Genma was about as happy to see Sumire as she was to see him. He'd sort of figured the prawn curry was off, and he'd sort of figured he'd be getting a lecture. He'd rather hoped it would come when he was home and upright and could better pretend that the medics had just been making a big deal over nothing, and anyway he'd stayed in the hospital to be with Raidou, who was much worse off, not because he'd particularly needed the care himself.

"Um, hi," he said. Not his best opening salvo ever. "It's not as bad as it looks." Which was, he had to admit, pretty bad. But everyone who was in the hospital always ended up with a stupid IV, that was just the way things worked, so that you could write off. And everyone looked worse with bed hair and in pajamas. Plus the color of the hospital pajamas, an absurd blue-grey, made him look positively ill even when he was at his peak. And the lighting--ugh, flourescents--definitely didn't flatter. As for bandages, well... Bandages covered minor injuries as well as major ones, right?

He was pretty sure she wasn't even close to buying it.

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Raidou, for all his flaws, was currently in a much more honest headspace then his mission partner. That was possibly something to do with the fever still curling through his system that made lying both hard work and entirely pointless. Well, either that or the very nice cocktail of drugs they had him on that gave the world a slightly soft blur around the edges.

At least it gave him something to look at.

The manacles he was also happy to live without. It meant he could scratch his nose. And his shoulder. Wounds were a bastard for itching when they healed. It did get him yelled at by both his mission partner and the nurses, and renewed manacle threats, but the momentary relief was almost worth it.

Raidou was starting to think that two days of enforced bed rest--with a few more looming on the horizon--was actually worse then the damn mission that had put him there.

He didn't particularly want to live through another sponge bath, either. The nurse had been attractive and all, but even the fever and the drugs weren't enough to stop Raidou from being extremely uncomfortable when she'd stripped his shirt and his pants off without so much as a "morning" and doused him in cold water. (It hadn't been that cold, he knew, but it had felt cold on overheated skin). Genma's grin hadn't made the whole experience any more pleasant, either.

He was oddly glad to see Sumire stomp in with an expression like thunder. She would probably keep the sponge-wielding nurses away. "You should've seen the other guys," he informed her solemnly, happy to stick with a classic.

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Sumire kept her eyeroll to a minimum, she was working. (Though, she wouldn't have objected to getting orders to wring Genma's neck for being an idiot either.) "It does look as bad as it is, and I'm sure the others are absolutely beside themselves with the amount of dead you served them," Sumire replied, keeping her voice that one modicum south of razor sharp. She gave Genma a look that translated into something like, 'When you get home, I will end you.' and removed a notepad from her jacket pocket.


"Anyway, now that you both are in a state in which it is possible to get actual answers out of you, rather than each others names," Oh, the things you heard from the nurses. "I'd like to begin your debriefing." Not that you have much of a choice.

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Oh. It was the debriefing. Hmm. Lovely. If it was the debriefing, then there would be absolutely no varnishing over the moments of pain and fear and occasional downright stupidity on that mission. Genma might not have wanted Sumire to know the ugly little details of their mission, but he couldn't justify falsifying a mission report. The expression on his pale face spoke volumes about just how delighted he was to be faced with giving that report to Sumire.

"Alright, here's my report. We survived it, the client survived it, Suna's definitely involved, and there were a hell of a lot of Sand shinobi in on that for it to have just been a simple assassination. What else do you want to know?"

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Raidou lifted an eyebrow. Genma was apparently about as delighted to see Sumire as he himself had been to see the scrub nurse. He was also angling to get himself cracked with a clipboard. Well, a notepad, which wasn't quite as bad, but considering they were both still hospital-bound, it'd be nice if neither one of them accumulated new bruises until they got out.

"The wife was in on it," Raidou said, cutting in before Sumire could reply. "The first two days went as expected. Third day we got hit with a full-scale attack. Suna-nin." He gestured with his free hand at the medical charts, which would tell Sumire a lot more about their injuries then he could. "They were aiming for the client. When we got in the way they snatched the wife. Fake ransom attempt most likely. We tracked them the next morning," gods that rat had been annoying, "found the lady holed up on a noble's estate, and more then enough evidence to implicate her. Couple more Suna-nin, too. We took them out, took the lord out, took the wife back to the client and executed her on his orders."

Which was all damn true.

"Then we came home."

