“Does this mean I’m off medkit-stocking duty?” Kakashi asked.

Raidou sank his face into his hands, muttering something that sounded like make him run laps for years.

“We could put him in a drug rehab program when we get home,” Ryouma offered. “Like the ones they have for soldier pill addicts. He stole morphine, he's spent half this mission high…” He offered his shoulder to Kakashi, who leaned against it again.

“Do they let you bring books?” Kakashi asked interestedly.

“Only books on how to properly stock med kits, observe protocol, and follow orders,” Genma said. “And no, you’re not off med-kit stocking duty. You’re on it forever.” He picked up his bowl and made an attempt at his second helping of stew. “You didn’t really think that was going to work, did you?”

“I just thought we’d need it,” Kakashi said, sounding less snarky and a good deal more genuine than he’d probably intended to let on.

He worries about us, Genma thought. And wasn’t that surprising, in the rookie who’d done his best since day one to convey how little he wanted to be a part of Team Six. And then hauled Genma’s poisoned ass out of a mountain, wracked himself with guilt over failing to kill the demon queen, and sat up all night at Ryouma’s side. And tried to take on Iebara by himself, to keep his teammates out of harm’s way.

It made it damn hard to stay pissed off at the guy.

“Actually, what I meant was, doing it wrong to get out of a chore never works,” Genma said, bluffing his way out of too many thoughts. “When I was nine I tried to get out of making icing roses for my dad’s shop by doing some really shitty ones on a wedding cake order. Guess who makes the best icing roses in Konoha now?”

I see what you’re doing, the grey ice in Kakashi’s visible eye said, and I am playing along. “Is it you?”

Genma waited just long enough for Ryouma and Katsuko to look up. “Actually, it’s still my dad. But I’m second best.”

Amusement flickered briefly in Katsuko’s eyes, before she returned to demolishing her—fifth? sixth?—bowl of stew with the single-minded intensity usually reserved for surgery or licensing exams.

Ryouma’s eyes narrowed. “I expect cake”, he said, with an inflection usually reserved for much direr demands, “when we get back to Konoha.”

“I want an icing rose,” Kakashi said. His eye had gone unfocused and his expression relaxed as he rested against Ryouma’s side. ‘Meds, fed, bed’—the wounded soldier’s triple cure was starting to work.

“I want the last ten minutes of conversation to have been a fever dream,” Raidou said, almost as wistfully.

Katsuko punctuated the moment with a loud belch. She looked at her bowl with a contemplative expression, probably trying to decide whether she desperately needed another bowl of stew, or if eating more would in fact make her stomach explode and kill her.

“Can you take a deep breath, Ueno?” Genma asked her.

“Maybe,” Katsuko said, after a moment of thought and a couple of abortive experiments. “But that would make my lungs expand and leave less room for food.”

“Then you should probably digest what you’ve eaten already, before you eat more,” Genma said. “You’ll be sad if you make yourself vomit with your shoulder broken.”

Katsuko nodded. “Good idea,” she said, and set her bowl down. She regarded the others with an evaluating expression, eyes ticking over bed-hair, bandages, and bruises. “So. Besides discussing drug theft, how are all of us going to last two days underground without killing each other?”