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Kudou clears his throat, but it sounds... Off. Heiji stops halfway out the door, squinting at him. “Ya just got somethin’ stuck in yer throat, or...?”
“No,” Kudou says with a strained voice. “But it’ll probably pass.”
Heiji steps back inside, hand still on the door. “Don’t sound like it.”
“I’m fine.” Kudou waves him off, but his hand abruptly jerks back to cover his mouth as he starts coughing.
Heiji swears under his breath and slams the door shut. He gets to Kudou’s side just in time for his knees to buckle, unable to hold himself up even with his hand on the wall for support.
“Sorry,” Kudou grimaces, weakly clinging to Heiji. “You’ll probably... miss your train now.”
“Hey, hey, it’s fine.” He lowers them both to the floor, carefully, so Kudou is sitting in his lap and Heiji is leaning against the wall of the hallway. “Ain’t yer fault.”
Heiji’s never been good with comforting words, so he silently rubs Kudou’s chest. He can feel the too-fast-too-strong heartbeat under his hand, even with Kudou’s gasping breaths moving his chest erratically. “Ya gotta slow down. I’m gonna count, and ya need to breathe with it, ‘kay?”
It sucks that this has become normal, that Heiji is used to having to coach Kudou through these... well they ain’t heart attacks, but calling them arrhythmia attacks just don’t pack the same punch. They’ve been calling them episodes, for lack of a better word.
The first time it happened they were terrified that the antidote hadn’t taken hold, that Kudou was gonna go back to being Conan again, that he was never gonna stay normal forever. But then when it was over and he didn’t transform, they thought it must’ve just been an aftereffect of the antidote, or his body settling in, or something else they didn’t know how to explain.
But then it happened again. And again. And again. Out of nowhere, his heart would start hammering like it used to do when he transformed, and would knock him off his feet-- sometimes literally. Turns out, all that shifting back and forth took a toll on his body. Specifically his heart, which now has some kind of persistent arrhythmia that Heiji doesn’t remember the technical name for. He knows it ain’t too dangerous as far as doctors say, but Kudou gets fatigued easier now and he has these... episodes. Sometimes triggered by stress, or by the cigarette smoke in the Mouri’s house, or most unfortunately for Kudou: caffeine. He’s had to stop drinking it entirely.
But eliminating triggers doesn’t stop it from happening at random, like now.
There ain’t much Heiji can do except wait it out with him. He hugs Kudou tight and rubs his chest, feels his heart go into overdrive, watches him curl up and shake from the pain, listens to him as he chokes on pained whines and other noises. Trying to hold it back has him coughing again, leaving him gasping and unable to hold back his groans.
Heiji has to hold back from going Tch . This feels old, even if it still hurts to watch. “Don’t try an’ hold it in, stupid.” He shifts Kudou in his lap so his head is tucked under Heiji’s chin, letting him curl up a bit more so he can hide his face when he whimpers.
It takes a long time for it to be over, or at least it feels like a long time, because it always feels like a long time. The tension finally starts to leave Kudou’s body slowly as he uncurls his hands and limbs and relaxes his shoulders until he finally lets his head fall on Heiji’s shoulder, slumped over and panting but no longer trying to hide a groan with each exhale and no longer trying to claw at his own chest.
“Better now?”
“Definitely missing your train,” Kudou says, breathless, in lieu of an answer. And he’s right. This one lasted, what, seven minutes? Ten? He tries not to keep track, that’d just make him freak out the longer it goes on. It’s not too long in a relative sense, and if Heiji ran out the door right now and booked it he could probably make it, but they both know that he won’t leave Kudou alone after this. Not for a while, at least.
“Ain’t yer fault,” Heiji sighs. “I’ll catch the next one.” He can’t even count how many times he’s had to tell Kudou that it ain’t his fault. Ain’t like he can control when he has the episodes or anything. He keeps absently rubbing Kudou’s chest, even though it’s over. He knows it still hurts.
He gives half a thought to the fact that his shoes are still on. He needs to kick those off and chuck them in the genkan before he gets back up. “Should we move to the couch? Or your room?”
“No.” His breathing is finally becoming steadier and slower, but it still hitches every so often. “This is fine.”
Read: he’s too tired to move right now. “‘Kay. We’ll stay here a minute.” Or two, or ten, or however long Kudou needs.