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Normal
"Normal" is one adjective that would most certainly run screaming from any attempt to apply it to the lives of either Kudo Shinichi or Kuroba Kaito.
As individuals, they are both exceptional and unique—and not just because they are both masters of their crafts.
Anyone who spends any time around Kudo Shinichi (or who simply watches the news) learns very quickly that his life is best described as a mobile crime scene. No matter where he goes, he always seems to take just the right path (or the wrong one, depending on how you look at it) to find the nearest murder victim. He had seen and solved more cases by the time he graduated high school than most police officers did over the course of their careers, and let's not even get into the sheer, improbable strangeness of some of those cases (which, on occasion, have involved incredible scientific discoveries of such mythical treasures as the fountain of youth). Now he is halfway through university and the one student whose whereabouts the police regularly check up on—which really does tell you everything you need to know about the normalcy (or lack thereof) of Shinichi's life.
The peculiarities of Kuroba Kaito's life are both less and more obvious. Very few people know anything about his double life as an infamous master thief who has firsthand experience of honest to goodness magic (ranging from creepy witches to magic rocks), but everyone knows he's chaos incarnate (and proud of it).
In lieu of all this, it should be no surprise that their courtship is an unusual one.
Danger
Their dates are often fraught with danger.
"So…" Megure-keibu said slowly. "Would you care to explain to me how you two ended up in the middle of a Wild West shootout in the middle of downtown Beika?"
The two people in question were the former high school detective turned college detective Kudo Shinichi and Kuroba Kaito, the young magician whose popularity had been skyrocketing ever since his debut.
"Well," Shinichi began. "We were here for lunch—"
"On a date," his companion interjected with what Megure privately considered to be a wholly inappropriate level of cheer.
Shinichi seemed to agree because he jabbed his elbow into his companion's side and gave him an exasperated look (Megure couldn't help but notice that the young detective was blushing).
Shinichi coughed lightly and resumed recounting the day's events.
It had begun with a dealer of antique jewelry who happened to be a regular at the restaurant. The woman had been meeting a potential client in one of the private rooms to show off some particularly exquisite (and expensive) pieces. The two were deep in conversation about the various pieces' dramatic histories when two men had walked into their room and pulled out guns. One had seized the client, taking her hostage, while the other aimed his weapon at the dealer and demanded she hand over her wares.
That was when the robbers' luck had run out.
"Why exactly were you following them?" the inspector asked.
"They walked past our table on their way towards the private rooms, and I thought they might be hiding firearms under their coats," Shinichi explained.
"And you didn't call the police because…?"
"I didn't want to call until I was sure."
"Right…" Megure would admit that that was fair. Most people would probably have nosed around only to discover that they'd been letting their over active imaginations run away with them. Kudo Shinichi was not most people.
"So when you realized what they were up to, you decided to take matters into your own hands."
The taller teen, Kaito, grinned. "We kicked butt!"
"But it turned out the client was in on it," Shinichi said. "And it turned out they had friends hiding amidst the other clients as well. She alerted them while we were securing the two original robbers, and they, ah…weren't interested in cutting their losses."
Megure nodded. They had already learned that the robbers had been after the antique jewelry because they believed that said jewelry contained clues to obtaining some old billionaire's fortune. Whether this was true was still up for debate. If true, however, the amount at stake was more than enough to cause a gang of greedy, amoral men and women to perpetrate violent crime.
The situation had devolved rapidly from there, and it could have been a real mess.
"So, hoping to make sure no one got hurt, you distracted the robbers with…" Megure glanced over at a deflated, black and white sphere lying in a puddle at the foot of a nearby wall, "a soccer ball, which you used to start a chain reaction that led to the sprinklers going off. At that point, Kuroba-kun snuck up on one of the robbers, knocked him unconscious, stole his gun and opened fire."
"Kaito has really good aim," Shinichi offered helpfully.
The inspector's eyebrows twitched. "We noticed."
The man had to admit, it was difficult not to be impressed. The magician had literally shot the guns out of the hands of the rest of the robbers. He hadn't missed even once—which had been good because there had been exactly as many armed robbers as there had been bullets left in the gun.
