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Not 100% sure how this happened. It went from, "oh, they'd only talk for real if they were stuck together" to "ok, but even then they'd have to have a life or death situation" to "uh. this is getting kind of grim" to "wait why are you kissing??" so *shrug*? They kinda took over and it unspooled and I wrote the most in one sitting that I have this year on this thing, so yeah. It's also the last thing I have fully written for the HakuKai week, so no guarantee on anything else. =_=; I'm chronically burned out a bit this year.

Last Confessions

Kaito always thought that if he was going to die, he’d die much like his father had; in a very public manner from an ‘accident’ or shot in front of a crowd as Kid. It would be the same organization of course, and the only collateral would be the pain his death would have on everyone he loved. Maybe the pain of his identity as Kid coming to light in the most horrifying way possible.

It was almost funny; he never expected his death might come from being buried alive. Definitely didn’t expect Hakuba to be there with him. Ironically, his night job as Kid wasn’t even related to how they got in this situation. A case of wrong place, wrong time, sideways collateral for someone else’s life problems.

So.

Stuck buried under a hell of a lot of rubble in a space barely bigger than the average bath-and-shower stall with no idea if the mess would shift and crush them at any moment or if they’d run out of air or if some other terrible thing would kill them.

Lovely.

Their light came from Hakuba’s cellphone, set on its dimmest setting to make the battery last as long as possible. There wasn’t a signal to send a help message. Kaito sat at one end of the space and Hakuba sat at the other, left to contemplate their own mortality and nurse the bruises and cuts they’d gotten from the damn building collapsing around them.

“Is it good luck,” Kaito said into the uncomfortable silence that had stretched since they realized their phones would be no use, “or bad that we lived through a building falling on us?”

“I assume good,” Hakuba said. “It is certainly good luck that there were not many people in the building when it fell.”

Because someone pulled the fire alarm first. Because Kaito had the bad luck to hold back with Hakuba to check people were actually out. Because he had the good luck to pull Hakuba to a sturdy part of the room when he felt the ground lurch and the walls rumble.

“Pretty sure that alarm was intentional,” Kaito said. Another stream of dust sifted down above them as something shifted. Kaito could taste it on his tongue. They probably looked like dust monsters, not that the dim phone light gave enough details to tell exactly how bad their condition was. “You think anyone is going to realize we were in there?”

“The people we helped evacuate should notice,” Hakuba said in a dull tone. Tired. Too close to defeated.

“Hm.” Not much good it would do if they ran out of air. How long would oxygen last in a space this size? With two more-or-less adult bodies? Air typically contained about twenty percent oxygen, give or take a percentage or two. The human body exhaled oxygen with carbon dioxide, but each breath that amount of available oxygen would get less. With the dust, the air quality was poor to begin with. Put all of those factors together, Kaito couldn’t really see lasting more than a day or two if the air was truly sealed. Even if it wasn’t, they had perhaps three days without water before their bodies would start shutting down. And they still could get crushed at any moment if the wall and support beams keeping them safe for the moment gave out after all.

“I’m surprised you aren’t coming up with a plan,” Hakuba said, though he didn’t sound surprised, just resigned.

Kaito shifted to get comfortable—as comfortable as concrete and scree could be really—and huffed. “I know I’m a talented magician, but even I don’t have the means to lift a ton or three of concrete off us.”

“No escape then.”

“I’m not giving up hope just yet,” Kaito said, forcing his voice light. “Like you said, someone should know we were still in there.”

“The odds of us living through this are currently at forty-three percent,” Hakuba said. “And dropping.”

“I love to cheat the odds,” Kaito said. “That said, never thought I’d get a building dropped on me. Or that you’d be stuck with me.”

“I’m sure you’d rather a different companion,” Hakuba drawled, blinking focus back into the moment instead of wherever he’d drifted to. Likely to thinking about death and dying. A bit impossible not to at the moment.