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"Thanks, Namiashi," Sumire replied, faithfully copying down the information and taking a look at the practically illegible medical charts. Then, Genma got an angry look. "You could've said the same thing, idiot," Sumire told him coolly, narrowing her eyes. Maybe it was new for Genma, but it was almost pin-width close to the same look she gave Shibata on a daily basis. She rescinded the look and closed her eyes for a moment.


She could conduct herself with proper Murakami restraint, Sumire told herself. And she wasn't going to pluck up that empty bedpan and brain Genma with it. "Were you able to find any extra evidence for Suna's presence there? I can't say I'm not glad the parties didn't contact the same village twice, however, finding Suna-nin that close to Tanzaku Gai is a little disturbing." But who knew? Maybe the sandfleas wanted some downtime at the pachinko halls. "You found no orders? How many were there?"

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"There were eleven in the place we found the wife," Genma said, steadfastly ignoring Sumire's signals that she was moments away from bitching him out so hard the paint would peel from the walls, his wounds would spontaneously reopen and bleed, and both his and Raidou's eardrums would shatter from the language. "And.... Oh gods, at the birthday party? There were at least six we could confirm were Suna, plus a good six or seven others that we weren't able to confirm. There were collateral dead as well at both places. At the party the deaths among civilians were entirely the fault of the enemy. When we went in to recover the wife, however, there were two household servants who we had to eliminate."

So cold. So precise. But it was the truth. They'd fought and killed their Suna allies. It had been necessary. But it had also been necessary that there be no witnesses alive to confirm that fact. The party attack itself had made the news already. But that was Suna's problem to handle. "You ought to look at what Suna's saying about the attack at the party. I'm sure enough witnesses spilled the fact that one of Iijima's bodyguards was nearly crushed to death by a sand jutsu that someone in the press marked it as a Suna attack."

There, maybe that would throw her off a little. Give her something Intel could chase down.

"And I'm sure they had orders to stage that attack. The house where they were holed up was rigged with so many traps it was a wonder they didn't end up killing their own clients."

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"Mm," Sumire's reply was non-committal as she wrote down the information - it wasn't coder's work, and Sunese coders could be right assholes about sharing their information - to give to the appropriate party. The kunoichi forced herself to think normal thoughts, work thoughts, as she alternately entertained throttling her not-brother. "So, seventeen Suna, six to seven Radicals that may or may not be tied to that village, and civvie deaths aren't needed in the general investigation." They might be their people, but the ninja were more important. Besides, civilians died everyday at the hands of ninja.


"Your chart said you managed to get poisoned." There was a bit of surprise in her voice. As often as she found him poisoning himself for one new thing or another, it was more interesting to find things that had gotten through. However, if he kept putting himself at risk, she knew they were going to revoke his access to the labs. "Was it a new type?" She flipped through his chart, and reminded herself to ask about the emergency procedure that had lengthened his stay (the medics involved could very well be deserving of bedpans to brains).

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"New enough," Genma muttered, and looked down in disgust. He should never have set off that trap in the first place, and he should have had more resistance. "Ichiro--you know him? Enokido Ichiro, works in the labs with me. He analyzed the sample. One of the medics said if I hadn't had the resistance to the class of metal alkaloids it's part of, Rai'd have brought back dogtags, not me." He glanced at Raidou, just a tiny flick of the eyes. Genma'd heard the news while he'd been out walking in the corridors that morning, pushing an IV pole and trying not to limp too much. (Didn't want them telling him to use crutches or anything stupid like that, after all.) So it was news to Raidou.

The medic who'd spilled the beans hadn't even meant to. Genma'd seen the note from Ichiro sitting on top of a pile of papers newly delivered to the nursing station, leaned over the desk and said, "Hey. I work with that guy. He's okay, right?" And the medic, who was new to the ward and hadn't actually managed to figure out that the long-haired guy with the hip injury leaning over his desk was in fact the poisoned guy, had reassured him that Shiranui-san was very lucky, owing to the fact he was resistant to the class of poisons it belonged to. "He'd have been dead in five minutes after taking that needle in the shoulder if he hadn't had that resistance," the medic had told him. Genma had found himself feeling a little light-headed then, and gone back to bed.

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Sometimes Genma said things that made the world spin backwards. For Raidou it spun all the way back to the moment he'd found Genma, pinned to a wall with a sword point ready to nail him there. The way he'd broken his own sword when he'd rammed it through a man and into solid brick. The way Genma had simply fallen and Raidou had fallen and they'd all been stupid little dolls with their chakra strings cut. The way he'd gotten up and made himself work. Made Genma tell him what the hell he needed.

