Yay chapter?
Chapter 54
Kaito snapped awake with a scream clogged in his throat as Shinichi twisted restlessly beside him, and thought that maybe sleep hadn't been such a good idea after all. Everything had tangled up, blood and gunshots and falling stone, and Shinichi staggering with a crystal in hand and blood spilling from his chest with Snake so close and pointing his gun (no, no more!) before he was falling, everything dimming even as he knew Shinichi wasn't going to make it—
He'd been grateful, then, that he wasn't going to be left behind. His last thought had been that gratitude, because he couldn't face the world without Shinichi anymore, and Shinichi was leaving that world.
They'd just ended up lucky in how.
Shinichi woke to his voice easily enough, and Kaito tucked down and clung. How could he not?
That Shinichi hugged back was very telling. (But Kaito had died first, and while he'd known Shinichi wasn't going to live, he hadn't actually seen—felt—him dead. And not so long ago, Shinichi had fought for him as he'd died again, had managed to keep enough blood and oxygen to give him a third chance despite the length of time where his heart hadn't worked on its own. Kaito thought that would have broken him entirely.)
"Okay?" Kaito mumbled against Shinichi's hair.
Shinichi made a sound that might have been a laugh, cracked and brittle. "Not okay."
And the Red Nights were supposed to give nightmares, too, weren't they? And of course they had to have been right up there in the middle of it, so who knew how much that fear had seeped in?
Kaito raised his head just enough to get a good look at the curtains, then tugged the thick drapes aside with a twist of will, refusing to let go of Shinichi long enough to use more conventional means. The thin lacy ones that were really only a basic view-shield from the outside he left in place, scattering the light just enough to keep it from being blinding.
"Try and go back to sleep," he prompted, tucking his nose into Shinichi's hair. He had him, he had him, Shinichi was here and safe and alive.
Shinichi's grip on him tightened briefly, and Kaito knew their dreams hadn't been so different.
"I'm not going anywhere," Kaito murmured against the fear, both his and Shinichi's.
"I'm not letting go," Shinichi whispered back, something so utterly fractured about his voice that Kaito was afraid that if he moved, Shinichi would break entirely.
"Okay," he agreed, curling even closer. "Okay."
They had needed rest, not nightmares.
He really should have seen it coming.
xxxx
Hours later, once they'd both managed to make it back to 'calm', Kaito picked a (or rather, 'the') restaurant. (Ainsworth proper only had the one and he was not going to be taking Shinichi anywhere in a taxi tonight.) It claimed to have some Asian-style dishes, and he was kind of curious as to what that entailed. There were fair number of others in relatively nearby towns (Nelson seemed to have a plethora of 'bar-and-grill' types, especially), but the actual resort only had the one.
He'd looked it up online, just to check, and found a wide range of reviews, from 'excellent all around' to 'terrible service, mediocre food'. Food was entirely a matter of opinion, but the more expansive reviews included wait time and attentiveness of servers, which meant the 'service' records were just spotty. Weird.
Either way, it was the only one they could walk to, so. Springs it was. (Also, 'The Springs Restaurant'? Really? Descriptive, but not exactly creative. Not even a more interesting word for 'spring'. He could do better in his sleep.)
"What are you thinking that has that pout on your face?" Shinichi asked, sounding amused.
Kaito told him.
Shinichi laughed, and Kaito counted that a win. Much better than earlier, and Shinichi's laugh lightened his own spirits considerably. Even more so when Shinichi added in a teasing set of handsigns, 'Not everyone can be Kaitou KID.'
Kaito pouted more exaggeratedly, "You could do better in your sleep, too!"
Shinichi grinned at him, "To be fair, I'm just as much a Kid as you are, these days."
That was vague enough, in English, (and their conversation had been ranging between Japanese and English, because why not?) to not be paranoia-inducing. Most people wouldn't recognize the 'Kid' being a specific international criminal instead of 'young person'.
And Kaito kind of had to concede the point.
"Well, flip a coin! Tonight's service is either going to be great or horrible, according to online reviews. Also, I'm morbidly curious about what 'Asian style' means."
"Probably 'vaguely able to remind one of'," Shinichi told him, shaking his head and smiling. "Come on, let's go. Do we have a reservation?"
"Technically, yes, but I only made it ten minutes ago."
"Not a crowded night, then?"
"Not a crowded time of year, near as I can tell."
Shinichi tipped his head in acknowledgement.
It was winter, after all. Even Kaito had almost forgotten that despite the bare branches of the deciduous trees, as the weather so far had really been closer to the chill of late fall than the chill of winter.
The restaurant itself turned out to be interesting. The view was nice, if not the most spectacular they'd seen even only nearby. Service was decent, though nothing outstanding, and the food was…
Okay, Kaito had to go with 'strange'. While the 'Asian style' dish he'd ordered out of blatant curiosity wasn't bad, it was really more a suggestion or passing nod to something that came off as a cross between Korean and Thai, with possibly some Chinese mixed in. Definitely far from individually recognizable and with enough similarity to some of the nicer American restaurants Shinichi's parents had taken them to in New York to have the 'style' part pretty accurate. It was local foodstuffs styled to taste vaguely Asian, but not particularly well.
To be fair, it was also kind of tasty, even if his first thought had been 'strange'.
Shinichi's was significantly closer to actual Italian, though it didn't bother claiming to be such—there was only so much you could do to alfredo without it becoming something else entirely.
Naturally, Kaito stole a piece of chicken. "Tasty," he grinned.
Shinichi shrugged, then stole a bite of Kaito's. "Weird. Interesting, but definitely weird."
Kaito grinned at him, "I'm a terrible influence."
