

Nibbling at his spoon petulantly, he burrowed deeper into the blankets. So. Shinichi. (Or rather, Conan, at the moment.) He needed to sort through this mess. First of all, what evidence did he have for the – crush?

Maybe – maybe the fact that Kaito's first thought upon seeing that the tiny detective wasn't at the heist had been Is he okay? Is he sick? His immune system's probably all screwed up from the whole shrinking thing. Would it be weird to bring him soup? No, wait, Mouri-chan's probably taking care of him accompanied by a pang of inexplicable jealousy meant absolutely nothing. It hinted to absolutely no furtive, slowly burgeoning attraction to Shinichi's admittedly complex mind and ridiculously dry sense of humor. Or any other sort of untoward affection for any other part of Shinichi.

Kaito thought briefly of Conan's taunting smirk, the one that turned up higher on the left than the right and always managed to convey seventeen million different snarky comments of varying length and degree, and smiled helplessly.

And then he realized what he had just done and shoved his face into the ice cream carton to muffle his groan of horror.

The next day during lunchtime, as his classmates talked obnoxiously loudly about Kid's spectacular failure at last night's heist, Kaito set his lunch aside and compiled a list of reasons why he was totally, absolutely, definitely not in love with Shinichi. He made it all the way to reason number eighteen when he realized the entire list was pretty much him gushing over how much he adored Shinichi.

Staring forlornly down number five (He can kick soccer balls through smoke with 98% accuracy and if that isn't hot I don't know what is), Kaito dropped his head down on his desk with a clunk. Great. Even he, firmly waist-deep in denial, could see that he wasn't going anywhere like this. In fact, it was just becoming more and more clear that he actually had a thing for Shinichi.

Kaito was in the middle of trying to compose a sonnet about how much he disliked Shinichi (he was failing miserably; so far he had mentioned the exact shade of Shinichi's eyes about four times) when something smacked him in the head. Scowling, he raised his head to find Aoko towering before him, eyebrows lifted and hands on her hips.

"Just what I need," Kaito mumbled, apparently not quietly enough that Aoko didn't hear him, because her expression darkened and she whacked him on the head again.

"Why do you look like someone drowned a bucket of puppies in front of you?" she demanded, scowl deepening when he didn't respond immediately. "Are you sick? Developing an aneurysm?"

"No," Kaito answered sullenly, slouching back in his chair. He stuck out his bottom lip, regressing to his five-year-old self. "I'm just. Tired. Or something."

Aoko remained unimpressed as she crossed her arms across her chest. "Right. That's really convincing."

"Thanks," Kaito grunted, and glared at her in an attempt to get her to leave. One that was ultimately futile, because Aoko stayed parked in front of him as she studied him contemplatively.

Narrowing her eyes, she tilted her head to one side questioningly. "Is this because of the Kid heist last night? The whole lighting-himself-on-fire-and-having-to-ditch-the-heist debacle? I mean, it was great and I took, like, fifteen videos, but I guess since you like that stupid thief for some reason, it might be upsetting."

"That's totally it," Kaito agreed in a monotone. Aoko was starting to look vaguely irritated.

"I'm trying," she gritted out, eyebrows firmly angled downwards as she adopted a slightly threatening air, "to be a good friend, but you're making it kind of hard, if you haven't noticed."

"I didn't ask you to do any of that," huffed Kaito, refocusing his glare on the desk.

Which turned out to be a bad idea, because Aoko's gaze immediately lowered to his desk – and more importantly, the list he'd been writing. Kaito could pinpoint the moment it clicked in her head, and he was a second too late trying to hide the list before she swiped it off the desk.

"Give it back," Kaito told her, but he knew it was a lost cause as Aoko's eyebrows made a desperate attempt to escape her forehead.

"Kaito," she began, some twisted form of awe in her voice, "are you in denial over this – this 'Shinichi' person?"

"What Shinichi," Kaito tried, frantic. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Aoko was so surprised she didn't even sound annoyed as she said, "This Shinichi," and pointed at the top of the page, where Kaito had written Reasons Why I Am Totally, Absolutely, Definitely Not in Love with Shinichi in large, blocky, impossible to miss letters.

"Oh." Kaito coughed. "That… Shinichi."

Squinting at the list – and Kaito prayed she never got to reason thirteen, because that one mentioned the whole eight-year-old thing, and she would probably be more than a little disturbed by that – Aoko remarked, "Huh. All this stuff about being smart and solving mysteries... It sounds a little like that guy who just came back."

Kaito's brain stalled. "What."

"You know." Aoko met his eyes over the top of the paper. "It was in the morning news. Some detective guy came back from taking down a criminal organization. He's our age, actually. I think his name was Ku – Kuroi? Ku – something."

"Kudou," Kaito breathed.

Aoko nodded, recognition blossoming across her face. "That's right, Kudou."

"Kudou Shinichi," Kaito tried. At Aoko's nod, he made a strange, whale-like noise and buried his face in his hands, feeling an embarrassing combination of ecstatic and hopeful. Aoko looked on with mild concern.

It wasn't stalking. Kaito didn't stalk people. He had more class than that – even if he was technically a criminal, he wasn't that kind of messed up. He would never resort to rummaging through trash or camping out in nondescript white vans. Never. Stalking was totally below him.

Kaito sighed. It was kind of hard to convince himself that he wasn't some creepy pervert when he was perched in the tree outside Shinichi's bedroom window at eight in the morning.

In his defense, Kaito thought as he pushed a stray branch out of his face, he had just been curious about Shinichi, considering that he had just gotten his body back and all, and he hadn't known a better way to get in contact with him. It wasn't as if he had Shinichi's number or anything – they only saw each other at heists, after all. And he couldn't very well schedule another one so soon. All he'd been able to find was Shinichi's address, and that was only through a very thorough internet search. So he hadn't had a choice, really.