Kaito shrugged. Part of him wished it was Aoko. A greater part of him is glad it wasn’t. That she was far away and safe. “I could be stuck with worse.” He could be stuck with Edogawa. Or a corpse. Edogawa and a corpse. Really, Hakuba wasn’t too bad.

“I’m glad I’m here with you rather than a random civilian,” Hakuba said. “I don’t think I would be able to handle the panicking.”

“Oh, we aren’t panicking? I thought we were doing that very very quietly,” Kaito joked.

Hakuba huffed a laugh. Dust sifted to the ground as he ran a hand through his hair. “I doubt you would let me see it even if you were panicking. You can be a hard man to read.”

“Thanks, that’s intentional.”

Hakuba laughed again, quieter.

Kaito didn’t want to sit in silence, stewing in his own thoughts. He rifled through his pockets, coming up with two pieces of candy and one of his many packs of cards. Add a scarf for a surface that wasn’t completely covered in dust, brush aside some pebbles… Hakuba watched him in the dim light. Kaito flipped a card. Hmm. Not great, too hard to play a card game with this. It was enough to see Hakuba some, but with the light pointing up, then they couldn’t see the cards. He could use his phone or try hanging it so it pointed down, but they needed to conserve battery and hanging anything could move things above them by accident.

“Well, there went that idea,” he muttered. He held out a candy instead. “It’s not much, but here.”

“Do you have more of these?” Saguru asked, taking the lozenge.

“Only a couple.”

“Best make them last, then.”

“Or enjoy it while we can,” Kaito countered.

“Hmm.”

Kaito popped his own candy into his mouth, letting artificial strawberry clear away the taste of concrete dust. After a moment, he heard the crinkle of cellophane as Hakuba did the same. Still too quiet. “Hey.”

“What, Kuroba?”

“Why did you become a detective? I mean, you could just like being nosy.”

“No, I am not a detective to be nosy,” Hakuba said. Kaito could picture him rolling his eyes. “I’m a detective because I want to help people.”

“Right,” Kaito said, not really seeing it. Maybe if it was all murders or stalkers or something. But a lot of criminals, especially the petty crime sort that seemed to be a good deal of Hakuba’s expertise, weren’t crazy or cruel, just trying to get by.

“Truly,” Hakuba insisted. “I want to know why people do them. What makes them desperate enough, or uncaring enough, to commit a crime. If I can understand that, see the whole structure of the system, then I can take steps toward bettering that system.”

“Oh, so the puzzle aspect isn’t the draw.”

“I can’t say I dislike the chance to reason out a conclusion based on the facts at hand,” Hakuba said. “But that wasn’t why I was originally drawn to this.”

“No, you just were a Holmes otaku taking it a step too far,” Kaito joked. If it was brighter, he could see the way Hakuba’s lip curled with irritation. Instead, he had to satisfy himself with the scoff and stiff shift in posture instead.

“I liked Holmes because he helped who the police couldn’t or didn’t care to help. Women. The lower class. People who were at a disadvantage.” A beat of silence. “What drew you to magic?”

“Uh. My dad?” Magic was such a core thing in his childhood that it wasn’t even something he questioned. “I guess I wanted a way to connect with him and he loved showing me how to do tricks.” Kaito ached a little inside, an old, old hurt that had never healed right. “And after he died, it was a way to keep him alive.”

“I see,” Hakuba said.

There was another uncomfortable silence. Kaito hated that sort of silence, and they always happened when he mentioned his father’s death, and it was only one of the reasons he never brought it up.

Hakuba’s phone timed out and it left them in suffocating darkness for the long moment it took to find it and turn the light back on. Their hands brushed, having both reached for it. Hakuba pulled his hand away first. Neither of them scooted back toward the edges of the space though.

Kaito thought about closing his eyes and trying to sleep, but the idea of spending potentially his last moments asleep felt cheap. He was going to crawl out of his skin though. He hated being trapped. Always had hated it. He shifted. Shifted again when it only managed to dig rocks more pointedly into his skin. “Distract me?” he said after an unknown amount of time.

“Distract you how?” Hakuba asked. “We decided cards were out.”

