This fic was supposed to be 3,000 words. HA.

Anyway, I'm kind of ambivalent about how it turned out, to be honest, but maybe you'll like it? I hope? :D Warnings include shounen-ai, tiny bit of shoujo-ai (mentions of Ran/Sera), grammar mistakes / general errors because I'm too lazy to proofread it again, cavity-inducing sappiness, etc.

Enjoy! - Luna

Penumbra

Shinichi was incredibly glad that he'd finally gotten his body back and taken down the Black Organization, for a variety of reasons. For example, he liked being tall enough to reach mailboxes, and it was nice that waiters didn't immediately offer him the kids' menu anymore. He didn't have to suffer through first grade math lessons, and he didn't have to tranq his ex-girlfriend's dad whenever he wanted to explain how Person A had murdered Person B. Oh, and it was also nice that his friends and family weren't being hunted by a mysterious criminal syndicate and all of that. So yeah, it was pretty nice that things had turned out so well.

And then a publisher came to him with a book offer.

"I was referred to you by your father," the finely-dressed publishing agent ("Nakamura Kimiko," if her gold-embossed card was to be believed) informed him, crossing her legs demurely beneath the table. She fluttered her eyelashes at him. Shinichi politely extricated his hand from where she was clutching at it as tightly as she could while wearing two-inch holographic nails. "Considering that your recent return to the public eye after you brilliantly and dashingly dismantled that awful criminal organization" – Shinichi dryly thought that if she knew he'd done most of the dismantling as a six-year-old, armed with a soccer ball and a bowtie, she'd have a slightly different opinion – "we at Onodera Publishing believe that a memoir or an account of your experiences or something of the sort would sell well. In any case, we would be willing to publish your first manuscript, if you were to write one."

"Uh," Shinichi said intelligently when she looked at him expectantly. "I'm not much of a writer."

Nakamura gave him an indulgent smile and rubbed the side of her pump against Shinichi's instep. Shinichi wondered, horrified, if she did the same thing to his dad, and resisted the urge to kick reflexively at her. "Give it a try."

"I really don't think," began Shinichi, but then Nakamura leaned against the table, tugging down the neckline of her dress as she offered him something she probably meant to be a sultry smile, and Shinichi stammered, "Never mind yes I'll do it please don't – please," mostly to get her to stop.

"Excellent!" Nakamura chirped and retracted her limbs, thankfully. She got to her feet, tossing her designer purse over one shoulder. "I'll see you in a few months to see how you're coming along." Shinichi stared mournfully after her as she flounced out of the café. Only after she was out of sight did he realize she hadn't paid for her fat-free, extra-whipped-cream, one-shot-vanilla, two-shots-hazelnut frappuccino. He groaned and fished a thousand-yen bill out of his pocket, putting his face in his hands. The waiter gave him a sympathetic look when he dropped by with their check.

"Did you get dumped?" he asked.

"I wish," Shinichi mumbled acerbically and ignored the man's bemused frown.

It was a good number of weeks before Shinichi actually had time to try to write the manuscript. After he'd come back, gotten (understandably and unsurprisingly) dumped by Ran, and spent a few weeks moping, Satou, Takagi, and Megure had approached him with a "special consultant" deal, which meant that Shinichi spent most days hanging around crime scenes and/or complaining about the quality of the coffee at headquarters. By the time he resurfaced from a scorpion-themed string of serial killings, it had been eight weeks and Nakamura called him to inform him that she wanted to see receive a copy of his manuscript within the month.

"So if you haven't started, you might want to," was how she phrased it. Shinichi heard the underlying "if you haven't started, you're screwed."

Shinichi's first attempt at writing the – manuscript – was an autobiographical… dramatized… memoir…novel. Thing. He stumbled through three hours of staring at a blank screen, four cups of coffee, and fifteen deleted paragraphs before he gave up.

Kaito found him lying on the ground ten minutes later when he arrived through Shinichi's bedroom window.

"Have you heard of ringing the doorbell?" Shinichi asked, disgusted, when Kaito's socked feet entered his periphery and came to a halt beside his face. Well, at least he was courteous enough to take off his shoes.

"This is easier," Kaito replied cheerfully, because of course he thought scaling two floors and picking the lock on Shinichi's bedroom window was easier and somehow more socially acceptable than pressing the doorbell. Shinichi sighed heavily. There was a reason you didn't make friends with known (retired) criminals, no matter how funny and hot they were. Shinichi was bad at life decisions.

"I brought you sandwiches and donuts," Kaito informed him, waving a bag at his face before he set it on the ground beside Shinichi, and okay, Shinichi would maybe let him stick around a little longer.

Kaito's feet retreated towards Shinichi's desk. Shinichi stared at the ceiling for a little longer before he forced himself to sit up, rubbing at his sore eyes.

"What were you doing?" Kaito asked, and Shinichi glanced over to see that he was looking at Shinichi's computer screen like the nosy little shit that he was. "Why do you have a blank document titled 'I HATE EVERYTHING' open?"

"You know how I got that book deal?" Shinichi started, and Kaito instantly looked amused, because he was an asshole who had laughed himself sick when Shinichi had told him about the book deal. Shinichi scowled and considered throwing the bag of sandwiches at his head. "My manuscript is due in less than four weeks."

"Wow, it seems really deep," Kaito remarked, faux-earnest as he scrolled down to nod at more blank pages. "Thought-provoking. Beautifully written. Really, Shinichi, I think this is going to be a worldwide bestseller."

"You know, now that I work with the police, I could definitely hide a body," Shinichi commented thoughtfully. Kaito laughed and sank into Shinichi's desk chair, mistakenly taking that as a joke.

