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Chapter 5
Kaito frowned (unseen), easing his hold on Conan without letting go entirely, continuing to card his fingers through hair that was slowly growing less neat under the attention. Shinichi—even Shinichi-as-Conan—did not panic. Ever.
That he was panicking now...
Mouri-chan was swallowing hard, clearly less nervous than sad after Conan's series of half-truths, and Conan himself was slumping down in clear exhaustion, slowly going slack in Kaito's arms. Kaito hesitated, considering possibilities. The migraine? He didn't know much about them, but he did know they weren't just 'bad headaches', that they did more to the central nervous system than just 'ow'.
He hadn't known Shinichi got them. Probably explained the exhaustion, though, and considering how absolutely tiny he was... the meds? Was he still riding hospital-grade painkillers? Was he getting sick? Had he been injured and hidden it? All possible, although the last was least likely, considering the hospital visit would theoretically have revealed any injury severe enough to have played a part in collapse. Either way, though, it wasn't like he could ask in front of the Mouris. Conan was clearly sliding back into the 'out-of-it' stage he'd been in off-and-on since he'd collapsed and Kaito really didn't want to prompt a response that might blow the detective's cover.
Meanwhile, the fact that Conan was starting to doze off in his arms was a great reason to pick him up.
A lack of protest would have been telling enough, but Conan curling into his chest was far more so. Kaito fought back the worry wrapping a stranglehold around his heart.
Apparently Ran realized the significance of the gesture as well, even though she could only see a child curled up against nothing while floating in the air. Her expression shifting from 'scared of' to 'anxious for' gave another possibility for the panic and neediness—Conan playing up his reactions to put the Mouris more at ease with Kaito's presence.
Hopefully that was it.
Kaito glanced across to each Mouri in turn, noting that Ran was still a bit pale and Kogoro was staring at Conan with a look that was something between interested and unnerved. Another moment passed, then Kogoro cleared his throat uneasily. "Upstairs, the room on the right. His futon is in the closet, but you can put him in the bed for now."
Kaito dipped forward in a slight bow, letting the shift of Conan's position indicate the movement, then turned away. He made his way up the stairs—careful to avoid prying eyes—and deposited Conan on the indicated bed. The smaller boy blinked several times, seeming to have trouble focusing.
Kaito frowned and sent a text, a generalized '...?' to leave the question itself open to interpretation.
Conan flopped his head deeper into rumpled blankets, "Opioid. I think. They make me weird for days."
Kaito grimaced and sent a much more specific question. 'Panic attacks?'
Conan nodded tiredly, closing his eyes. "General anxiety, builds pretty rapidly. Gets worse for a day or so, then starts getting better."
Kaito winced. That didn't sound fun at all, and the furrow between the apparent gradeschooler's eyes was growing more obvious. Kaito smoothed his thumb over the crease and Conan made a soft sound.
"Painkiller effect is wearing off," he explained tiredly.
Kaito paused, considering the light-level in the room against what he knew of migraines.
"Futon?" Conan asked, just a little slurred.
Didn't like the bed? Kaito shrugged and went to pull the futon out of the closet, flipping it open in the darkest corner of the room. Admittedly, 'darkest' wasn't saying too much, so he'd set up a better light-screen as soon as he had Conan settled.
Conan, who was sitting up and moving to slide off the bed, only to stagger and put a hand to his temple as his feet hit the floor.
Kaito was torn between rolling his eyes and going to pick him up again. He settled for moving to guide him by a hand on the shoulder. A coherent Shinichi, no matter how small, would not appreciate being picked up. His stubbornness was both predictable and exasperating, but Kaito could understand it. If he had been forced to deal with half the indignities that he regularly saw inflicted on the miniaturized detective, he would cling to every possible scrap of self-sufficiency he could as well.
Forty seconds later, Conan was safely ensconced on a futon inside a hastily-raised blanket-fort to block the light.
A soft sigh came from under the makeshift tent, "Thanks."
Kaito huffed silently and tapped on the nearest blanket. Conan didn't respond, so Kaito took that as a 'sleeping' and sat back.
Now... what to do with himself while his main link to the world was sleeping?
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Ten minutes later, he'd decided. A hop out the window and text to Mouri-chan later, and he was headed back towards the Kudo mansion on invisible 'wings'.
Once there, he cobbled together a lunch (he got hungry, and he wouldn't if he were a ghost, right? He tried to ignore all the cultures—including his own—that offered food to the dead,) then set about scouting the area around the Kudo mansion and the Agasa residence. Once he was satisfied he knew the layout and that there were currently no suspicious objects or people nearby, he used his glider to do a tri-pattern aerial surveillance of the streets Edogawa Conan and Haibara Ai had taken to school that morning. Even if Conan didn't usually go that way, living as he did at the Agency, Haibara did and Conan obviously would want his friend safe, too.