“I don’t know. A story or a game or something.” Kaito fiddled with the edges of the scarf he’d set down earlier.

“A game.” Hakuba hummed, thinking. Slowly, he said, “Kuroba. We are most likely going to die.”

“Loving the optimism.”

“I would like to do so with the least number of regrets.”

Kaito scowled in Hakuba’s direction. Hakuba could have been something from a horror movie in the lighting they had, so it was probably a really good scowl. “Not seeing how this is a game, Hakuba.”

“We could take turns saying things we want to air out. I know I have my fair share of secrets weighing on me,” Hakuba said with a wry smile.

“This sounds a lot like your attempts to get a confession of criminal activity from me.”

“No, that’s not—” Hakuba let out a frustrated sound. “I’m not thinking in lines of incriminating things. Merely things that weigh heavy on us.”

“Not sure we’re at the heavy secret stage of whatever the hell we have going on,” Kaito quipped.

“Entertain yourself then,” Hakuba huffed.

He turned his back on Kaito and Kaito felt a twinge of guilt. If Kaito confessed a secret… what kind of things were they even talking about here? “You go first,” Kaito said after several dozen breaths of tense silence.

“Oh no, you’re clearly not interested.”

Hakuba was such an ass sometimes, Kaito thought. “It’s better than waiting to die I guess.”

“What a ringing endorsement.”

“Shut up or spill, Hakuba.”

Hakuba turned back and frowned. His mouth opened. Closed. Ha, not so easy to spill secrets, was it?

“Scared?” Kaito taunted. “I guess it could be a problem to let me know your deep dark secrets.”

“That’s not it. I don’t know where to start.”

“Start wherever.”

“Maybe you should start,” Hakuba snapped.

Kaito rolled his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. I don’t eat fish.”

“…I highly doubt that this is something that weighs on you, Kuroba,” Saguru said archly. “Although it is strange for someone born and raised in Japan.”

“Well it’s kind of a secret. Only my mom, Jii, and Aoko really know why.”

“And why is that?”

Kaito pursed his lips. He wasn’t going to mention his phobia. That would be giving Hakuba something to hold over his head and use against him. He could tell a bit of truth though. “I fell in a fish pond as a kid and a fish tried to swallow my arm. I’ve hated anything with scales ever since. Just looking at them brings back the awful smell of mucky water and slimy fish and—” Kaito shuddered. “Yeah, don’t want to eat something that is so gross.”

Hakuba hummed, bemused. “Alright then. I suppose that is being honest if nothing else.”

“Well what sort of confession were you thinking of, oh mighty detective?”

Hakuba looked him dead in the eye. “I’m gay,” he said bluntly. “And this is the first I’ve ever said so out loud.”

“E-eh? Really?” Kaito blinked rapidly. He. Couldn’t compute that really? No, it was fine that Hakuba was gay, it just. Didn’t fit? He flirted with women? And girls clearly were interested in him if their class was any indication. “Huh.”

“Well? Is that it?”

Kaito blinked again and realized Hakuba was…tense. Oh. He softened a little inside. “Um, congrats on saying it out loud?” Oh crap, should Kaito share something like that back? “Are you… okay with being gay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Defensive much? “You’ve apparently never said it out loud. Even I’ve—”

“You’ve what?” Hakuba’s eyes are sharp in the dim light.

“Ugh.” Kaito rubbed grit into the back of his neck. “Even I’ve said that I sometimes find men attractive out loud before. To myself and to Aoko.”

“Oh.” The defensiveness bled away into understanding.

“Yeah.”

Awkward.

Kaito cleared his throat. “Uh. So, to follow that. Hm. Well I guess I technically just outed myself as sort of bi? But.” He swallowed. Oh, it was actually a lot harder to say this sort of thing aloud than he thought it would be. “I like Aoko. A lot.”

“I think everyone in class is aware of that,” Hakuba said. His voice was a little scratchy. The dust, of course.