"What's the problem?" he asked, leaning back until the back of Shinichi's chair shrieked at him, and Shinichi sighed and looked down at the bag in his hands. He busied himself with pulled out a sandwich for each of them, fussing with the wrinkles in the parchment paper wrapping.

"I don't know. It's just… I don't know how I'm supposed to write about what I did. What I went through," Shinichi finally said after a long pause. He bit down on his bottom lip. "It's just… it doesn't feel like something that belongs in a novel or a memoir or anything, because it's something that happened to me. It's not a story I think I want everyone to read about, because nobody would understand it, not really." Exhaling, he tossed a sandwich at Kaito, who caught it one-handed, before he gave Kaito a wry smile. "Maybe I'm just being stupid about it."

Kaito was giving him a thoughtful frown. "No, I think you've got a right to keep some things to yourself. You're right: nobody's going to get it the way that you do." He shrugged. "So why don't you write about something you want to write about?"

Shinichi eyed him with apprehension. "What do you mean by that?"

"Write whatever you want," Kaito told him, unwrapping his sandwich. "It doesn't have to be necessarily inspired by your actual life, but as long as you retain some aspects of the drama or mystery or whatever your publisher is looking for, it'll probably be good enough. So. Write what you want."

"Huh." Shinichi watched him take a bite of his sandwich, half a slice of tomato dropping out the opposite side and landing on Shinichi's carpet with a damp plop. Shinichi couldn't even bring himself to be angry. "Okay. I'll think about it."

"You're welcome," Kaito said imperiously before he got mustard on Shinichi's laptop and Shinichi was forced to draw the line.

After Kaito left around midnight, Shinichi lay in bed for about ten minutes before he sighed, got up, and turned his laptop back on. The only thing he could think about was – well, Kaito, which was nothing new, really, but…

He opened a new document (this one he titled "UGH") and started typing.

Three weeks later, he had a manuscript. Or… something like a manuscript.

"This is a love story," Ran informed him after she finished reading it. She tossed her copy onto Shinichi's kitchen table, lifting an eyebrow at him as if in challenge. "This is a romance novel."

"No, it's not," Shinichi replied, scandalized. He picked up the manuscript and straightened out the pages, Ran eyeing him critically all the while. "It's a story about a police officer trying to catch an international art thief. It's a crime novel. Or maybe a thriller." He frowned. "I don't really know genre classifications."

"Uh, I don't think so," Ran said disbelievingly. "First of all, Keisuke is utterly obsessed with catching Shadow. And Shadow is always flirting with him." She yanked the manuscript out of Shinichi's hands and flipped to a random page, jabbing at a line with one finger. "Look at this. He calls Keisuke beautiful. And on the next page, he makes a comment about Keisuke's eyes."

"That," Shinichi began shiftily, but Ran ignored him.

"And there's the whole thing where Keisuke is the only person Shadow talks to about why he's a thief. The whole scene when Shadow tells him about how he steals art because his mother told him that she left a message hidden on the back of 'one of the world's greatest masterpieces' or whatever –"

"I –"

"And at the end, when Shadow finally tells Keisuke that he's going to give up being a thief because he's quote-unquote found something better? And then Keisuke lets Shadow stay with him until Shadow gets everything sorted out, and Shadow tells him his identity even though Keisuke is a police officer?"

"That was supposed to be a friendship thing," Shinichi informed her with a sniff. Ran looked incredulous.

"Shinichi," she said flatly, "this is a love story."

"You're reading into things," groaned Shinichi. "After all, I based this on my relationship with Kaito. Keisuke is based off of me, and Shadow is based off of Kaito. Well, based on when he used to be Kid. Before he retired."

Ran looked at him askance. "Does that not tell you anything?"

"What's it supposed to tell me?" Shinichi blinked at her.

"Oh my God." Ran put her face in her hands, rubbing at the inner corners of her eyes and smudging her eyeliner. Shinichi winced. "How are you an actual human? How have you survived this long?"

"That's not very nice," Shinichi remarked. "But back to the manuscript. What did you think? Did you like it?"

"Shinichi," Ran said, sounding put-upon, "you gave me it to me yesterday night. I'm talking to you about it today. What does that tell you?" When Shinichi stared blankly at her, she sighed. "I'm telling you it was great, Shinichi. I stayed up all night to read it. I mean, sure, it's still a little rough right now, but it's one of the best love stories I've read in a long time."

Touched, Shinichi reached out to pat her on the hand. "Thanks. That means a lot to me." He frowned. "Even though it's not a love story."

"You keep telling yourself that, Shinichi," Ran allowed magnanimously. She smiled at him, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek as she got up and reached for her coat. "Good luck with the book. You better make the bestseller list, or your father's going to laugh at you."

"He's going to laugh at me no matter what," Shinichi grumbled, but he stood up to give her a hug. She was warm and solid and smelled like the expensive French perfume her mother had gotten for her birthday last year, and there would always be a corner of Shinichi that wished they could've ended up together, but an overwhelmingly large part of him understood why they couldn't. He smiled into her hair anyway and kept his arm wrapped around her all the way to the door.

"Make sure Nakamura-san knows to market the book as a romance," Ran called when she was halfway down Shinichi's front walk, and Shinichi scowled at her.

"It's not a love story!"

"Shadow!" Keisuke came to a stop at the edge of the rooftop, staring down into the abyss into which Shadow had fallen. His heart hammered in his chest. Shadow had a parachute, didn't he? He wouldn't end up – no. He would be okay. He had to be okay, or –

Keisuke's breath was knocked straight out of him when Shadow swept up out of the darkness, grabbing Keisuke around the waist and under the knees and lifting into the sky. Gasping, he clutched frantically at Shadow's shoulders as they shot away from the ground – what was happening? It took Keisuke a minute to realize that Shadow was wearing some kind of collapsible hang glider and that they were lifting up on a thermal, swooping across a sky studded with stars.

