"Dad was smoking around you again, wasn't he?" Ran towered in the kitchen doorframe, the flowery apron and spatula not quite dulling the edge in her voice. Pots boiled behind her, wreathing her in steam, like the ghost of cigarettes past.
Shinichi tried to look less incriminating as he stood in newly-changed clothes and smelling of lemon shampoo. He had spent the last 30 minutes trying to scrub the evidence off of him, and instead of reeking of tobacco he now reeked of tobacco and citrus.
There were ample chairs and couches to hide behind but Ran's height gave her tactical superiority. His first instinct since becoming Conan was to run at any sign of conflict, whether it be physical, verbal, or parental.
"What are you making?" He asked innocently.
"Pasta," said Ran, with the finality of a stone wall. "Don't change the subject."
"I want to be impartial while I'm staying here," said Shinichi as he sidled up against the couch, immediately regretting his choice of words. Polite diction was great at getting out of sticky situations involving amped-up criminals and large, blunt objects. It was unnerving coming out of a kid's mouth.
Ran looked unimpressed before blowing a lock of hair out of her eyes and kneeling down in front of him, smelling of tomato sauce and oregano. Her attention was blinding and he found a patch of carpet to focus on instead.
"It's not good to be around smoke. It'll make you sick. I know you know this, you're a smart boy."
Lung cancer was at the bottom of his list of Current Risks to my Health and Safety. "I don't want to interrupt both of your daily routines while I'm here," said Shinichi. "I've already caused enough trouble." Sensations from that morning flickered up his spine, of sour fear and cold concrete at his back.
"You've been no trouble at all," said Ran, clearly lying through her teeth. "And you are not interrupting any of our routines. If anything, things were getting a little too boring around here." He could sense a small smile behind her words but he was too busy investigating the carpet for tiny criminal activities to look in her the face.
Yes, he thought. What a way to break up the monotony. Adopt a child.
"I've been trying to get dad to quit smoking for years," Ran added. "Maybe having another set of lungs in the house will be the kick in the head he needs."
"If he wouldn't quit for his daughter, why would he quit for me?"
The silence was staggering, the kind of thunderclap realization that accompanied masterful deductions. And he just performed it on the teenage girl who took him in and was guilty of protecting him from a stint of chemo. "Well… He…" she began.
Proof of god manifested in the kitchen as the pot chose that moment to boil over onto the kitchen counter and floor. Bubbling water sizzled against the heating coils and sent gouts of salty steam through the door.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" cried Ran as she hurried back into the kitchen, grabbing an oven mitt and hefting the pot off the stove with one hand. She found a washcloth and began mopping up the residue from the counter. "Stay right there! I'll be right back!"
Shinichi did not stay right there but didn't have many hideaways to choose from. Locking himself in the bathroom or Kogoro's room seemed like a slippery slope, involving scolding and doors busted off their hinges. He could head back downstairs but the memory of Kogoro's ham-fisted interrogation left him feeling breathless and dizzy. Also, he'd come back to dinner reeking even more of tobacco, which would only add fuel to Ran's self-righteous fire.
It took both hands to pull himself onto the couch, wedging his tiny form into a deep groove near the armrest. In the reflection of the window, he watched Ran return her kitchen to order, muttering words under her breath. She swore when she thought no one else was looking.
Why'd you go and do that, he thought to himself. Push away the only person who seems to give a shit about you.
The reflection warped as rain began to fall, pattering against the window.
She doesn't care about you. She cares about the mysterious little boy she found in the park. The one she'll grow sick of when she learns what he's really like. If he doesn't keep his damned mouth shut.
He laid there for probably 15 minutes, listening as ground beef sizzled in tomato sauce. The couch cushions were worn and pleasantly soft. His skin was still pink from hot water and the lemon scent had finally overpowered stale cigarettes.
There was a lot to be thankful for, he reasoned. These people were not trying to kill him; granted that was a low bar to cross but given the last few days it felt important to mention. He was warm and dry and food was being prepared as he sulked in self-pity. Yet, the tension was still there, live wires sparking under his skin. Adrenaline still oozed through his blood after his paranoid fit in the streets, and that sour surge spent its dying hours giving Shinichi miniature panic attacks all day.
Or was it guilt?
His mouth dried up. His conscience had flip-flopped back and forth the last few days from "I owe these people nothing" to "I owe these people everything". What could he even give back? All the money Kudo Shinichi had was tied up in his name, his reputation, his trust fund, and his fingerprints. None of those were his anymore. Maybe the fingerprints, he thought, but he took a moment to investigate his hands, idly wondering how much of his body had changed.
Was this even what I looked like as a kid? He tried to recall images from photographs but there weren't that many hanging around the Kudo mansion.
At some point, Ran had returned to the living room, taking approximately six whole seconds to find his hiding spot. She crouched down on her haunches, far enough away to be non-threatening but still within reach. Her hair was frizzy with steam.