The way he hadn't--not for one damn second--believed Genma wasn't going to make it. Because it was Genma and that was what they did. They got home. Every damn time.

Raidou didn't miss the look Genma gave him now. He couldn't have missed anything, not with the way his attention was suddenly riveted on his friend's face.

Rai'd have brought back dogtags, not me.

Whoever had thrown those senbon wasn't dead enough. Not nearly. Raidou clenched his teeth hard enough to hurt and hoped it'd been the jounin with molten metal in her throat.

He didn't know it had been a trap. Genma hadn't told him.

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While Raidou was watching Genma and Genma was watching the ceiling tiles, Sumire watched the two of them with half-hearted interest, the same way a tape recorder might look if it were a human being. Movements, breaths, flickers of eyes and twitches of fingers were all categorized, and filtered away for a more intensive report later. After a long moment where the three were all silent at once, she spoke up.

"Namiashi, if you keep clenching your teeth like that, you're going to break them." Sumire finished the last few strokes and looked at the notepad a couple times at different angles. Had she gotten everything the way she wanted it? "I'm going to have to warn you both; since your last missions have been so... colorful..." They did have a penchant for the dramatic mission, didn't they? "You'll probably have to play it a little safer." Better for Sumire's nerves anyway. "Lest the higher ups decide to suspend you from duty for a week or two."

She looked down at the greenblue tips of her nails, noting the pattern she'd asked for had chipped slightly over the course of the last day or two. "I'm the bearer of such bright and cheerful news, aren't I?"

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"What exactly is that supposed to mean?" Genma demanded, sitting up with a scowl. "Rai and I aren't any kind of burnout mission suicides! It was just bad luck and bad intel. If the mission guys'd thought the threat was as large as it turned out to be, there's no way this would have been a two-man mission." He folded his arms across his bandaged chest, fuming. There were a lot of fuckups on this mission, but bad intel at the outset was definitely one of them.

"You worked on those docs. You saw what they told us to expect. It wasn't seventeen fucking Suna ninja."

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Oh, so Genma, in his drugged up glory, was actually going to attempt talking back? To her and insult her hard work? Sumire told herself that it was a lucky thing she wasn't allowed to beat the sense in and the snot out of her comrades. Because Genma would be learning to make seals with his toes when she was finished. Sumire stared at him and then through him, pinning her eyes on his was a work of sheer will. It kept her from rising out of the chair and destroying her voice by screaming at him, like she wanted.


"Yes, I worked on the documents, Shiranui. However, I worked on nothing about enemies to expect, got it? Secondly," Sumire voice was layered in razors. "Take a look at your last few missions yourself before you talk back to me in that manner." Sumire knew she had a point. ANBU missions were dangerous, true, and she didn't doubt the validity of their good ol' Academy try. But facts were facts, and facts didn't lie. Coming back in bits was more or less indicative of walking into blades and kunai. "And for one god-damned minute think of what the Intel Psychs are thinking when they go back over your quarterly reviews, huh?" Better, yet, came her bittered thoughts. Take two minutes to pull your head out of your ass and look at yourself.

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"I realize," said Raidou sharply, before Genma could detonate, "that Intel don't spend a lot of time above ground in the real world, but I was under the impression that you had at least one working brain between the lot of you." Fever and drugs be damned, he was not taking that bit of bile lying down. The painkillers helped take the edge off the biting flare in his shoulder when he shoved himself upright and glared. "We're not picking daisies for a living here, Murakami. We're ANBU hunters. A tough day at the office for you is a bit of tricky paperwork. A normal day for us involves at least one attempt to kick us off the mortal coil."

This wasn't something that ever got said. If you'd dodged the kunai and made it back alive when the odds were stacked the other way, you damn well didn't kick up a fuss and remind the universe what it owed you. You just healed up, took the next mission, and hoped you got lucky again.

"You worked on nothing about enemies to expect? Well let me clue you in, Intel. It was minimal threat. A B-rank." Raidou's voice was rough, his face still flushed, his eyes dark and furious. "We took down seventeen fucking Suna-nin between the two off us. That's not two-to-one odds, Intel. That's almost ten-to-one odds. Ten ninja each, plus civilians, plus traps, plus no damn warning, and you're bitching because we picked up a scratch or two?" He was so tired of this shit from people who did not get it. "The only reason either of us is still alive is because we are damn good at what we do. You want to take us to task? Fine. But you make damn certain that your department does its basic job first."