He couldn't help but laugh breathlessly. Shadow grinned at him and tucked into a turn. His face was backlit against the dim glow of the moon, carved like so much dark, beautiful marble. "Nice, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Keisuke agreed, rearranging his arms around Shadow's neck. He pressed his face into Shadow's collar – he smelled like something sweet and dangerous, a dark chocolate gunmetal scent – and let himself peer out at the endless sea of stars. He'd force Shadow to land on the roof of the museum and return The Starry Night in a minute. Right now, all he wanted to do was enjoy the feeling of Shadow's heart thrumming against his and the clean night air on his face.

Nakamura called Shinichi to let him know that his manuscript had been accepted with a kind of unholy glee in her voice that made Shinichi get a prickly, uneasy feeling along his spine, but she didn't do anything but send him the manuscript back with edits and polite demands for rewriting scrawled in the margin. Shinichi spent the next several weeks writing, rewriting, and overusing a thesaurus.

"What's another word for 'beautiful'?" Shinichi asked once when Kaito was over. Kaito, who was digging around in Shinichi's freezer, stuck his head back out to give Shinichi a slightly judgy look.

"How about 'gorgeous'? Or 'pretty'?" he asked in a very duh kind of voice.

"I've already used those within the last two pages," Shinichi informed him primly, spinning a ballpoint pen. "Nakamura says I'm not supposed to use the same adjective more than once within a three-page span."

Kaito closed the freezer, looking enthralled. Apparently harassing Shinichi was more interesting than his quest to find chocolate ice cream. "Why've you been using adjectives that mean 'beautiful' so often?" He got a vicious gleam in his eyes that immediately put Shinichi on guard. "Was Mouri-san not joking when she said you were writing a romance novel? Is there anyone who's secretly a prince? Love triangles? Heaving bosoms? Unrealistic amnesia?"

"Please stop," said Shinichi, horrified. "And no, it's not a romance novel. It's a crime/thriller."

"Hm," Kaito hummed, unconvinced. He tried to lean over Shinichi's shoulder to read the manuscript, but Shinichi warded him off with an elbow to the stomach. Yelping, Kaito staggered backwards, grabbing dramatically at the kitchen counter. He gave Shinichi a betrayed look. "What was that for?"

Shinichi squinted at him. "No peeking."

"I don't understand why you won't let me see it," Kaito whined, throwing himself into the seat opposite Shinichi. He made a face, dropping his head until his cheek was pressed against the kitchen table. "You let your ex-girlfriend see it."

"Ran is more than my ex-girlfriend," Shinichi told him absently, rolling his eyes as he crossed out a wordy sentence and tapped the end of his pen against the page. "I've known her since we were six."

"Still," Kaito said, and this time he sounded more serious. Shinichi looked up to find him staring at the wall, eyebrows furrowed. There was something sad about his face, something strung a little too tight. "I really – I don't understand why you won't show it to me, Shinichi."

"Oh." Shinichi immediately felt waist-deep in guilt. He didn't want to show the story to Kaito, mostly because he felt uncomfortable after what Ran had said about the story being romantic. Because it really was just based on his relationship with Kaito – there were embellishments, of course, but at its core, it was about them. About how Shinichi felt when he looked at Kaito.

And in the back of his mind, Shinichi was half-sure that if Kaito read it, he'd think Shinichi was, like, creepily obsessed with him, and that would be awkward, because then Kaito wouldn't break into Shinichi's house at three in the morning or watch bad cop shows with him or put up with Shinichi when he was pre-caffeinated and that – that wasn't something Shinichi was ready to face. That wasn't something Shinichi would ever be ready to face.

"Well, maybe I don't want you to read it until it's perfect," he finally said. Kaito glanced up at him with an eyebrow raised, a little questioning, and Shinichi felt himself flush. He jabbed his pen in Kaito's direction, staring fixedly over Kaito's shoulder. "You'll just have to preorder it if you want to read it as soon as possibl."

"You're so cold, Shinichi," Kaito sighed, but he was smiling, so Shinichi counted it as a win.

He cleared his throat noisily when the moment stretched on too long. "So. Synonyms for 'beautiful.' Go."

"Dazzling, lovely, stunning," Kaito offered, looking straight into Shinichi's eyes as he smiled with the strangest kind of fondness, and Shinichi felt oddly warm all over.

"Thanks," he mumbled, ducking his head and scribbling down lovely even though he'd used it two lines earlier when he was describing Shadow's eyes. What Kaito didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"You have to go," Keisuke choked, coughing uncontrollably through the smoke as he pushed feebly at Shadow's arms. "The rest of my unit is going to get here in minutes! They'll arrest you!" When Shadow didn't move, Keisuke shoved at his shoulders. "Shadow, I can't stop them, you have to leave –"

"You're hurt," Shadow said, so quiet and serious that Keisuke stopped panicking just long enough to get a good look at his face. It was drained and determined – not an entirely unfamiliar expression for Shadow, but Keisuke had never had all that intensity dedicated to him. Above all odds, Keisuke's heart skipped a beat.

"Shadow," he whispered, and Shadow's eyes went pained. "Shadow, you have to go. I'll be fine. You don't need to worry about me." He could hear the heavy footsteps he knew belonged to Shirokawa coming up the charred stairs, accompanied by the sound of Nakano's voice shouting something at him.

"I can't stand the thought of you being hurt," Shadow said, and it sounded like a confession, with how smoke-roughened his voice was. Keisuke almost thought he felt Shadow's gloved hand brush across his cheek. "I can't stand the thought of you being hurt because of me –"

"Were you the one who set up the bomb?"