“Whatever. It’s just.” You know what? Kaito hated vulnerability. “I guess I wonder if it’s love or love. Is it because she’s the person who’s closest or…? Anyway, I’ve never told Aoko.”

“…I believe she cares for you as well,” Hakuba said kindly.

“She has awful taste,” Kaito joked.

Hakuba actually laughed a little. The space around them felt a little less oppressive for a moment.

“You really never told anyone?” Kaito asked.

“Who would I tell?” Hakuba asked rhetorically. “I haven’t had a close friend my age since I was twelve. My closest friends are my caretaker and a hawk.”

Ouch. “…Aoko’s my only close friend,” Kaito offered.

“I used to think that the price of genius was intimidating everyone away. Now I suppose it was my lack of social ability.”

“Oh, social ability doesn’t mean much if you don’t let anyone close.” Kaito would know that better than anyone.

“It’s lonely,” Hakuba admitted.

It was too vulnerable and yet Kaito supposed Hakuba was right about this exchange. They might die here. Why not air some of the things buried deep in them to someone else, just this once? It could be the only chance to do so.

“Yeah. It’s lonely,” Kaito agreed. “It’s part of why I was mad at my mom for going to America. She was someone who got it.”

“America?” Hakuba questioned.

“She’s in Las Vegas. There’s a pretty big stage magician scene out there. She works as an assistant and helps magicians develop new tricks.”

Hakuba moved a little closer. “When did she go to America?”

“I was thirteen?” Kaito shrugged. “Old enough to take care of myself.”

“Hm.” That was a sound of disagreement.

“Some of us can cook,” Kaito said, “and don’t need a housekeeper or nanny, or whatever that old lady is to you.”

“Baaya is the most stable presence in my life,” Hakuba said. “My parents shipped me back and forth across the world and are both career-driven people. That doesn’t lend itself well to childrearing. Baaya is more of a parent to me than they are.”

Ah. That was sad. Kaito at least had his parents for some of his life. His father was a big part of his early childhood. His mother had been there helping him gain skill for years after Toichi’s death. “They didn’t spend any time with you?”

Hakuba hesitated and in the silence, something crashed distantly. It made them both flinch though, moving closer to each other and the light for comfort. Kaito could almost make out the gold of Hakuba’s eyes this close, bright even with the rest of his body grayed out by shadows and dust.

“They did,” Hakuba said finally. “Mother encouraged my love of books. Otou-san taught me the very basics of deduction. But they were busy, and I never quite…”

“Quite what?” Kaito’s voice came out hushed, gentle.

“Fit,” Hakuba said. “I’ve never fit. Not in Japan, not in England. A half-blood child of a divorced couple who can’t socialize with children his own age. Up until I began gaining fame for solving cases, I felt like a nuisance at best, a bit like an easily forgotten pet to be paraded at social events at worst.” Hakuba breathed out heavily. Dust stirred with the force of it, swirling eddies. “I felt more at home in the imaginary worlds of my books than reality most of the time.”

“Hakuba…”

“I am not saying it for pity,” Hakuba said, sharp. “I never told them though how it felt to forever fly back and forth, switching between languages and cultures and never feeling quite right with either.”

How many times had Kaito thought of Hakuba as only British? It made a tiny squirm of guilt shift in his gut. “Are you mad at your parents?”

“Are you mad at yours? Parental choices shape us, and as children we have to live with it.”

Kaito drew his knees to his chest. He didn’t. He didn’t want to look at the part of him that had those sort of negative emotions. They weren’t useful emotions. Anger at his father’s killers, anger at corruption in the police that had let those killers slip through the cracks without even a true investigation… That was useful for drive. For purpose. The rest of it was only muddying the black and white of it all.

He sighed. “Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe I’m mad at my mom a bit for moving half the world away. Maybe I’m a little mad at my dad for dying.” It felt wrong to say that out loud. Like. Like it was disloyal to his dad’s memory. Like Kaito’s efforts as Kid wouldn’t outweigh the bit of him that was still that eight -year-old that felt betrayed that the man he looked up to was as mortal as anyone else.