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Raidou was a damn good friend and damn good backup. Right now he was both. With Sumire backing Genma into a corner he didn't feel he deserved to be in, he'd been about to lose his cool with his fiery kunoichi friend. When Raidou lost it for him, well... Genma was suddenly profoundly reminded of why this partner, this friend, was the best there was. He gave Raidou a nod of the head, meeting his flashing eyes.

Of course they were both probably going to regret this later. But dammit, the prawn curry was no longer an option, and as much as he loved Sumire, he was not going to sit there and let her insinuate he and Raidou had fucked up. Especially not Raidou. Especially not while he was sitting there recovering from injuries that would have taken a lesser man down entirely.

"Rai's right, " he said, face grim, voice low and quiet and tinged with danger. "We have nothing to be ashamed of about our conduct on this, or any of our previous missions."

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Ugh, their Teen Girl Squad Hunters are Better than Intel (for sure, totally, duuuh~!) argument did nothing more than push up again raw nerves. Raw, worried, how-the-hell-did-they-get-to-this-position nerves. Secondly, what the hell did they know about proper Intelligence Internal Operations and Field Operations procedure? Apparently, for all his time in ANBU, Namiashi Raidou had forgotten that his information came from the blood, sweat and tears of every single damned agent in her branch. And he was teaching Genma that same kind of mindful snobbery.

Beating the hell out of Genma and Raidou was beginning to look like a better and better option (especially if it got them off their kick), and she wasn't going to take it lying down. "'Don't get it', you say?" The words dropped like stones and clattered. Congratulations, Namiashi, she thought and curled a finger around a loose lock of hair. You've finally forgotten. "'Live under a rock', huh?" She could read him, all of him, better than any book.

Hunters didn't have a pokerface, after all. Not one any Intel agent worth her salt couldn't crack within fifteen minutes of meeting them, and Sumire had more than seven months personally and three years professionally. "Well, Big Bad Hunter-san, tell me then: Why did you end up in a hospital on a B-Ranked Mission? Why are both your files stacked with cases just like this? If I was the analyst for your files, then I would wonder myself." He opened his mouth to keep arguing and she held up a hand to shut him up, continuing with all the force of a storm. "And don't you dare ever insult my branch again. We've laid down more blood than you are capable of imagining. Just because we don't go throwing ourselves into kunai, doesn't make our jobs any less dangerous. Just because you say so, doesn't make it true."

Unlike Genma, Sumire never said a thing she'd ever regretted. She didn't have the time for it. "I'll be going now and leave you to your own dealings. Maybe when you get some sense into your head, you'll both be more receptive to debriefing, and less receptive to licking your own wounds." Her fingers gripped her notepad so hard her thin fingers turned white. "Have a nice day, gentlemen." The last word she filled with as much ire as she felt, and multiplied by ten. They deserved it.

She swept out of the door and closed it behind her.

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Raidou stopped clenching his teeth, it was either that or crack a molar. Gods and hellfire, the woman didn't listen. He'd explained. He'd damn well ranted an explanation at her stupid pretty head and it had been about as effective as slapping a water jutsu against a mountain. A puddle jutsu, even. She didn't listen. He worked his jaw, took a deep, hard breath through his nose, and resisted the urge to get up and break something.

Why did you end up in a hospital on a B-Ranked Mission? Why are both your files stacked with cases just like this?

"Because it was an A-Rank." He wanted the manacles back, just so he had something to fight with. He wanted to stand up and shatter something. He wanted to go to the gym and beat his own fists bloody until the anger drained away. He wanted Sumire to come back so he could bellow at her properly. He wanted anything but to be in this fucking bed with a fucking sword wound from a fucking B-Rank that had been a fucking A-Rank.

The IV stand shivered and jerked as Raidou pulled his good arm close, shoulders hunching, chin ducking down as he fought to get control of himself. He was going stir-crazy in this hospital. Tethered to machines that monitored everything, watched by nurses who missed nothing. Burning up with stupid fever and godawful pain from the B-Rank that was an A-Rank that was a damn stupid clusterfuck.

He just wanted to be okay, get the hell out, go see his brothers, and go home. Fucking Intel.

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Genma was just as incensed. Just as filled with iron-tension and a need to get up and fucking break something, preferably that damnable clipboard of Sumire's over her hard little head. "Of course it was a fucking A-rank," Genma said, still snarling with temper. "And it's not like we think the Intel field guys have it easy, but the fucking analysts... He spat the word out as if it were the lowest of epithets. "They could fucking well get it right, we wouldn't be here with our asses in a god damned sling."