"No, but they were trying to get to me, and –"

"Then it's not your fault," Keisuke snapped. When Shadow's expression didn't clear, he sighed and placed a hand on Shadow's forearm. "I'm a police officer. I can take care of myself, and I make my own choices. I chose to follow you when we knew there were people gunning for you. Don't take the blame for this." He motioned at the sluggishly bleeding wound below his ribs. Shadow's gaze flickered down momentarily before it returned to Keisuke's face, searching and dark. Despite everything, he was still gorgeous, and Keisuke couldn't help but smile faintly at him.

"Now go," he demanded, giving Shadow a slap on the back of the head, and Shadow retaliated with a touch along Keisuke's jaw as he started for the crooked, blackened remains of the far window. He gave Keisuke one last look – Keisuke lifted his eyebrows at him – before he dropped silently away. The second the top of his head disappeared from sight, the door broke down with a sickening crunch and Shirokawa and Nakano charged into the room, breathing hard.

"Keisuke-san, what –" Nakano began, but Shirokawa was the one who hurried across the room to the window. He swore.

"He got away."

Both Nakano and Shirokawa turned to look at Keisuke, nearly simultaneous. Keisuke almost laughed, but his stomach gave a twinge of pain and he groaned.

"A little help here?" he hissed, motioning at the hole in his stomach, and Nakano jumped and hastily crossed the room, babbling something about calling medical.

Several weeks, innumerable cups of coffee, and an arson-murder investigation later, Shinichi sent off his final revisions and spent the afternoon vindictively snapped all his red pens in half.

(Kaito, who had materialized in the middle of Shinichi's third pen, watched with something like morbid interest.

"Can I try doing one?" he asked, and Shinichi clutched the remaining pens to his chest and glared. Judging by the way one of Kaito's eyebrows was crawling up his forehead, he probably looked unhinged, but Shinichi was finding it hard to care when all he could think was No more pasting clauses together into compound-complex sentences! No more cutting out adverbs! No more parallel construction!

"Did you just finish writing a novel?" he said, hostile, and Kaito held his hands up in surrender as Shinichi cracked the last four pens in two.)

After that, life mainly went back to its usual pattern of murder and Ran calling to make inarticulate sounds about her crush on Sera (of course she didn't put it like that – she used phrases like "a really good friend" and asked things like "do you think she's pretty when she wears leather, because I think she's really pretty in leather" – but Shinichi could read between the lines, okay).

Kaito kept dropping by the police station, Shinichi's house, and crime scenes, probably because ever since he'd won Magician of the Year last April, he didn't have to bother with things like giving free promotional shows or shooting awful adverts for local magazines, so he had a lot of free time. It was nice having him around. He didn't mind it when Shinichi babbled about the postmortem differences of cyanide and arsenic, and he brought food, so he was basically a prince in Shinichi's book.

Two days before the novel's release date, there was an outbreak of werewolf-themed serial killings that made Shinichi mostly forget that the book was coming out, more focused on trying to figure out if there was an actual reason why the killer always used silver bullets on their victims or how they selected their targets. The "congratulations your book is available to the general public" email that Nakamura sent him was lost in an influx of messages about the latest killing in Hokkaido.

It wasn't until after the werewolf murders were cleared up – no, there hadn't been an actual reason for using silver bullets; the killer had targeted people who role-played as werewolves on an obscure internet forum – that Shinichi actually realized his book was out, and he only remembered because Yumi ambushed him on his way out of the station shouting something about shadows and Keisuke.

(To be honest, at that point Shinichi had been running on two shots of espresso and half an hour of sleep, and he may have panicked and ran when Yumi came skulking out of the shadows to shout at him about fictional characters. He was justified, dammit, no matter how Satou laughed at him.)

When Shinichi got home, he found a grand total of eighty-four voicemails left on his answering machine. Most of them were from various talk show hosts who apparently wanted to interview him about his "groundbreaking" and "inspirational" novel, with a few recordings of Yukiko somehow flailing audibly (?) mixed in. There was also an extremely loud call from Hattori; Shinichi could only understand about four words of it, and they were can't, kill, proud, and you, which left Shinichi with a very unclear message.

Shinichi had a bad feeling in his stomach. He called Nakamura.

"Is there a reason why I have voicemails from multiple news network asking about when I'm going to come out and whether I'll do it on their show?" he asked once she picked up. "Because I do. I have them. There are" – he paused to count – "forty-seven of them on my answering machine right now. Forty-seven."

"Maybe it's because you recently published a novel about two guys falling in love," Nakamura offered, sounding faux-contemplative.

"What."

"You might recall that you worked on a manuscript for several months," said Nakamura, somehow managing to come across as both patient and patronizing. Shinichi was too busy frowning to get properly annoyed at her. "It was about a police officer and an art thief who chase each other around and eventually shack up together. You know. That story about two guys falling in love."

"I wrote a crime/thriller," Shinichi said blankly.

"No crime/thriller involves that many uses of the word 'beautiful.' Nothing is beautiful in a crime/thriller. Everything is bloody and sad," Nakamura informed him, sounding far too rational for this conversation. "And anyway, what you wrote is selling way more copies than a crime/thriller ever would." She paused, sounding uncertain. "I thought you did that on purpose."

"Did what?" Shinichi demanded. He rubbed at his eyes, feeling a migraine beginning behind his eyes.

"Wrote a love story," said Nakamura quietly. "I thought you didn't want to – tell me explicitly. That you were… you know. I thought the book was you trying to be subtle."

"It was me writing a story that I could relate to. It wasn't supposed to be a romance or a declaration of love or a – coming out story or anything like that," Shinichi replied. He shut his eyes and exhaled. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Ran laughing at him. This was his punishment for not listening to her, wasn't it? "Well, thanks anyway."

"Kudou-san –" Nakamura began, but Shinichi hung up on her and went to go try to drown himself in the coffeepot. He half-expecting Kaito to come swinging in through his kitchen window, but he never did. Shinichi went to bed feeling oddly unsatisfied.