"You've been avoiding me," she said, her face a neutral mask. "Ever since I got home. Can I ask why?"
The couch's fabric suddenly became very interesting.
"Hey, enough of that." She gently guided his gaze back to her, pointing two finger's at Shinichi's eyes, then back to her own. "Remember, eyes on me. Use your words."
"I'm sorry for causing so many problems," he said.
"Conan, you've been an angel since you've gotten here." He couldn't ignore how she began rubbing her right wrist, where his tiny fingers had tried to pry open her grip that morning. "We enjoy having you around," she lied again.
This was honestly worse than Kogoro's interrogation and the air suddenly became too thin, up here on the heights of the couch. He wanted to squirm his way into the depths of the cushions and carve out a place to sleep forever, if he could fall asleep without needing to have a nervous breakdown in the process.
Her patience was a tender worm under his skin, gently eating away at him. "Is there anything I can do to make you see you're not a burden to us?"
Kogoro's words echoed up through smoke-clouded memories. Let your guard down a little. Say something every once in a while. Stop acting like a damned ghost…
"Can I help with dinner?" He asked. The thought came out of nowhere, and the speed at which his mind changed direction nearly broke his neck.
She blinked in surprise. "Oh?"
"I want to help," he repeated, the speech center of his brain seemingly undamaged by the mental torque. The rest of it scrambled to follow suit. Ran stood up, looking just as dazed as he felt.
"Uhm. Okay." She held onto the couch for support as she dizzily wandered back into the kitchen before halting just past the door. "Hold on." She turned the burner down low and double-checked the pasta water for errant explosions before exiting the room. Shinichi had enough of a brainstem left to put one foot in front of the other, and enough reason to realize what he'd just asked of her. He went from hiding away from her attention to stepping into the heart of her domain, the one part of this claustrophobic apartment that was hers. He crammed his hands into the too-large pockets of his pajamas, taking in with subtle alarm how different a kitchen looked from this low angle. The countertops may as well have been on the moon. The pot full of bubbling water was already on strike 1, so he fixed his focus on it on Ran's behalf before realizing that he could do nothing to stop it from boiling over again. Worse, he was the perfect height to get third-degree burns across his entire body if it did.
Ran returned with the step stool from the bathroom and placed it on the counter farthest from the stove, which wasn't very far in this tiny kitchen. After a beat, she grabbed some disinfectant from underneath the sink and wiped it down. "Okay, you're all set."
His pride died slowly with each step, but he was too far gone to run away from her again. At least the counters no longer looked like distant castle walls. At the summit, there was a cutting board in front of him, laden with tomatoes and a large knife. He picked up the knife, needing both hands to do so, and began to steady it over the smallest tomato.
Ran was on him instantly and the knife was carefully plucked from his hands. "Nope. Nope. None of that." She sheathed it in its block far away from him. "You can make the salad."
"I can be a lot more helpful if you let me."
"You can keep a lot more blood inside you if you listen to me." Ran filled her arms with already-chopped ingredients and laid them out in front of him. "We don't even know what your blood type is."
"It's O negative."
"I don't want to know why you know that, and you probably won't answer if I ask." Then, as if she just processed his words, "Oh, that's mine, too."
She returned to the stove now that he was disarmed and pacified. He began throwing handfuls of sliced romaine lettuce into the bowl, chewing on the fact that this task would probably only take 30 seconds for her. Behind him, she slung metal and water and sauce like a machine; he was more likely to lose blood if he got too close to her than the knife.
Somewhere between the slivers of onion and the chopped bell peppers he realized it had been years since he had cooked with someone. His mother certainly didn't cook; the kitchen was the domain of the Help and god forbid her fingers became stained with dishwater. On some bored nights he snuck down and watched the cook prepare meals, stepping out of the shadows into bright fluorescent lights to ask for a snack, only to be taught how to correctly measure "by weight, not by volume". The cook's words echoed in his head, down dusty halls he hadn't recalled in some time. Muscle memory made him pick the seeds out of the pepper husks, just like he used to as a kid. He blinked steam away from his eyes.
The whirling dervish behind him had gone silent and Ran was now double-checking his work over his head. She placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "Good job. Now add the dressing and toss it with these." She placed two large, mismatched salad tongs on the counter.
The scent of meat and marinara must have pulled Kogoro from his stupor, his heavy footfalls reverberating up the stairs. He lurked at the kitchen's edge, leaning against the doorframe, smoke mixing with steam in his presence.
"It'll be ready in a sec. Be patient," said Ran, catching his complaint before it left his mouth.
"I see you've put the freeloader to work."
"Call him that again and I'm throwing all this delicious pasta out the window." Her tone was sickly-sweet but her eyes hardened as she rattled the saucepan against the burner. "Followed by you."
"Just glad he's earning his keep."
"He asked! He said he wanted to be helpful." She took three plates out of the cabinet and set them next to Shinichi. "At least someone is."