“Maybe I’m a bit angry that my parents thought raising a child from opposite sides of the world was a good idea,” Saguru said, covering Kaito’s rising guilt and discomfort with his own confession. “For as much as I am glad for my freedom to come and go as I please, it would be nice to know if my presence is ever missed.”

“Everyone here notices when you’re gone,” Kaito offered, nudging Hakuba with his elbow—when had they gotten quite so close? “The girls always talk about how they hope you’ll return soon.” Too late he realized girls missing him wasn’t exactly something Hakuba would care about.

But Hakuba gave him a wan smile for the effort. “I’m sure you don’t miss me at all.”

More guilt at all those moments on heists where he’d heaved a sigh of relief that he didn’t have to deal with Hakuba and Beika’s devil child. Kaito cleared his throat. “I definitely notice when you’re gone.”

Hakuba huffed a laugh and it wasn’t even a real, true laugh, and Kaito wanted to change that, to make Hakuba laugh and mean it all of a sudden because if they died here, it didn’t feel right to die with all this bittersweet feelings in the air. This whole sharing secrets was supposed to clear away regrets, not make them worse.

“…Hakuba.” Kaito leaned closer, reaching out to brush his sleeve. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, just that he felt like he had to do something.

“Yes?”

Hakuba’s face was close.

Kaito swallowed. Maybe it was just because of the situation, but he wanted… Maybe… He leaned a little closer. The right words didn’t appear. Kaito was supposed to be able to adjust to any moment, any situation, fit on any mask at the space of a breath, but there weren’t masks here. It was open and vulnerable as an open wound.

He reached out. Hakuba watched his hand near his cheek and didn’t pull away. The faintest hint of stubble at the edge of Hakuba’s jaw. Grit and dust and sweat against sweaty fingertips. Kaito didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Hakuba leaned in further.

The barest brush of lips and breath, the sense of a mouth beyond that, and Kaito’s heart was beating faster than the time he’d kissed a girl on a dare in junior high.

Something gave a loud crack behind them and they jumped apart. Sudden light stabbed into Kaito’s eyes.

He swore, shielding his eyes so they could adjust after hours in dimness. Squinting, he was at least sure that they weren’t going to die from rubble and that there wasn’t some kind of miracle tunnel from a rescue operation. Instead there was an unnaturally even circle in the wall that was glowing a blinding shade of silver-veined red.

“Akako?!” he yelped when his eyes finally adjusted past the glow to see the person standing in the middle of it.

“Kuroba.” Her teeth were grit and she looked exhausted and furious. “Get the hell through the hole.”

“I. What?”

“Is there a carbon monoxide leak giving us visions or is that Koizumi-san?” Hakuba asked.

“Uh, I think it’s really Koizumi,” Kaito said.

“Through. The portal,” Koizumi said tensely. “Now.”

Kaito didn’t think twice; his survival instinct was strong. He grabbed Hakuba and Hakuba’s phone and dragged them bodily past Koizumi’s body holding the hole open.

The hole closed behind them with another awful crack. He now knew the sound reality made when someone ripped a hole in space. Great. Wonderful. Not brain-bending at all.

“You owe me,” Koizumi said, wiping sweat from her brow. She looked exhausted and the least put together he’d ever seen her. Not to mention the room he was in looked… kind of wrecked. Like Koizumi shoved all the furniture to the walls, ripped up the rug, and painted on the floor and wall with something that looked suspiciously like blood.

Hmm, yeah, Kaito wasn’t going to examine that closer.

Hakuba looked frozen, eyes flicking about to take in the details without really believing what he was seeing.

Wow, they were both a mess. They had so much dust they were literally gray except for the places where they’d bled. Which were red and the particularly discomforting rusty brown-black that dried blood turned. Now that they weren’t trapped under a building and possibly dying, Kaito’s injuries rushed back to the forefront, all aches and uncomfortable lungs and knee-melting relief.

He sat on the ground not even caring that it was smudging one of Koizumi’s creepy symbols. “Oh thank fuck.”