A few of the robbers had managed to attempt return shots before losing their weapons, but they, unlike Kuroba Kaito, had had terrible aim.
Megure took a moment to look over the rest of the restaurant's mildly shell-shocked customers. More than a few were aiming expressions that Megure could only call star-struck at the two teens before him.
Well, he reflected, the paperwork was going to be a nightmare, but it could have been worse. At least no one died. No one who wasn't a robber had even been injured. When he thought about it that way, he really didn't have anything to complain about.
Not much anyway.
He still planned to have a long talk with both boys about unnecessary risks. He reflected that he'd lost count of how many times he had had that conversation with Shinichi. It never seemed to stick.
Coincidence
They are also dogged by coincidences: some pleasant, some not so much.
"Congratulations! You've won an all expenses paid, two-day stay at Akime's Hot Spring Hotel!"
Kaito accepted the prize voucher with a grin and turned to Shinichi. "Good thing we came packed after all. And here we thought we'd have to go home when our first accommodations fell through because of a body under the floorboards."
Combo Plate
They also see more than their fair share of dangerous coincidences.
"I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so."
Shinichi rolled his eyes. "No you didn't."
"Yes I did," Kaito insisted. "I said the guide was paying far too much attention to you to be normal."
"Yes," the detective conceded. "But you also thought it was because he was romantically interested in me."
"Well, in my defense, for anyone else, that would be far more likely than that the guy was a serial killer in hiding trying to decide if the detective taking his guided hiking tour was here to uncover his deep, dark secret."
Shinichi let out a tired sigh. "I'm not anyone else."
"True. That's on me. I should have remembered that most strange men who pop up around you are certified maniacs."
Shinichi's lips twitched into a smile despite the situation, but the smile fell away just as quickly as it came. There was, after all, nothing at all humorous about their situation.
They were sheltering in a small cave at the bottom of a very deep ravine. They'd ended up in the ravine because their guide had cut a rope bridge right out from under them. He'd done it so quickly that he must have prepared the trap long ago for just such an occasion, and Shinichi and Kaito had avoided major injury only due to the magician's stuntman extraordinaire-level athletic skills and reflexes (and the paranoia that led them both to carry a variety of gadgets with them wherever they went. If not for Kaito's grappling gun and Shinichi's ball-dispensing belt, things would have been a lot worse).
Unfortunately, nothing changed the fact that they were stuck at the bottom of a very deep ravine in the middle of nowhere on a little-traveled mountain trail way outside of cell range. And to top everything off, it had begun to rain.
Shinichi hated the fact that a man who had already taken three lives and who had just attempted to kill the two of them was probably in the middle of making his escape even now. But even more than that, Shinichi hated the fact that being around him had once again put Kaito in danger.
"I'm sorry," he said. The words slipped out of their own accord, barely audible over the pattering of the rain outside their cave.
Kaito heard anyway though and scowled. "Hey, none of this is your fault. And don't you dare start thinking otherwise."
Shinichi started to argue (they wouldn't be in this mess if he hadn't been such a recognizable detective and if he hadn't asked the man so many questions trying to figure out why the guy set off his 'something isn't right' sense), but he thought better of it. Arguing about it would only upset Kaito because his magician was sweet like that. Kaito always seemed to want to protect him, even if it was only from his own somber thoughts.
Shinichi didn't know what he'd done to deserve the love of such an amazing man, but not a day went by when he didn't thank whatever powers were up there that he had.
"I hope it stops raining soon," he said, feeling that a change in subject was in order. Besides, they had important problems to solve—namely, how in the world they were going to get back to civilization. "If we can find enough dry wood, we may be able to send smoke signals."
"We could try that," Kaito agreed amiably. "Or we could just call someone."
He held up an empty hand. There was a poof of smoke, and suddenly the hand was no longer empty.
Shinichi stared, incredulous. "Is that a satellite phone?"
"Yep."
"You've had that this whole time?"
"Yep."
"…Well, what are you waiting for? We need to alert the police so they can catch that man."
"And come get us."
"That too," Shinichi agreed, paused, then prompted, "So?"
"I don't feel like it," the magician decided. "But if you come sit on my lap, I'll let you use the phone."