When Shinichi got into work the next morning, he opened the door to his office to discover a pile of letters, cards, and other miscellaneous fanworks stacked into a two-meter pile on his desk. He stared at it for a long moment, processing everything. Was that an oil painting balanced on the top?

Satou, who was passing by behind him, patted him on the back hard enough that Shinichi's shoulder made a sound like a gunshot as it popped. Shinichi was too numb for the pain to really register. "Nice job on the novel, Kudou-kun! I never knew you were such a romantic!"

"What is on my desk," Shinichi asked hollowly. "Is that a paper mache model of Keisuke and Shadow…" He couldn't finish. He was pretty sure the blob of gluey paper that was probably Keisuke had its legs bent behind its back and its arms over its head and he really didn't want to try to figure out what position the creator had been going for.

"Your address isn't publically listed anymore, right? So everyone sent their fan letters and stuff to the station," Satou informed him with unholy glee. "Have you seen the marble bust someone made of Shadow's head?"

"I didn't even describe what Shadow looks like," Shinichi said blankly.

"Really?" Satou looked incredulous. "Because I'm pretty sure there's at least three paragraphs somewhere about the 'cut of his jaw' or something."

"He is supposed to have a really defined jawline," Shinichi admitted, musing.

"And 'sparkling eyes' and a 'bitten-red mouth,'" supplied Satou, throwing an arm around Shinichi. She smelled like perfume and smug satisfaction. "Also he's supposedly beautiful, gorgeous, pretty, and lovely. In case you forgot. How many hours did you spend scouring the thesaurus?"

"Probably at least two," Shinichi said. "Total, I mean." Well, maybe three. Possibly three and a half. But he had some pride, okay.

Satou made a sound that signified she didn't believe him but wasn't willing to get into it before she patted his head, ruffling his hair until he squawked at her. "Anyway. Read through all the fan mail after the meeting about the Yamashita case, okay?" There was a glint of morbid glee in her eye as she pulled away. "I hope you like all the doujinshi. There are at least fourteen in that pile. I think at least five of them are R18."

Shinichi stared. He felt his eye twitch. "The book's been out for less than a week."

"Don't underestimate doujinshi artists," Satou advised him solemnly before she trotted off, probably to harass Takagi into going on a coffee run. She did love her caramel macchiatos.

Staring at the pile of fan mail, Shinichi decided that he would do the emotionally stunted thing and ignore it until he couldn't (i.e. when his whole office was swamped/when he couldn't open the door anymore). With that in mind, he shut the door and went to go to the meeting.

He got home at five after working the Yamashita case until he'd dug up four suspects. With a groan, Shinichi threw himself on his bed and didn't move for two hours. He kept expecting to hear the sound of his window sliding open, to hear Kaito laughing at the way he was starfished across his bed, but all he heard was the sound of his own breathing and a cricket somewhere in the distance.

Around seven, Shinichi finally got up to order sushi and stare at his kitchen counter until the doorbell rang. When Shinichi went to get the door, the deliveryman's eyes went wide and he flushed all the way past the collar of his polo shirt.

"Oh my God, you're Kudou Shinichi," he stammered, mouth working open and closed. "You – I –"

Shinichi smiled uncomfortably at him. He was acutely aware of the fact that his shirt was wrinkled like so much cellophane and his hair was probably sticking up at eighteen different angles. "Yeah, that's me."

"I loved Penumbra," the deliveryman blurted out. He licked his lips. "I – I think it's incredible what you did. I really liked the way you didn't market the story as anything, like, unnatural or unusual or anything. You just released it without caring what anyone would think about you. I think…" He flushed even harder, looking at Shinichi through his eyelashes. "I think that was really brave of you."

"I didn't think of it as a statement," Shinichi said, shrugging. "It's just me. And I'm not ashamed of myself" – well, at least not that part of him; the rest was probably debatable – "so why would I? I'm not interested in telling lies of omission anymore." Those had cost him too much already, with Ran and with everyone he'd known as Conan. Comparatively, his sexuality wasn't worth worrying about. Even if he hadn't meant for it to ever even come out to the public.

The deliveryman was looking at Shinichi as if Shinichi had dedicated a star to him. "Oh," he breathed. "I – wow. You're… really… wow."

"Thanks," Shinichi offered when the silence had gone on for too long and he was starting to get a little uncomfortably, mostly because he was pretty sure the deliveryman was staring at his mouth. He eyed the box the guy was holding. "Uh, how much do I owe you?"

"Oh, I – right," the deliveryman said, looking down at the box as if he'd never seen it. "I, uh… I…" Shinichi was in the middle of reaching for his wallet, trying to remember how much the roll he'd ordered cost, when the guy blurted out, "I'll take your number as payment," and went bright red.

Shinichi stared at him blankly for a second before it registered. "You're…" Trying to pick me up, he almost said, but the hopeful expression on the deliveryman's face made it awkward. "Um… I…"

"Right," the deliveryman sighed, trying and failing not to look as if Shinichi had taken a jackhammer to his heart. Shinichi winced. "I should've known you already had someone. You probably wrote Penumbra for him." He gave Shinichi a long look. "I hope he appreciates you."

"Uh, yeah," said Shinichi, rubbing the back of his head. For some reason, his mind flashed to Kaito. Did Kaito appreciate him? Kaito, who hadn't even texted him about his book, who hadn't bothered to even congratulate him…? He coughed. "Actually, uh, it's not… we're not… together. So, uh, I can give you my number as long as you promise not to spread it around."

"I wouldn't," the deliveryman promised, looking so enthusiastic Shinichi was struck by an urge to reach out and ruffle his hair. He was like the human version of a golden retriever. "I – thanks. I'm Ishimoto Ryou, by the way." He fumbled for a pen, which he passed to Shinichi after he found one in his back pocket.