“No,” Koizumi said crossly, “thank me. You have no idea how much trouble this was.”

“Then why did you even bother?” Kaito asked.

“If you think for a minute that I went through all the work of trying to ensnare you just for you to die from a building of all things,” Koizumi said as her eyes narrowed dangerously, “you’re even more of an idiot than I thought you could be.”

“I didn’t think it was even possible to—” Kaito waved a hand, indicating ripping through the fabric of reality.

“Possible, but not easy,” Koizumi said with a sniff. “You owe me a favor and a date. Two favors,” she corrected, glancing at Hakuba. “Because you had baggage.”

“Pardon me?” Hakuba said. Kaito would laugh at how insulted he looked except he was a bit too emotionally drained for that.

“So yes,” Koizumi said, crossing her arms and tossing her sweat-clumped hair. “You owe me favors.”

“Nothing against my morals,” Kaito said. He flopped to the floor. Wasn’t like he could get dirtier than he was already. “Do you have a shower we could borrow?”

“Do you want to owe me more?”

“Do you really want us walking around your house like this?”

Koizumi huffed. “There is a guest bath down the hallway on the right, and another at the end of the hall on the left.” Wow, two baths on one floor. But he kind of figured she had a mansion or something. “My butler will bring you a change of clothes and towels. I am going to lay down. Kuroba, if you try to wiggle out of your debt later, I will curse you and the next three generations of your descendants, should you be so lucky to have any.”

Kaito waited until she stomped out of the room to open his eyes again. “I feel like a bird that flew into a glass window,” he said.

“Kuroba, is there… I am not sure how…” Hakuba started several times, fumbling with words. “How?”

“Koizumi’s a witch. Don’t know how it works, just don’t think too hard about it.”

Hakuba made a pained sound. “There has to be some… logic… to how that. Whatever just occurred.”

“It breaks the laws of physics,” Kaito said. “You get used to it.” He sat up.

Hakuba stood swaying in the middle of the room, hands gripping his own elbows like he was holding onto his sanity. Fair enough. He had blood on one leg though, and more on his arms and the side of his face. The cut on his face sloped toward Hakuba’s mouth, and Kaito realized with a jolt that Hakuba had kissed him.

Fuck.

“Kuroba?” Hakuba raised an eyebrow at him, concerned.

“Nothing,” Kaito choked. He’d thought he was going to die, yeah, so that was. That was normal, right? Hakuba confessed his sexuality the first time and Kaito didn’t react negatively, and it was only natural he’d want to. To experiment or something in the last however long that. Yeah. Uh.

Oh, Kaito wasn’t thinking about this now.

“I’m going to go find a shower. I’ll go left, you can go right, okay? Okay.”

Kaito walked away fast before Hakuba could call him back. Moving hurt but whatever. He’d had worse. Was it weird to be a little upset that they’d been interrupted before Kaito could really register how that kiss felt? Or if he liked it? Did he like it??

Kaito stripped and stepped under the shower water before it was warm. The shock was good to get him out of his head long enough to wash what looked like two and a half pounds of dirt and dust from his body and find a first aid kit to patch where he’d gotten cuts. The clothes that the butler left—while Kaito was showering and in some method he hadn’t heard him do it—fit unnervingly well. Why did Koizumi have clothes that fit him?

Kaito grimaced. Maybe he shouldn’t go down that trail of thought.

Okay. Next. One, make sure Hakuba didn’t drown in the shower. Two, get the hell out of Koizumi’s place before she decided to put a spell on him in addition to him owing her favors. Three… talk to Hakuba? Maybe? Or he could just skip to figuring out an excuse to justify how they ended up out of the pile of rubble that should have killed them in more-or-less one piece?

It took a minute to find the bathroom Hakuba was in. Koizumi definitely had too big of a house and too many random rooms with identical doors with slightly unnerving decorations that left Kaito feeling like he was being stared at by things like an antique painting of an Irish wolfhound. The shower wasn’t running, but Kaito didn’t hear any noise in there either.

