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"Are you sure you're going to be alright?" Ran asked. She pressed her hand to Shinichi's forehead for the fifth, or possibly sixth time that morning, and he had to fight the urge to bat it away. The room was spinning, like the residual vertigo that came after spending hours rocking on a boat, but he would never admit his growing urge to vomit in a hundred years. Ran was already going to be late to school as it was, and he could handle this cold by himself.
"I'll be fine, Ran," he repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. "Just get to school, okay? I can call you if I need something." He said it mostly to placate her; Ran's worrywart tendencies extended to more than his smaller form, it seemed. If it were anyone else, Shinichi would've considered her fretting a positive, a necessity even. But he wasn't a fan of being coddled, especially not in this older, bigger body. Ran sighed.
"I know, I'm sorry," she said. "I just worry." Shinichi gave the smallest of nods, mindful of how even that motion made his stomach flip uncomfortably. Ran stood up with a displeased downturn to her lips, though the fight had drained out of her shoulders. "There's leftovers in the fridge downstairs, and you already have my number and Agasa-hakase's, so if you need anything, you have no excuse not to call, okay? I'll see you later." Shinichi waved her off, barely listening to her parting words.
He waited until he heard her walk down the stairs and the front door closed before he let out a low, pitiful groan. His whole body was shaking with fever, bundled up beneath blankets to stave off the cold. His sinuses ached, pounding against his skull relentlessly, but no matter how much he blew, nothing came out. Shinichi's head felt like it was clouded in fog, all hazy with his thoughts difficult to discern, and his stomach wasn't happy about the porridge Ran insisted on feeding him when she found out he was sick that morning.
All in all, it was a pretty horrible cold. He hadn't been this sick since... Oh, since he was three, maybe? That time, he got some bug that was going around and spent two nights sleeping on the bathroom floor next to his mom because the both of them kept puking at all hours. It was probably a good thing he could hardly remember it. Still, this cold was giving that illness a run for its money. He coughed, but flinched immediately as it made his stomach cramp up. Another groan filled the room.
Maybe... he could just lie very, very still. If he was still enough, he wouldn't be able to make anything worse. The heavy heat in his limbs would also be maintained, instead of being lost every time his stomach cramps forced his legs into motion. Hmm... He was in worse shape than he'd realized, wasn't he? Still, he couldn't quite get himself to consider that sending Ran off to school might've been a mistake.
Shifting around cautiously, Shinichi ended up on his back staring up at the ceiling. He'd been living with Ran for... four months, now. Four months, and she didn't know his secret yet. It wasn't that Shinichi had been wanting to tell her, but it felt wrong to see his own babysitter cozy up to him as a teen. She deserved to know, if nothing else. Haibara's little stunt prevented him from speaking up, though, and the two of them coordinated to keep things that way. Everyone else was better off not knowing, they'd decided.
Shinichi still wasn't sure they were right, but he didn't want to be threatened with another gun, so he went along with it.
His mind devolved into half-formed ramblings, little more than thoughts passing through his head. In his mind's eye, he could clearly see the faces of the men who had shoved the drug down his throat, Vodka and Gin. They seemed to pop up everywhere, like cockroaches, or maybe worker ants. It must've been doubly as bad for Haibara. She’d flinched hard when she saw Gin's Porsche, recognizing it instantly on sight. Seeing them was probably like seeing a ghost. He could get why she was so secretive, even if he didn't fully agree with it.
At some point, without his realizing it, Shinichi's eyes had slipped closed. When he tried to sharpen the images in his head, he could feel his eyelids tighten, as though he were attempting to narrow his eyes while they were already closed. In that strange drifting state, his body didn't feel as awful. That heaviness radiated from his very bones out in waves, but his stomach settled with some gurgling, and even his irritated sinuses were a low drone of aching.
There was no way for him to tell how long he was in that state. Time became much more flexible when one's consciousness was coming in and out, and their eyes were closed and unable to see the shifting of light. But Shinichi felt something cold settle against his forehead rather suddenly, and it yanked his mind back to the surface. His eyes blinked open, scanning the room, until they landed on a very familiar figure. He weakly batted her hand away as she tried to adjust the damp towel she'd just put on his head.