"Nice to meet you." Shinichi smiled at him as he wrote his number on the back of Ryou's hand. "Text me whenever."

"Yeah, I will," Ryou assured him as he pushed the box at Shinichi and took the pen back. He nearly tripped going down Shinichi's front walk. Shinichi couldn't help but laugh as he shut the door and went to go eat his roll. He stayed up until one in the morning, staring out his kitchen window, until he gave up and went to bed.

Kaito never showed. Shinichi felt his absence like a bruise.

Ryou texted Shinichi first thing the next morning – Shinichi woke up to a text that read Hi! It's Ishimoto Ryou from last night! and couldn't help but laugh a little as he wrote back I remember you :) and got an immediate string of exclamation points in return. He was still laughing to himself when he walked into the kitchen and found that Kaito was sitting on his counter.

Jumping, Shinichi nearly managed to bash his head against the doorframe. "Kaito what the hell," he managed, clutching at his chest. Kaito was going to give him a heart attack one day. "It is way too early for this."

Kaito swung his legs, an eyebrow raised. He looked good, even though he was wearing a shit-eating grin and the ugliest green sweater Shinichi had ever seen. "That's not a very nice greeting." He squinted at Shinichi. "Why are you laughing this early in the morning? I know you haven't had coffee yet. I've been holding your coffeemaker hostage."

Shinichi gave him a look. "Mature."

"Yeah, that's me." Kaito's heel knocked against a cabinet. "But seriously, why are you smiling this early in the morning?'

"I…" Shinichi paused, trying to figure out the best way of saying "I met a cute sushi deliveryman and now we're talking about the accidental romance novel I wrote." He got an inexplicable sinking feeling that Kaito wouldn't be all that thrilled by that.

Apparently Shinichi's hesitation was enough to spark Kaito's suspicion, because the next thing Shinichi knew, Kaito was standing in front of him, scrolling through Shinichi's phone. Shinichi stood blinking for a long second – it wasn't his fault that his mental processing power didn't peak until nine o'clock, okay – before he made a choking noise and scrambled for his phone back, but Kaito was already shoving it back into his hand. There was a very strange light in his eyes, even as his mouth turned up at the corners.

"Kaito?" Shinichi hazarded after a moment. He glanced down at his phone. Ryou's texts were piling up – questions about Penumbra, little smiley faces, a picture of a cat (?). "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," said Kaito with the kind of cheerfulness that he hadn't forced around Shinichi for the better part of a year. His expression cleared, the way smoke faded out slowly. "Good to see you've found yourself a…"

"Friend," Shinichi finished when Kaito wouldn't. Kaito's face did something complicated. "Are you sure you're okay? You're acting really weird."

"Me? I'm great. I'm excellent. Spectacular, you might even say," Kaito insisted. He clapped Shinichi on the shoulder, gently pushing around him until he stood in the hallway. "I'll… I'll see you later, Shinichi."

Something annoyed unfolded in Shinichi's chest. He grabbed Kaito by the (well-muscled… now was not the time) bicep, pulling until Kaito was forced to meet his eyes. "I haven't seen you in a week and that's all you have to say to me?" His stomach turned. "You didn't even congratulate me on the book."

"The…" Kaito's eyes went wide before he looked away, licking his lips. "I…" he began, then stopped, and Shinichi scowled.

"Is that what this is about? The book?" When Kaito flinched, Shinichi sighed and let go of his arm to rub at the back of his own neck. "Look, I know it's… awkward, since I kind of based it on the two of us and it got marketed as a romance novel, but I swear that I didn't mean for it to be one. It was just supposed to be a crime/thriller. It wasn't supposed to… imply anything about… us."

(Even if Shinichi had considered that maybe they could – but no, it wasn't possible. Kaito was too brilliant and beautiful for Shinichi. He knew they'd never be more than friends. That was just how Shinichi's life worked out.)

"Oh," Kaito said. Shinichi forced himself to look him in the face. Kaito was wearing the strangest expression, one that Shinichi had never seen on him before. It was shuttered and vulnerable at the same time, like he was trying to look indifferent and failing miserably. But before Shinichi could open his mouth, Kaito mumbled, "I… okay. That's… right. Yeah, I'm going to go now." He was halfway to the front door by the time Shinichi realized what he was saying, and the next time Shinichi blinked, he was gone.

Shinichi waited for a minute before he allowed himself the luxury of a drawn-out groan. He couldn't help feeling as if he'd made an even bigger mess of everything.

"Good job," he muttered to himself, looking down at his phone and typing out a response to Ryou's last question (i do like cats). Not even Ryou's excited lines of smiley faces made him feel any better.

"This is the last time we'll see each other like this," Shadow said, looking Keisuke fully in the face. His eyes glittered behind his mask, dark and impassionate in the murky light of the basement. It took a minute for Keisuke to fully understand what he was saying, and when he did, he felt his face go blank.

"Right," he managed, knowing he sounded uncharacteristically flat, but he couldn't help it. He'd known that eventually Shadow wouldn't want to continue their friendship or whatever they were calling the thing that they had. It had been clear from the start that the man was bound to get tired of Keisuke, straight-laced and boring as Keisuke was – but somewhere in his stupid heart, Keisuke had been hoping that would be years down the line. He wouldn't admit it, but Shadow was the closest thing he had to a best friend. "I… see. I guess this is goodbye, then."

"For now," Shadow agreed, and Keisuke felt a flash of anger. He gritted his teeth. Fine. Shadow could decide when they were friends and when they weren't. What did he care?

"Right," he said before he turned on his heel and stormed out of the basement.