"We're married. Legally, possession-wise we're a single entity, therefore it's not stealing."
Kaito laughed, leaning back over to steal a noodle.
That was right about when someone choked off to the side, staggering to his feet and making as though to run to the toilet. He got one step before hitting his knees and throwing up and it was only seconds more before he'd dropped entirely, limbs going slack.
"Kaito!" Shinichi snapped, already up and moving. He turned to a nearby waiter, "Don't let anybody enter or leave until the police get here!"
Kaito yanked out his phone, dialing the local emergency number. After having been around Shinichi so long, he knew death when he saw it, and that man was already gone.
The woman at the table was on her feet, babbling about food poisoning, and Shinichi cut her off, "Don't be an idiot. Unless you're suffering from severe immunodeficiency, food poisoning won't show symptoms for at least a day, and even full-on AIDS patients will have a good hour or more. This was either the strangest allergic reaction I've ever seen, or poison. From the symptoms and the area, I'd say aconite. High dose."
Aconite poisoning… yeah, Kaito could see that. It wasn't his area of expertise, but he'd been on that case. Or, he hoped it was 'that' case, because if Shinichi had needed to deal with people using aconite more than the once before—ah, relatively speaking—he was going to get worried. The stuff was dangerous.
The waiter looked terrified, but the woman puffed up, "And how would a child know this?"
Shinichi sighed sharply, already more than a little suspicious of the woman in question, from what Kaito could see. Well, he was too, to be fair.
"My name is Kudo Shinichi—ah, forgive me, Shinichi Kudo in English order—and I'm a detective. I work mainly with Tokyo's Division One, violent crimes. I specialize in homicide, and aconite was used to poison arrows in Japan, traditionally by the Ainu when they hunted bear. This is not the first time I've seen these symptoms and though there are venoms that share them, ingesting a venom generally renders it harmless, while that is very much not the case with plant-based poisons."
The woman was looking nervous.
So, she likely either had a hand in it directly, or knew about it. Shinichi would seek out evidence and motive first—there was the chance that they were wrong, that she was nervous for some other reason. Evidence before accusation, always.
(They weren't wrong, though it had been difficult to get the police to listen to them. Shinichi's consultant ID had been pretty useless, being in Japanese in a primarily English-speaking country. In the end, Shinichi'd given a name in the NYPD*, hoping that Redwood would help despite having mostly kept his involvement the one case he'd worked in front of the man hidden behind his mother's acting. When the Canadian inspector doing the calling turned back to them more willing to listen, Kaito figured Shinichi's gamble had paid off.)
The case was wrapped up and settled in a little over an hour, the woman arrested and Shinichi and Kaito left with half-empty plates and no desire to eat.
One of the officers offered a sympathetic smile, and Kaito recognized him from reporting the landslide, "You two aren't having a very good vacation, are you?"
"… Only one person's died," Shinichi decided after a moment, though that wasn't strictly true. Only one person since arriving in Canada, anyway. "We have four teens who may not have made it without us finding them, and the landslide could have been a lot worse. I'd like to think it's going… better than usual."
"The sad part is, that's true," Kaito agreed, grinning wryly. "Last time you went with Ran and Sonoko to one of her remote get-togethers, someone tried to kill you all, if I remember correctly."
"The… yeah, five people died in that one.*"
The officer gaped at them, "If you're not pulling my leg, I don't want to know about it."
"Hey, Kenny, pick up the pace!"
"Yeah, coming!" the officer called back, "Look, either way—I'm sorry you two got dragged into this. I hope your time here gets a bit less hectic."
The thought was appreciated. "Thanks," Shinichi said.
Kaito nodded, "Yeah. We're only here for a little longer, anyway."
Which was probably a good thing, or the locals would start noticing Shinichi's curse, too.
"Good luck!" the officer called over his shoulder as he moved to catch up with the one who was probably his partner.
He was out the door before either of them had a chance to properly respond, but the parting comment was appreciated.
"Head back?" Kaito asked.
"Yeah," Shinichi sighed, "It was nice while it lasted."
"It was," Kaito agreed, just a little wistful.
Shinichi cast a final glance around the area, where everyone but the employees had cleared out and the younger staff had been sent home. In a place this small, the kind of publicity a murder would bring would either get it more customers… or run it out of business entirely.
Murder always had consequences for more than just killer and victim.
Why could no one ever realize that and just not do it?
xxxx
*I have actually seen aconite poisoning, in a friend and accidental. Aconite's toxins can be absorbed through the skin, and accidental contact can be bad. My friend came through all right—the dose was very small, and his heart didn't stop, thankfully. For those who have seen the TV series Teen Wolf, aconite (wolfsbane) should not be tampered with. It's nasty stuff, no matter how pretty. The topical type of poisoning doesn't include nausea, diarrhea, or any other intestinal problems like the ingested kind, but I did some extra research after the doctors had ID'd the cause of the numbness and slowing responses. I ended up suiting up and clearing the patch near his house, then burning the outfit, just to be safe. Probably overkill, but… well. The Aleut hunt whales with it. Better safe than sorry.
As for the five deaths—I was making that one up. Sonoko tends to invite Ran and (by extension) Shinichi to a lot of ridiculous things. I'm deciding that at least one of those things was pre-Conan (thus actually on-record, if the police decided to check) and turned out badly. Shinichi had to have gotten better with experience, after all, so younger-him wouldn't have unraveled things as fast as older-him, therefore giving a culprit more time to work.
Also, somehow just about this whole thing ended up in mostly Kaito-POV. Huh. I intended to have the second bit Shinichi, but I'm not really wanting to go back and rework it.
