| [Dec. 18th, 2013|11:41 pm] |
“Possibly not my best idea ever,” Genma conceded. They were about level with Sandaime’s chin whiskers, not quite halfway down the cliff face, which made it too far to climb back up and take the stairs. He took a slow, steadying breath, kept his palm pressed firmly against quivering abdominal muscles, and quirked a wry smile at Ryouma. “You know what they say about medics; they make shitty patients. I was supposed to lay off exertion until after I get one more healing session tomorrow. I guess this actually counts as exertion.”
“Whoa. Shit,” Ryouma said, alarm threading through his voice. “I didn’t know that. You’re not going to bust it open, are you? You want me to carry you down?” He made a move towards Genma full of heroic intent.
“Wha? No!” Genma said, startled and amused. He took a step backwards, holding his stomach with one hand and pushing the other out to ward off any attempted rescue. “Oh gods,” he wheezed. “That’s… Thanks, I appreciate it, but I’m fine. It’s not going to come back open, it’s just going to punish me with a little pain for my unwise choices.”
“Hah,” Ryouma said, dropping back. His mouth curved in amused empathy. “My thigh's not too happy with me, either. We can blame it on the QM poking us.”
“Definitely,” Genma agreed. “I thought for a second there I was gonna go down like a house of cards. What was Morita-san trying to do, see if I still had my appendix?”
“Probably pissed at you for proving him wrong about the armor,” Ryouma said. "Which, thanks for the rescue." He stepped onto a rocky outcrop, balanced briefly, then dropped a body’s length down.
Genma followed suit, landing with as much finesse as he could manage, and trying to keep the wince off his face. They stuck fast to the barest of ledges. “My pleasure,” he said. “No one gets to yell at Team Six’s rookies but me and the captain. Especially when the rookie in question is a good part of the reason the team made it home to get yelled at.”
Ryouma’s gaze didn’t deviate from the village below them, but his lips twitched as a very faint flush of pleasure crept over the backs of his ears. “I got annoyed that first day,” he said, “when you tried to make me eat a rat bar. But I've appreciated 'em ever since.”
That was probably as much of a ‘thanks for being a decent lieutenant’ as Genma could hope to expect from a man as tightly defended against real interpersonal intimacy as Ryouma seemed to be.
Not that he was much different from anyone else in ANBU.
“Well, now I know you prefer the peanut butter ones, it’s easier to stay in your good graces. About rat bars, anyway,” Genma said. He steeled himself for the next jolt. “How’s your leg holding up? You want to maybe ease off the long jumps and take a slower pace the rest of the way down?”
Ryouma had gotten ahead again. He looked up at Genma, waiting for him to catch up. “Sorry,” he said guiltily, when Genma got down to him. He held one hand out in an invitation for Genma to set the pace as they pushed off once more.
“It’s ok,” Genma said. “I’m kind of half tempted to just translocate the rest of the way down and save myself some jarring.” But Ryouma had reacted fairly poorly to a translocation back during the trials—some people just didn’t do well with space-time jutsu. “Actually, our chakra’s probably not recovered enough for that yet,” Genma said, backtracking, “so let’s not. We can just go a little slower.” He picked as direct a route as he could. They’d made it as far as Nidaime’s chin—another ten meters or so and they’d be at the mews where the messenger falcons were housed and dispatched. They weren’t in uniform and had no reason to go in, but they could at least take the stairs from there.
Like they should have done in the first place. |
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