Disturbingly belatedly, Kaito abruptly realized he could have actually knocked on Shinichi's front door.

Groaning, he banged his head against the tree. When it came to Shinichi, Kaito couldn't even function like a normal person, could he?

He was in the middle of some intense mental sobbing when there was the sound of a window opening and Shinichi's voice saying, calm and slightly puzzled, "Good morning, Kid. What are you doing?"

Kaito promptly fell out of the tree.

Well, he thought as he went, this is going well.

When Kaito finally managed to collect the remains of his dignity from the overgrown grass of Shinichi's backyard (which took an understandably long time) and fully compose himself, brushing leaves and dirt from his hair and checking for broken bones, Shinichi was leaning out of his window as he blinked owlishly down at Kaito with eyebrows raised. "Are you… okay?"

And God, if Kaito hadn't already been feeling mildly concussed from falling nearly two stories, he probably would start upon seeing pajama-clad Kudou Shinichi in the flesh, hair flat on one side and mouth still slack and pink with sleep. It was especially gratifying to see those pretty azure eyes on a distinctly not-eight-year-old face. Kaito had to swallow.

"I," he began when he realized Shinichi was still looking at him with a conflicted facial expression equal parts bewildered and concerned, "heard you were back. From. Being eight. So. You know."

As far as explanations for early morning stalking went, Kaito's was severely lacking, but thankfully Shinichi didn't seem to mind unduly as he smirked, worry melting away. "So you do care about what happens to a critic like me." His words seemed joking, not meant to be taken seriously, but even from all the way on the ground, Kaito couldn't help but be enthralled by the softening of his eyes, the way the tension in his shoulders seemed to bleed away.

Throat suddenly feeling dry, Kaito nodded and grinned as earnestly up at Shinichi as he could. "Well, you're my favorite, after all."

He didn't miss the way the words sounded, wincing a little when he did. Great. If he hadn't already been edging into creeper territory, he certainly was now. Just the impression he wanted to make on the guy he was painfully in love with.

Amazingly enough, Shinichi didn't look repulsed. On the contrary, he actually flushed a little, withdrawing into his bedroom the slightest bit as he coughed. "Always the flatterer, Kid."

"It's Kuroba Kaito, actually," Kaito corrected before he could stop himself. "And since when is telling the truth considered flattery, tantei-kun?"

For a moment, Shinichi just gaped wordlessly at him – and maybe Kaito was going crazy, but he seemed to be growing steadily pinker and pinker, which was an irkingly, distractingly good look on him – and then he said, characteristically pretentiously, "If you're not Kid, then I'm not tantei-kun."

Resisting the urge to grin – okay, maybe he didn't really resist and ended up smiling rather ridiculously – Kaito beamed, "Okay. Shinichi."

Evidently, Shinichi had not been expecting to be called by his first name, because his obscenely pretty mouth fell open as his cheeks went progressively darker shades of pink, and Kaito lamented that he'd escaped Creepy Stalker Land only to end up in Uncomfortably Overfamiliar Zone. Why couldn't he just act like a normal person and ask Shinichi out on a date?

He was contemplating the logistics of moving to Antarctica and building an igloo to occupy for the rest of his sad, meaningless life when Shinichi announced, "Give me ten minutes to get dressed and then we can get breakfast and discuss why your last heist was such a spectacular failure, Kaito."

Kaito spent about three seconds in a stupid haze over the sound of his name on Shinichi's lips – he could probably die happy hearing the way Shinichi strung the syllables together so neatly – and then another four minutes staring up at Shinichi in abject shock. "What? Is this supposed to – a..." He couldn't bring himself to say date, in fear that Shinichi would shoot him down, and if that happened, Kaito would definitely need to take some igloo-building classes.

Overhead, Shinichi rolled his eyes. "I would think that my intentions were obvious," he sniffed, adorable even as he snuck a glance down at Kaito with something not entirely dissimilar to nervousness, and God, Kaito could probably fall for him several million times more.

Oh, who was he kidding. He probably would.

"Uh," Kaito stammered when he realized Shinichi was now regarding him with something approaching anxiety. "That sounds… great."

And that was when Shinichi decided he wanted to kill Kaito by pulling on the world's brightest grin. He looked like the human embodiment of sunshine, golden and too radiant to look straight at for long periods of time. "Be right down, then," he grinned, a little breathless and a lot gorgeous, and Kaito's heart couldn't take all this. He elected to nod dumbly instead of falling to his knees and/or spontaneously combusting.

They ended up going to Poirot for breakfast, which was possibly a bad choice because apparently the head waitress knew Shinichi and didn't stop teasing him and later Ran happened to wander down and practically had a coronary at the sight of Shinichi willingly letting someone drink his coffee (apparently this was a big deal, but Kaito had just wanted to see how bitter Shinichi's coffee was and Shinichi hadn't protested, so), but overall it was completely and utterly perfect, because Shinichi kept smiling at him over his plate of pancakes and self-consciously trying to smooth down the perpetual cowlick at the back of his head and Kaito kept knocking over the syrup and missing his mouth when he tried to eat his waffles because he was too busy memorizing the fan of Shinichi's eyelashes when he blinked.

Basically it was awesome, and Kaito would never be happier than the moment Shinichi let him kiss him on the sidewalk, tasting like powdered sugar and promises and several other clichéd romantic things.

(He was proven wrong six years later when Shinichi proposed to him in the middle of a heist. But that's a story for another time.)

Goodbye, world. I have died of overexposure to fluff. Please bury me with my manga.

Anyway, thanks for reading (if you enjoyed this fic, please considering dropping me a review!) and I'll see you all soon! Stay lovely, my dears! - Luna