Shinichi realized that Kogoro was blocking the door and the floor was still slick with pasta water and floor cleaner and he had no way of escaping this conversation. Despite the vast differences between them, both members of the Mouri family simply didn't care if there was an audience to their squabbles. He got dizzy thinking about the abundance of sharp objects and scalding liquids around them and he held onto the counter for support. He sent a desperate plea for safety to the god of kitchens and boiling-over pots.
Desperately wanted to fade into the background, he busied himself with the salad, trying and failing to dish it out onto each plate. If need be, he could cover his escape by throwing a cup of water on the burner to make a smokescreen.
"Oh, I finally got it," drawled Kogoro, snapping his fingers lazily in the air. "You brought home an indentured servant. I always knew that chirpy demeanor hid a shrewd, cutthroat intellect."
"Maybe it's just nice to have someone on my side for once," said Ran, sticking her tongue out at him.
All his attention was focused on the salad bowl. Why was it so damn tall. And the tongs so unwieldy. He was playing an arcade crane game just to get tomatoes onto a plate, some falling onto the floor.
"So, you conscripted a child in your war against me. That's against the Geneva convention."
"Can you even find Geneva on a map?"
With surgeon-like precision, he got one damned tomato onto a plate, taking every scrap of sleep-deprived concentration he could muster.
"Somewhere in Europe. By some lake. They didn't fight, but they had the balls to tell everyone else in the world who and what they can draft."
"Actually, the Hague regulations on forced conscription predate the Geneva convention by fifty years." It took Shinichi three more tomato transfers before he realized he made that comment, and the only sounds in the kitchen were bubbling pasta water and the fan over the stove. He sheepishly turned his head to see both adults in the room staring at him in blank confusion.
"Uhm," was all his brain was able to supply at the moment.
The eyes of the Mouri family bored holes into him for what felt like two eternities before Kogoro yawned, stretched, and backed out of the room. "Wake me when dinner's ready and the kid's done with his history lesson."
Shinichi sublimated his tension by putting too much salad onto each plate, ignoring the corona of gentle concern radiating off Ran. She took the tongs away from him and slid the plates further down the counter.
"I can see you're really concerned about our health," she said breezily, "And was that your fun fact for the night?"
The nearly-empty bowl became very interesting to look at.
"Oh, come on," she whined dramatically. "We were doing so good. Was it dad? I can run defense for you tonight if you want."
The onset of nausea was sudden and overwhelming, a noxious mix of salad dressing and lemon soap and tomato and cigarettes.
"I'm not hungry anymore." He turned to step off the stool but Ran caught him the shoulders, hands soft but unyielding. She knelt down, ignoring the bits of wet salad that had fallen to the floor.
"Conan, you can't keep running away anytime something bothers you. Sometimes you need to stick it out. Here, in this apartment, you're safe. I know dad and I can come off a little strong but you have nothing to worry about from us.
"If we are bothering you, say something. We're both tough," she said, giving a fierce smile and holding up a fist. "We can take it. We can take anything you throw at us."
You're wrong about that.
"Tonight, we're going to have dinner. We won't ask you any hard questions if you just have a normal conversation with us. I know you can do it. It could be about anything." She brightened up, "Even the Geneva Convention."
He felt the dam shudder again, overflowing, pushing against the bricks he'd laid that afternoon.
"I know dad talked with you earlier today, and that probably wasn't easy." She got closer and lowered her voice, "I can make him play nice. Just give me two minutes." She mimed cracking her knuckles.
His brain must have been trying to shake someone off its tail all night because it abruptly changed direction again. "I'm sorry for running away this morning."
A dozen emotions cycled across Ran's face before settling on a cross between perplexed and relieved. "You don't have to apologize," she lied for a third time that night. "But I'm glad you did." She chewed on her lip, ironically struggling to look him in the eyes for once. "…I don't suppose you'll tell me why you had to get away so suddenly?"
His frontal lobe tried to spoon-feed logic down his throat, that his reasons for fleeing like a scared jackrabbit weren't unusual. Taking away the whole "freak poison turning me into a child" curveball, the whole situation seemed cut and dry; he had been beaten and left for dead in an alleyway. Anyone would understand that. Anyone would be haunted by that. He could confide in the Mouris just that detail.
But he didn't.
"No," he whispered.
Frustration flickered across her face but it was quickly smoothed over with sixteen years of practiced restraint. Ran had the patience of an angel, but it was one of those righteous angels with a flaming sword. She could be held off but she'll have her way eventually. "Well, we're here when you're ready. And I guess I did promise we won't ask any hard questions. But…" she said, making sure his eyes found hers again, "No more running away. If you ever feel like you have to run again, come to me or dad. You understand?"
"Yes," he assented.
"Do you promise?"
Her pupils were dark and wide and reflected a stranger back at him. "I promise," he lied.