He knocked. “Hakuba?”

Nothing.

Kaito waited for a slow count of five before turning the doorknob. It wasn’t locked.

Inside, Hakuba was shirtless, only wearing underwear, and staring at his own first aid kit like it could tell him the secrets of the universe.

“I’ll take it as a ‘maybe’ to if you’re okay,” Kaito said.

Hakuba flinched, turning to stare at him and cover his chest like some kind of Victorian maiden before wincing as it no doubt aggravated the livid-looking start of a bruise on his ribs. Hakuba got the worst of the damage between them from the look of it. Kaito expected Hakuba to settle since it was just him, but instead he seemed even more flustered, face going a splotchy pink.

“Kuroba!”

“I knocked,” Kaito said. Was Hakuba body shy? He didn’t have anything to be ashamed of for the look of it. Hakuba was solidly built and fit. It wasn’t like he had some sort of bad scars or an embarrassing third nipple or something. Or… maybe he was flustered because he’d kissed Kaito and confessed to being gay, and he was half-dressed in front of someone he was attracted to. Kaito blushed a bit himself at that realization.

He scratched the back of his head, looking up at the paneled ceiling. “Do you need help with bandaging?”

“…I could use assistance with my ribs and back,” Hakuba said after a long, uncomfortable moment.

Kaito nodded, moved forward brusquely. Perfectly normal to help bandage someone up. Nothing odd about a bit of partial nudity between boys. But Kaito’s cheeks stayed warm as Hakuba turned his back to him. As Kaito touched his bare skin and Hakuba’s breath caught in his throat, maybe from pain or maybe not.

“I’m sorry,” Hakuba blurted as Kaito finished tying off bandages around a cut on his side.

“For?”

“The…kiss,” Hakuba said, facing conveniently away so Kaito couldn’t see his expression. The mirror had too much condensation to give him a glimpse. “I shouldn’t have taken advantage of—”

“It’s fine,” Kaito said.

Hakuba’s shoulder jumped under his hand. “Are you sure that—”

“I’m sure.”

“Kuroba…” Hakuba turned. He blushed down his chest, Kaito noted. It was weirdly cute?

“Look. Let’s revisit this when we’re not hopped up on a near-death situation,” Kaito said. “But for the record, I kissed you back.”

Hakuba frowned. “You didn’t.”

“Did.”

“Kuroba, that barely lasted long enough to be counted as a kiss, and I initiated it. I would notice if you had kissed back.”

Kaito was going to blame this on dopey, relief-high brain, but okay. He was doing this. He caught Hakuba’s face in one hand like earlier and this time he leaned in, pressing lips together, firm and unmistakable. Hakuba’s mouth opened in shock and it got a little wetter.

Kaito pulled back.

Hakuba stared, face red, mouth open and a bit shiny at his lips.

Kaito licked his own lips as they practically tingled. “There. Even. One surprise kiss each. Next time one of us asks first.”

“Next time?”

Oh, Kaito did not just say that. Crap. Thankfully he had an excellent poker face. “Oh, did you think I just kiss anyone? Ouch, Hakuba.” It was funny to watch him flail a little, words failing. Kaito took his distraction as a chance to get clothing on him. “And now we’re leaving?”

“But? Koizumi-san?” Hakuba protested as Kaito took him by the arm and pulled him down the hall.

“Will get over it. Pretty sure she left to pass out for a few hours anyway. She knows how to find me.”

Hakuba couldn’t argue that; Koizumi had just ripped a hole in space to find Kaito.

Kaito glanced at his phone, a message to Jii having finally gone through, this time with their current location. He’d be there in fifteen minutes. “Okay. Hakuba, while we wait for a ride, you’re helping me come up with a cover story.”

Hakuba must give up on trying to understand or control any of this because Kaito could practically see the switch flip as his shoulder slumped the slightest bit. The whole way out of Koizumi’s hell-home, Hakuba’s hand was warm against Kaito’s own.

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