| [May. 8th, 2014|04:05 am] |
Ryouma's hand curved over the lower half of Kakashi's face.
"Easy," Ryouma said, low behind him. "We can't see."
Kakashi’s rapid breaths washed over the back of Ryouma’s fingers, curling up warm into his own face. Genma shifted, easing Kakashi’s hand back down under the foil blanket, and said, “Slow breaths, Hound. You’re safe, we’re your team.”
Ryouma’s hand stayed where it was, laid like a steady steel band over Kakashi’s mouth. It was a lot heavier than a mask, and it didn’t cover Kakashi’s nose—because breathing—but it was solid protection, and it kept them from seeing.
Slowly, Kakashi managed to untense.
“Good. Slow, even breaths,” Genma said, in the calm voice of a man used to seeing strange things and not commenting on them. All medics had that. Probably most lieutenants, too. He raised the canteen again. “I need you to drink this.”
Despite himself, Kakashi’s whole body made its best effort to press back through Ryouma’s knee.
Ryouma reached over him and took the canteen from Genma. “Lieutenant, turn your head?”
Genma hesitated, then he nodded and pivoted on one knee, angling himself away. “Get him to drink all of it, if you can,” he said. “If you can’t, I’ll do a transfusion myself and we’ll figure something else out.” He unearthed a soldier pill for himself and swallowed it, chakra flaring brighter with the punch of new energy.
Kakashi wasn’t deaf, he was just—
Having a blind-stupid reaction that delayed things for everyone else.
Ryouma tipped the bottom edge of his hand up and slid the canteen mouth underneath it, lining it up blind with Kakashi’s lower teeth. Kakashi got a grip on himself and drank, tasting the particular metal-edge that went with soldier pills. The water was still warm, and it washed smoothly down his throat. Swallowing hurt, but getting choked—twice—would do that.
He finished it, and fought his right hand up again, wrapping it around Ryouma’s wrist. He meant to drag Ryouma’s guarding hand down, prove to them that he could deal like an actual shinobi, but the chakra hit his coils like a burning wave, and the next few moments wiped out in a dark, shaking void until Genma shoved more morphine into him.
Ryouma’s hand was still over his face when Kakashi could focus again, and the world was a little bit warmer. Blurrier, too. Another red-flagged syrette hung on his dog-tags.
“Sorry, lieutenant,” Kakashi mumbled.
Genma glanced at him, light eyes picking up eerie green reflections. “Nothing to be sorry about, you’re fine. When we get to the safehouse, I’ll have a few more options for dealing with your coil damage, but for now all I have is morphine.” His mouth tightened into a thin line. “Sorry for putting you through so much.”
“Less than Iebara,” Kakashi said, with an eye-curving smile. “Or Tsuto.”
And there was that ugly, ragged humor again, brimming up under the drugs. He swallowed it down with the last edge of metal and tried to have a linear thought. “Now what?”
“Now we clean you up, get you stable, and get to the safehouse,” Genma said immediately. “Ram, can you fill our canteens? We need all need to drink at least a litre.”
Because blood-pills didn’t give you plasma back, they just upgraded whatever red cells you had left to be better temporary oxygen-carriers, so you didn’t die the highly ironic death of suffocating with air still in your lungs. You still had to offset the fluid loss. There was probably some other magic in there, too, but Kakashi’s medical knowledge tended to run dry around ‘slap gauze on it and hope for the best’.
Ryouma needed both hands for seals.
Kakashi’s fingers were still curled around the heavy bones of Ryouma’s wrist, holding him in place. Slowly, Kakashi made himself let go. |
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