He was in no mood to simply sit. Even though he knew he was preaching to the converted in Raidou. Maybe because he was preaching to the converted, and knew he could count on Raidou's agreement, he swung his bare legs out of the bed, stumbled and swore violently when standing disagreed with his hip, now grown pathetically stiff and painful after two days of bed rest, yanked the IV line to make sure he had slack, and paced. Back and forth, back and forth, wearing a path in the tile between his and Raidou's beds, with the back flap of the hospital top trailing him like a nervous auntie.

"Where the hell does she get off with that kind of attitude? And she's full of fucking crap about our mission records. Full of it! We have a better mission success rate than just about any other pair of hunters in the whole operation." He swung around, stumbled and swore again, and grabbed Raidou's bed rail to keep from falling. When he finally stopped, he realized he was shaking. "Fucking, goddamned poison!"

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Genma might have been able to count on Raidou's agreement for their joint moment of black outrage, but the latter was definitely not going to condone the former when he paced himself into another few days spent stuck in a hospital bed. He cracked his jaw, releasing a shiver of tension, and hissed out a long breath through his teeth before leaning over and catching his friend by the shoulder. Raidou was not in the best shape ever currently, but he was more then capable of judging Genma's centre of balance and pulling him off it. A careful tug keeled him over onto Raidou's bed, and the hand on the shoulder kept him there.

"I agree," he said, forestalling a protest, "I absolutely agree with every point you want to carve onto the wall, but do it without landing yourself back into a damn coma or something, would you?"

They hadn't dragged themselves through fire and blood and fucking sand just for Genma to crash himself out again when they were healing.

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Genma sat down with a hiss and a glare at Raidou, toppled backwards off his feet in mid-pace. It had been a deft move on his partner's part, taking advantage of Genma's motion and his relative instability. He'd been just transferring his weight fully to his injured leg, been at his least steady, when Raidou had grabbed and pulled him. Grabbed him by the left shoulder so the pressure on the weak hip had been maximized. Of course Genma had nearly collapsed onto Raidou. Damn taijutsu genius.

"I'm allowed to get up and walk," Genma growled, letting his irritation with Sumire turn into a general crossness. "That nurse was even badgering me to get up and walk more." The part where that had been a measured walk with a nurse, and a quick ride in a wheelchair back to bed if the shaking or lightheadedness came back wasn't as crystal clear in Genma's mind as the idea of walking had been. "How am I supposed to build up back to mission fitness if I still get the fucking shakes every time I turn around?"

Raidou's hand on his shoulder got him sitting. His own weakness kept him there. It pissed him off at least as much as Sumire had.

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"Stop turning around?" Raidou suggested, restraining the urge to point out he had his own concerns about mission fitness and they both just needed to train past them. Same as always. Genma was frustrated, he was frustrated, there was no damn point sparking off each other along with everyone else. Raidou took his hand back, letting it drop into his lap. His head was aching again. His bones were starting to tighten. His joints hurt, skin felt too hot, shoulder ached. The bed wasn't his and he wanted to go home.

Fucking fever.

Raidou blinked hard and focused on his disgruntled friend. "It'll get better," he said finally. "Always does, right?"

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"Yeah," Genma said a little doubtfully. "Yeah it gets better." He sighed heavily and pushed his hair back out of his eyes, turning a little to face Raidou, but that put all his weight on his injured hip, which it immediately protested. "Fuck. Can't I even just sit here and talk to you?" He sighed, suddenly more discouraged than angry, yanked on the IV line again to see if there was any more give to it, sighed when there wasn't and got up to get the rolling stand and pull it closer. By the time he'd retrieved it and walked all the way around the foot of Raidou's bed to sit on the other side, leaning on his good hip this time, he was more than ready to sit down.

"Rai," he said, and looked his partner right in the eye. "I might have fucked up on this. Like she said. I... No, I did fuck up. And it cost you. And I'm sorry." By the time he finished speaking, Genma couldn't look Raidou in the eye anymore. He stared instead at the wrinkled, many-times-bleached blanket tucked up around Raidou's legs. It was pilled a little, with a stray thread loose and waving like a target. Genma didn't reach for it, though. He just sucked his lips in against his teeth and sighed

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Raidou stared at Genma and reflected, not for the first time, that his friend was mildly certifiable. He twisted, pushing himself up and back until he was better braced against the flat hospital pillows, and jabbed Genma hard in the shoulder with his good hand. "She was wrong," he said firmly, catching Genma's eyes when he looked up. Holding them with his own. Genma looked tired. Raidou knew he did, too. They didn't need to deal with this shit when they should be healing.