Takagi cornered Shinichi in the bathroom after they finished the Yamashita case the following day. He had a crazed look on his face, as if he was considering bashing Shinichi over the head with part of a sink. Shinichi tried to look furtively towards the door, but Takagi blocked him bodily. "Kudou-kun, please, please, I'm begging you, read your fan mail and do something about it. Or at least move it somewhere else."

"Why should I do that?" asked Shinichi in a probably transparent bid to buy time.

"Satou-san keeps making me put all the new arrivals in your office," Takagi told him. There was a haunted gleam in his eyes. "Did you know that some people make collages out of their own hair? And sometimes they use, like, blood –"

"Okay, yeah, I'll look through all of that," Shinichi interrupted, patting him on the shoulder. "Sorry you had to… touch that. I'll buy you a drink sometime."

"If I get hepatitis, I'm going to be very upset with you," Takagi said reproachfully, and Shinichi winced and tried to look repentant.

When Shinichi eventually made it back to his office, he opened the door to find that his desk had disappeared under a barrage of letters, paintings, drawings, and – okay, so Takagi hadn't been lying about the collages. Shinichi stepped over one, wrinkling his nose. That… was a lot of blood.

He sat down in his desk chair and grabbed at the nearest letter. It was fairly normal; it contained mostly proclamations about how much the writer loved his writing style and the plot of Penumbra, and Shinichi was smiling until the letter started to devolve into a sex scene between Keisuke and Shadow, at which point he shoved it under a charcoal sketch of what someone apparently imagined Keisuke looked like when he was – okay. No.

Yumi poked her head in when Shinichi was halfway through a story about what someone thought would happen after Shadow and Keisuke moved in together (there seemed to be an unrealistic amount of cuddling and professions of love involved). "Kudou-kun! You're finally reading all the fan mail?"

"Unfortunately," Shinichi said absently, narrowing his eyes at a run-on sentence detailing Keisuke kissing Shadow on the neck. He tore his gaze away to raise his eyebrows questioningly at Yumi. "Did you need something?"

"I was just wondering when you'd find my doujinshi, but I think that might take a while," Yumi remarked, eyeing the state of his office before she smirked at him. "You never told me you were such a romantic, Kudou-kun! I can't believe you actually wrote such a great story. Where've you been hiding those writing skills?"

"Yumi-san," Shinichi groaned, putting his face in his hands and accidentally knocking a statue of Shadow off the desk. "Please."

"No, really," Yumi insisted, sounding earnest enough that Shinichi peered at her through his fingers. "I think you really managed to capture Keisuke and Shadow's relationship really well. It felt realistic."

"It wasn't supposed to be a romance," grumbled Shinichi, pushing his hair out of his face. "It was just supposed to be the story of two people."

"And that's why it worked so well," Yumi said sincerely. "If you had tried to show that they were falling in love, it probably would've come across as cliché. But since the progression of their relationship was written like a friendship, it felt like something natural. You know?" She grinned at him. "I guess I liked it because it didn't feel forced. It felt like something that might happen in real life. And that's probably why so many people love Keisuke and Shadow."

"Well," Shinichi started after a moment, at a loss. He cleared his throat. "I mean – I did write it based on my own… feelings. Experiences."

"What?" Yumi's face lit up. She looked terrifyingly excited. Shinichi felt churn in his stomach. "You mean there's a Shadow out there for you? Did you write Penumbra for them? Kudou-kun, that's so romantic!"

"What do you mean?" Shinichi asked cagily, scooting his chair discreetly back.

"Because if you wrote the book based on your feelings about whoever Shadow is, you have to be in love with them. There's no way you're not."

"Uh, we're just friends," Shinichi informed him, coughing into his fist. Yumi gave him a flatly unimpressed look, as if he'd just tried to convince her that the sun revolved around the earth.

"Yeah, sure," she drawled, rolling her eyes. "You wrote a novel about how you feel about that person, and the general public agrees that it reads like a romance novel. Yeah, I don't think it's friendship you're feeling." She squinted at him. "How deep in denial are you?"

"I," Shinichi began, but couldn't finish. He looked down at a pencil sketch of Shadow holding Keisuke, eyes soft and undefined as they looked at each other, and felt something closing off the back of his throat, because, well, Yumi… Yumi was probably right. He swallowed, looking away. "I… yeah, all right. Maybe you're on to something."

"Of course I'm on to something." Yumi looked infuriatingly smug as she tapped her nails against his door. "Anyway, tell me when you find my doujinshi. I hope you like chocolate lube. Oh, and bondage. Lots of bondage. Bye!" She disappeared down the hall, humming under her breath. Shinichi forlornly watched her go.

He sighed, rubbing at his sinuses, before he glanced back down at the desk. He was a little too scared to go anywhere near the doujinshi now, but some of the paintings weren't too terrible. There were even a few that didn't involve nudity. Maybe Shinichi could try to get a junior agent to help him carry some of the stuff home so his office wouldn't be as cluttered.

Mind made up, Shinichi pushed his desk chair back – and nearly fell over when one of the wheels caught on a crumpled letter. Catching himself on the arms of the chair, he glared down at the offending letter, which read TO KUDOU SHINICHI in a messy scrawl that seemed… almost familiar, actually. Where had Shinichi seen that handwriting before?

Reaching down, Shinichi managed to disentangle the envelope from the chair. The paper had wilted a little and gotten smudged with several unidentifiable substances; this must've been one of the first pieces of fan mail to show up in his office. There was no return address. Shinichi frowned down at it, sliding a finger under the flap so he could pull out the letter.

Dear Shinichi, the letter began, and already Shinichi was surprised. Most of the letters began with things like KUDOU-SAMA! or To Kudou-san. Nobody ever called him by his first name. He blinked and read on.