"Oh my god, are you serious?" Shinichi spluttered.
His answer was a cheeky grin. "Perfectly."
The detective just stared, speechless.
Kaito wiggled the phone again. "Well? The longer you wait, the more time Mr. Bridge Cutter has to make his escape~."
Shinichi made a face caught halfway between exasperation and incredulity which eventually gave way to resignation tinged with reluctant fondness as he complied with the magician's demand.
So Kaito wasn't perfect, but his eccentricities made him who he was, and Shinichi wouldn't want him any other way.
View
Every once in a while, however, they do manage to have an uninterrupted date.
That isn't to say those dates are normal.
"…We're at the top of a fifty story building."
"Yep."
"On a ledge barely wide enough to sit on."
"I'd say it's a little bit wider than that."
Shinichi shifted—very carefully—and grimaced. "Not enough to make an appreciable difference."
"Well, I guarantee it's sturdy," the madman sitting beside him replied like this should make it all better. "Just don't lean forward too much."
"…Is this seriously where we're having our picnic?"
"Of course." With a flourish, Kaito produced a picnic basket from nowhere and set it on the ledge on his other side. Reaching inside, he pulled out two neatly wrapped sandwiches and handed one to Shinichi. "Isn't the view amazing?"
Sandwich in hand, Shinichi took a moment to look out over the glittering panorama that was Tokyo at night and had to concede. The view was nothing short of breathtaking.
Unfortunately, so was the distance to the ground for entirely different reasons. He still wasn't sure if the first made up for the second.
On the other hand, there was something almost, dare he say, relaxing about being here above the hustle and bustle of the city, far away from the trouble that dogged their lives. For just a moment, it felt as though they were untouchable.
Despite himself, Shinichi smiled.
"I hope you plan on catching me if I fall."
Kaito laughed. "Of course. That goes without saying."
Truth
In truth, Kudo Shinichi knew from the start that saying yes when Kuroba Kaito asked him out meant that his already eventful life was going to get even more hectic. He was, after all, not an idiot. His life was already a near constant rollercoaster of murder cases, strange events and stranger people. Adding the Kaitou KID to that mix was unlikely in the extreme to make things less chaotic (quite the opposite).
But for better or for worse, Shinichi had realized that he would rather live a chaotic life that had Kaito in it than a (comparatively) peaceful one without him.
If anything, he worries sometimes that Kaito will change his mind about them once he's had a taste of the madness that is Shinichi's life. All considered, Kaito might be chaos incarnate, but Shinichi is the one who is always at ground zero of every local bomb threat.
With every murder they encounter and every time they find themselves in the crosshairs of danger, Shinichi's worry that Kaito will decide that enough is enough and leave him grows stronger. Part of him feels like it is inevitable. Kaito is, after all, a person of stage lights and loud music, of life and laughter and the spinning of dreams , whereas Shinichi is jokingly—and not so jokingly by some—called a shinigami for a reason. He is apparently destined to walk with death, finding justice for lost souls and laying the dead to rest.
When he considers all the facts, Shinichi decides that he wouldn't really blame Kaito if he ever comes to his senses and decides he should find someone better. It would hurt, but Shinichi knows his life isn't for everyone, and, more than anything, he wants Kaito to be happy—to succeed and thrive and go on to be the international sensation that he is so clearly meant to be.
The twelfth time they spent what was meant to be a fun day out tracking down and stopping a serial killer, Shinichi told Kaito this.
He was surprised by Kaito's response.
"I knew what your life was like long before I fell in love with you, and here I am," the magician said, firm and unshakeable in his sincerity as he clasped both of Shinichi's hands with his own. It was the most serious Shinichi had ever seen him. Then he cracked a smile. "I'd even venture to say that it's an essential part of what makes you who you are."
Shinichi blinked. "My incredibly bad luck?"
Kaito laughed and leaned down to steal a kiss. "No, Silly. How you deal with it. How you never stop giving your all when someone needs help, and how, even after everything you've seen, you can still believe in the goodness in people and in the idea that even killers can change for the better. You, my dear Tantei-kun, are a treasure and a half, and I am never letting you go."