Another area sweep of the school itself, grounds and outside of the building only. He'd have to come back after dark to do a more thorough search, check out the school as a whole and make sure Conan's classroom wasn't bugged. Whoever was gunning for the kid probably didn't know who exactly they were gunning for, or they would have caught him already, but there was the off-chance that they or someone else had an eye on him. He was pretty high-profile, what with all the cases he got cought up with and his reputation as Mouri Kogoro's apprentice. (Never mind the fact that the alcoholic hardly ever did any of the work and it was nearly always Conan himself settling things from behind the scenes.)
Ten minutes into his idle exploration of the school roof (lots of nooks and crannies, great for hiding things or people) and the ending bell rang, tinny and faint through an open window somewhere down the wall. Kaito hopped up and bounced off the edge of the roof, taking advantage of the steady updraft provided by the sun-warmed concrete in order to get airborne. Would be easy to stay in the air, too, as the darker asphalt of the streets generally got even warmer.
He spent several minutes looping slowly above the Shonen Tantei-dan—and chibi-Science-san—and frowned when they turned towards the Agency instead of Agasa's. Still, he was mostly satisfied with the relative safety of Conan's usual daytime torture-chamber (because going over basic addition and subtraction and reading first-grade level hiragana couldn't be classified as anything but torture to a high school student), and leaving a panic-prone Shinichi alone with the Mouris for long increased the chances of him blowing his 'Conan' cover sky high.
That thought had him re-angling his glider, looping up and away from the four first-graders trudging worriedly down the street to head back to a (hopefully still sleeping) somewhat drugged miniature meitantei.
He slipped back in through the same window he'd left by, a quick check showing that Conan was still huddled under the blanket-tent, eyebrows scrunched in pain despite the fact that he was sleeping.
Kaito sighed and sent an 'I'm back' text to Mouri-chan, not wanting to startle her when she thought he wasn't there. Not 'I'm home.' 'Tadaima' was for one's own home and this was not his.
... Not Shinichi's either, for all that Conan claimed it, and he always had to hide who he was while near either of the Mouris. Did he even have to be here? Why was Shinichi staying with the Mouris? Kaito had never thought to ask, but surely Shinichi would have an easier time overall if he wasn't constantly having to hold up a front of being someone else in front of someone he's been all but raised with.
Voices from the actual Agency office downstairs had Kaito slipping out of the upper apartment and down to eavesdrop from the staircase, leaving the door behind him cracked just enough to make it possible to hear Conan if he woke. He was a little concerned with what Mouri-chan would tell the Shonen Tantei, especially as Haibara was with them and she wasn't a naïve little child.
"Conan-kun's not feeling well," Ran was in the midst of explaining. "He's sleeping upstairs and I don't think you should wake him."
"Migraine?" Haibara asked.
A tint of surprise in the Mouri girls' reply, "Hai. It got pretty bad. He was having trouble seeing and the doctors gave him some very strong painkillers."
"Nothing opioid, I hope," Haibara murmured, actually sounding a bit concerned.
Ran hesitated, "I don't remember. It might have been morphine; why?"
"He doesn't react well to certain painkillers, according to the last time he was hospitalized. He was complaining about opioids for days."
Another moment of hesitation, the Ran's voice again. "I may have to call and ask. I really don't know."
Kaito sighed to himself and sent a text, 'Yes to the opioid. Morphine drip, third-dose for standard adult, which is still a lot for someone Conan's size. They got it in the IV before I realized what it was, but he was in enough pain that I might have let them anyway. He'll be anxious for a few days, with a possibility for panic attacks.'
Ran sighed and Kaito heard the couch creak a bit like she was leaning against the weaker armrest. "Well, Ai-chan, I'll be sure to let Agasa-hakase know when Conan-kun is feeling better and remind him to tell you, too. Meanwhile, though, I thing we should all let Conan-kun sleep."
Haibara's voice came out strongly decisive, "I'll let everyone know when I hear from you," she informed. "You are correct; he will recover more quickly if he is allowed uninterrupted rest."
Kaito slipped back up the stairs when he heard the distinctive sounds of four little bodies hopping off couches, pleased by the fact that Mouri-chan hadn't even hinted at his existence.
Now all he had to do was keep the Mouris from talking to Agasa for long until Shinichi could let the man know what the Mouri's had been told.
... That might be a little easier said than done.
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