I have to say, I wasn't expecting that Mouri-san had been telling the truth when she said you were writing a romance novel. I would've expected some kind of action-packed mystery about serial killers or something like that. That's not to say that I didn't love Penumbra, though. I doubt there was anyone who came away from it with regrets about reading it. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone asked you to write a sequel. It's not hard to fall in love with Keisuke and Shadow.

Keisuke and Shadow. It's easy to see where their relationship came from. They're us, aren't they? Not that anyone else knows that, save for probably Mouri-san and Hattori and Hakuba and Aoko, since they know that I used to be Kid and you used to be Conan. Obviously there are some differences – I never lived with you, obviously, and I never actually admitted that I gave up being Kid when I realized that you were more important to me. I know, I know – you loved my heists and if you'd known that I was giving them up for you, you wouldn't have approved. But I also know that you were always struggling about whether you should turn me in, even if you said you wouldn't. I know you, Shinichi. You always want to do the right thing. And I didn't want to force you to make that decision.

Anyway, I just need to know – was Penumbra for me? Are you saying that you're in love with me too? Because I've been waiting on you since you got back, you know. I never thought you'd care about me the way I care about you (how could you, when you're Kudou Shinichi?) but if you're saying that you do… well, I'd really like to know, because you don't know how happy that would make me. You really don't.

I would've said all of this in person, but some things are just easier to write. I guess you'd understand that, if Penumbra really is a love letter to me.

Yours, Kaito.

Shinichi stared down at the piece of paper in his hands, blinking rapidly as several things slotted together in his head.

Oh.

It took him an hour to harass a team of cowering junior agents into transporting the bulk of the fan mail back to his house and another twenty to get to Ekoda. Kaito's house was quiet and familiar, the front yard filled with blossoming rosebushes and a few of Kaito's doves diving in and out of a wrought-iron birdbath. As Shinichi walked up the path leading to Kaito's front door, one of the birds veered away from the bath and planted itself on Shinichi's shoulder, chirping incessantly. Shinichi gave it a pat on its damp little head and it cooed, nudging against the side of his neck before it took off again.

He rang the doorbell and waited. It took only a few minutes before the door swung open and Kaito stood there, looking vaguely resigned as he rubbed a hand through his hair. "Look, I already told you I didn't want to buy any vacuum cleaners…" He trailed off when Shinichi lifted his eyebrows at him. There was an uncomfortable silence.

"You're not the vacuum cleaner salesman," Kaito finally said.

"No, I'm not," agreed Shinichi. He held up the letter, and Kaito instantly blanched. It would've been funny if it hadn't been so sad.

"You found it. Shit. I was hoping you wouldn't, with all the fan mail you were getting." Kaito looked a little as if he wanted to drown himself in the birdbath or throw himself off the nearest cliff. He shuffled his feet. "Well, this is really awkward."

"How so?" Shinichi asked, innocent.

Kaito gave him a Look. "Uh, you found the love letter I sent you when I thought you wrote a romance about us even though it was just supposed to be a crime/thriller?"

"No, it was a romance," Shinichi told him. "Crime/thrillers don't involve that many uses of the word 'beautiful.'" He took a deep breath. "I didn't want to admit that it was a romance because everyone knew that it was about us, and if I did – I thought you'd be uncomfortable about it. But then, you know." He gestured with the letter. "This changes things."

One of Kaito's eyebrows ticked upwards. "So…" He licked his lips, and Shinichi couldn't help but stare, transfixed, for a long minute. "Are you saying…" He trailed off, making an abortive hand motion. His eyes were huge and hopeful.

"Yeah." Shinichi was grinning uncontrollably. He watched Kaito's smile unfurl across his face. For the first time, he let himself reach out and trace that smile with his hands, feel the steady beat of Kaito's pulse against his fingertips, and Kaito didn't object when Shinichi moved in to kiss him.

Keisuke stared in shock. Shadow was standing on his doorstep – but it wasn't exactly Shadow, no. It was a man with no mask, no gloves, no mystery, a man with dark hair and a smile like a sunrise. He wore baggy jeans and a shirt with a logo so faded Keisuke could barely read it in the dim light spilling into the entry from the kitchen. He looked at Keisuke with his familiar, casually beautiful eyes as if waiting for a reaction.

"You said we weren't going to see each other again," Keisuke stammered, thoroughly stunned, and Shadow – Shadow – laughed.

"And we aren't." He took a step across the threshold, shutting the door behind him. "I'm not Shadow anymore."

"You're not?" Keisuke was aware that he was gaping unattractively, but Shadow didn't seem to mind. His smile gleamed as he reached out with ungloved fingers to touch Keisuke's cheek.

"I'm not going to steal anymore," he announced, silencing Keisuke's half-formed protests with a lift of his eyebrows. "I've found something better."

"Better," said Keisuke distractedly – Shadow was hypnotically close; for once, he smelled like a man and not a mystery, and it was confusing in its novelty – and Shadow grinned. He hadn't stopped smiling since he'd set foot in Keisuke's apartment, Keisuke noted.

"Yeah. Better." Shadow brushed Keisuke's hair away from his forehead. Keisuke's breath hitched. "Do you mind if I stay with you for a little? Just until I work everything out."

"Of course," Keisuke agreed. He was only human, after all. "Of course you can stay, Shadow. As long as you need."

"Not Shadow," Shadow murmured. He leaned in until his lips grazed Keisuke's ear, his exhales ghosting across Keisuke's skin. Keisuke suppressed a shiver. "I'm not Shadow anymore, Keisuke."

"Then who are you?" Keisuke whispered back.

And when Shadow breathed out two words – a name, his name – into Keisuke's ear before he turned his face into the spot where Keisuke's neck met his shoulder, Keisuke knew he'd never find anything better, either.

If you enjoyed this fic even a little, please consider dropping me a review, and I'll see you all soon! - Luna