"Don't bat my hand away, you brat," Haibara scolded. She moved the towel down so it covered all the way to his eyebrows. Shinichi tried to talk, but he only accomplished a wheeze, his throat dry and covered in draining mucus. "Here, can you sit up a bit?" He complied, though it took him a minute to inch his way into a somewhat-sitting position. Haibara held a glass up to his lips and tipped it back slowly. He could only get down a few gulps before his stomach twisted painfully. "Easy there."
"Haibara...? What are you doing here?" he whispered. She raised an eyebrow, leveling an unimpressed glare his way. He shrank under it, feeling every bit the child he was, by all rights, supposed to be. In hindsight, he would've taken Ran's fretting and fawning over Haibara's tough love. Was it too late to acknowledge his mistake and ask for her back? ...Yeah, it probably was, huh? When she saw him shrink into himself, Haibara scoffed.
"Mouri-san was telling us how you had to stay home today because you got sick," she explained. "She went on and on about how unsure she was about leaving you by yourself, and kept saying that she was sure you felt worse than you were letting on. So, when I offered to come check on you during lunch, she was more than happy to hand me the key and send me on my way. And it's a good thing, too. It would've been disastrous if she'd come back to find you like this."
Like... what? Shinichi's brows furrowed, but when Haibara pointedly snapped her gaze from his feet back to his head, he took the cue to look down himself. Oh. Ah, yeah, that'd do it. At some point while his mind was drifting, he'd turned back into a child. The sleeping clothes he'd been wearing were baggy now that he was paying attention to them, and what he'd thought were sheets wrapped around each limb were the too-loose sleeves and pant legs. No wonder he'd had so much trouble sitting up.
"Seriously, Kudo, what am I going to do with you?" Haibara continued. "You're clearly in no state to take care of yourself. In fact, it sounds like you spent a great deal of time this morning shooing Mouri-san out of her own house, and for what? To lie around in bed all day, laid up with a fever?" With each word, Shinichi felt his teenage bravado die a little more in his chest. When was the last time he'd been scolded by someone whose opinion he actually cared about? "We've talked about your overconfidence before. Don't make me remind you."
"I know," he said, voice cracking. "I'm sorry, Haibara. I was being an idiot." Shinichi turned his head away so his voice was slightly muffled by the pillow. "I just... I hate it when people try to coddle me, especially in my bigger form." Haibara let out a sigh. There was a tap on his shoulder, and when Shinichi slowly turned back in her direction, Haibara was already looking at him closely. Unlike the anger he expected to be present on her face, she appeared resigned.
"Letting someone take care of you when you're sick isn't the same thing as being coddled," she told him firmly. "The word 'coddled' implies being given excessive care that isn't needed, but when you're sick, you never know when a seemingly innocuous cold can turn into something more dangerous, like pneumonia. I know Mouri-san can sometimes get on your nerves, but you have to understand that it comes from a place of genuine care on her part, and she doesn't mean to be overbearing."
Shinichi nodded. Yeah, logically, he knew that Ran didn't act in particular ways to spite him, but it was hard to reconcile that with the wealth of experience he'd had in his six years of life that taught him that anyone older than him would see him not as his own person, but a child to be shielded from the hardships of life. His dad was refreshingly frank with him on that front, but his mom... He grimaced just thinking about her hot and cold temperament.
Haibara sighed, standing up. Shinichi followed her with his eyes, head stationary, and watched as she crossed her arms and stared back down at him. Displeasure was drawn across her features, but he could imagine how it would warp on her true face, irritation bleeding out into worry that she wouldn't so freely admit. It settled something in Shinichi. He'd been kind of an outcast all his life - more advanced than his peers, with strange, hyper-specific interests. He'd never had a friend like Haibara, who stuck by his side and actually cared about how he was doing.
"I'm going to let that little lecture sink in for a while," she said, "and in the meantime, I'm going to warm you up some food. If you've been asleep since this morning, then you're most likely overdue for some sustenance." His stomach rumbled at the mention of food, but Shinichi dutifully nodded his agreement anyway. Maybe food would help it settle. Haibara turned away to head to the kitchen, but she paused to turn back to him. "Message me if something, anything, happens, okay?"
"I will," he promised. With a firm nod, Haibara continued her way out of the room. Shinichi didn't bother trying to stop the amused smile that crept onto his face. For all her blustering, Haibara's care felt more real to him than all the hushed, poorly-covered worrying he'd been subjected to all his life. He still felt awful - why he thought it was a good idea to brush it off that morning was beyond him - but with the promise of food and company, at least his spirits were beginning to lift.