You knocked me out
You bit my lip.
You held me down
Kept me sober.
- Linda Perry featuring Grace Slick, "Knock Me Out"

• • •

Shades of Grey: Startled
by Icka! M. Chif

• • •

Kid was already standing in the middle of his bedroom when he arrived home from the heist. The thief was as silent as a statue, head slightly bowed as if his attention was elsewhere, the only thing moving being his cape shifting slightly in the breeze.

Feeling puckish, Hakuba chuckled to himself, quietly padding over to his guest, his socked feet making no noise on the carpet. Kid remained motionless as Hakuba got right behind him. Reaching out, he rested a hand on Kid's hip. "Boo!"

The effect was instantaneous. Hakuba abruptly found himself impacting against the wall next to the bedroom door, the breath being knocked out of him as he slid down the wall. He wheezed, gasping for air and found himself looking up at the barrel of a gun, chips of icy violet blue glaring at him from above that.

Violet blue that widened in shock as the Kid's expression filled with horror. "Shit!" Between one wheezing gasp and the next, the Kid was gone, flown out the window.

Hakuba banged the back of his head against the wall. Damn.

Damn it all.

• • •

The next day at school, they played basketball for Physical Education.

Normally, Hakuba enjoyed basketball. His width and height came in useful in throwing the ball and blocking other players from passing the ball to their team-mates, usually allowing one of his smaller, slightly faster team-mates the opportunity to steal the ball and take a shot.

Not that he approved of stealing in any way shape or form. Really.

But this time, they put both Kuroba and himself on the same team. Which was ordinarily fine, the two of them played decently well together. Normally.

Today though... to say that Kuroba was not his usual cheerful bouncy self was a vast understatement. Oh, he was still bouncing, smiling and cheerful, but there was an undercurrent of darkness beneath his joviality today, a lurking aggression.

An aggression that found an outlet on the basketball court. More specifically, in Hakuba's direction. Which was fine by him, he had some pent up anger himself to work out anyway. Their strengths may have been different, but Kuroba was strong, strong to take what ever Hakuba dished out. Just as Hakuba could handle whatever Kuroba threw at him.

Passing the ball between the two of them resembled missile launches as they tossed the ball at each other with more intent of bodily harm than actually passing the ball. People scrambled to dodge out of the way instead of to catch the ball. The points for their team rose higher as the game turned from a team sport to a vicious one on one.

It was about the time that Hakuba got a bloody lip from the ball slamming into his face that the teacher caught on to what was going on and sent them both to the school nurse to cool down. Hakuba didn't care about the fact his lip was cracked and bleeding, it mirrored the one on Kuroba's face and the scrapes and bruises over both of their bodies. What mattered was that they were bloody well even.

The two of them trudged through the hallways like warriors coming back from the battle, wounded but triumphant, side by side as they pointedly did not look at each other. Didn't matter that they'd been beating the crap out of each other with a large orange and black rubber ball, what mattered was that neither of them had cried mercy in the midst of it.

Therefore, they were both victorious over the other.

They cleaned their bruises and scrapes in silence, ignoring each other as they did so. Then bandaged and beginning to feel the beginning of the aches that would really painful tomorrow, they both sat down, pressing ice packs on various parts of their injured anatomy to prevent swelling later.

So they sat there, stiffly holding ice packs as the intellectual part of his brain finally wrestled control back from his growling anger and started chiding him for losing control like that.

And the worst part was that he was -mad- at Kuroba, but he wasn't, because Kuroba wasn't the Kid, but he was. Which was part of the problem. Part of the confusion.

And if he was brutally honest, he was furious with himself. He'd royally cocked up. Out of all people, he should have -known- better. The Kaitou Kid was exactly that, a Kaitou. A flying phantom thief with strange people shooting at him, police chasing after him and the instincts inherit there of. Dangerous instincts. Ones necessary to the Kaitou's survival. And much to his embarrassment and mortification, he had forgotten that.

If Kid had been Watson, he could have easily lost a body part, not just been thrown across the room and had the breath knocked out of him.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair, smoothing down the tussled strands and feeling like a blasted clot. "I should apologise." Kuroba, who had been staring off at some unidentified speck on the floor glanced up at him, dark eyes widen in mild surprise. Hakuba continued, looking straight ahead. "It is not you I am currently upset with."

"Yeah, well..." Kuroba shrugged. "You're not totally at fault here." He admitted, looking rather shamed faced as well. "Did something stupid last night and it just kinda..."

"-Carried over." Hakuba nodded, finishing the sentence.

"Exactly." Kuroba flashed him a rueful grin. "Truce?"

"Truce." He and Kuroba shook on it, the handshake strong and secure, then grimaced as bruises made themselves known at the movement.

"Let's not do this again." Kuroba commented with a lopsided grin, one that made his now-appearing black eye wrinkle in mirth.

Hakuba chuckled, ignoring the twinges of pain that brought. "Agreed."

• • •

That night, he found Kid sitting on the window ledge of his bedroom, the cape mingling with the movements of the curtains in the breeze.

Hakuba shuffled his feet, partly out of surprise. He hadn't expected to thief to come back after last night. "Hullo."

Kid smiled back, a bit tentatively. "Nice night."

"Yes." He agreed, walking next to the window. He paused, resting against the edge of the window and looking out at the sky through the tree branches outside, just inside the each other's personal space.

It was a nice night out.

"So." He cleared his throat. "How did the heist last night go?"

A laugh answered him, then Kid began to talk, the incident of the previous night forgotten. Or at the very least, put aside.

And if a bit of a bruise peeked out beneath a layer of makeup on Kid's un-monocled eye, well, Hakuba wasn't going to comment on it.

-fin-

The song lyrics come from track eight on the Crow: City of Angels soundtrack. We were listening to it as we typed, to keep the right mood going. ^^;; It just kinda fit, even if the discription isn't acurate.

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