"You think I'd run with a fuck-up?" he snorted, putting every ounce of derision into the noise he was capable of. "Give me some damn credit. I think I've earned it by this point." If Genma started blaming himself Raidou was going to track down Sumire and fillet her with her own stilleto. He spoke firmly, low and heated, letting conviction work for him in the place of pretty words. Raidou wasn't a poet, but he damn well believed what he was talking about. "I got nailed in the shoulder because I didn't dodge quick enough. I got concussed because I let myself be distracted. And I got sick because we don't have fucking antibiotics in the med-kits. The only reason we got back alive is because you healed me, your summon tracked the wife down, and you held on long enough to not die from poison while I played fucking shuriken tag on the roof."

He was going to have nightmares about being half a second later. He knew it.

Raidou changed his jab to a hold, letting his fingers curl over Genma's shoulder and squeeze for a moment. "So stop talking crap before I smack you with your IV stand."

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It was what Genma needed to hear. What he wanted to believe. The passion in Raidou's voice, on his fevered face, was certainly convincing. And it was true, at least the first bit of Raidou's litany. No shinobi was perfect; even the Hokage--perhaps especially the Hokage--had scars from blows not dodged, moments of distraction, moments of weakness. Raidou had taken those blows because he hadn't dodged them. The same could be said for the claw-shaped marks gouged out of Genma's hip.

And it was true that Genma'd done his damnedest to keep that concussion from becoming something more. From becoming the sort of nightmare head injury any shinobi with as many years as Genma and Raidou had in the field had seen more than once--blood and spinal fluid leaking from ears and nose, consciousness dimming, personality fading--watching your buddy die long before his heart got the clue that it was time to stop beating. He'd worked hard on that, on keeping them together, on reconnaissance and planning, on taking down the threat and retrieving the damned wife.

It wasn't enough.

"I shouldn't have ever been poisoned, Raidou," Genma said, voice bitter with regret. "There was a trap in that fucking stairwell. What kind of incompetent fucking ninja lays a lethal trap where their own client is more likely to trip it then an intruder? But it was there. I took those poisoned needles when I set off a trap in that god damned fucking secret staircase, because I got complacent. I figured there was no way there'd be a trap there. No way." His fingers knotted into the blanket, tearing at it, savage with his frustration, shaking with the residual effect of the very poison he was talking about.

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Raidou considered that. "Yeah, okay, you're a moron."

He was starting to get pretty good at reading Genma's expression. That one ranked somewhere between surprised and hurt. Raidou leaned in, ignoring the internal shriek as his shoulder protested, and looked his friend square in the eyes. "You made one mistake on something you never expected to be an issue. Congratulations, you're human."

Raidou was tired. He was hurting and exhausted and very damn unhappy to still be in hospital after two days. He wanted exactly three things in the whole wide world right now and they weren't big things. He wanted to get the hell home, he wanted to see his small family, and he wanted Genma to stop ripping himself up over something that that was not his fault.

Well fuck if he wasn't going to get one out of three.

"How's this for another view? Let's say you didn't set off that trap. You stayed down in the little lord's bedroom like I suggested and fought your ninja there. The wife woke up and buggered off to who knows where, and I set the damn thing off coming down the stairs because I sure as hell wouldn't have been expecting it." He glared at Genma, eyes bright with fever. Trying to make him see. "I definitely don't have your immunities, so stop kicking yourself for saving my damn life, you idiot."

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The effect of Raidou's words was immediate and powerful. Genma was, like most ninja of his caliber, good at visualizing a scenario. He did it all the time, unconsciously, automatically. It was how you predicted an opponent's moves. How you plotted a path through a crowd that left you invisible, undiscovered. How you kept track of two teammates and eight enemy and your client all at once, and how you planned for every possible future from moment to moment. You visualized everything in cinematic detail without any effort at all.

What Genma visualized now was himself, covered in gore, fighting ninja in the lord's bedchamber. And Raidou dead on those stairs less than three minutes after tripping that trap. Three minutes... maybe five, if Raidou was really lucky. Five minutes at the outmost and he'd have been nearly dead, choking on bile and shuddering with convulsions, with a bitter froth on his blue lips and agony in his brown eyes.

Genma could see himself as if it were a movie and he were a camera in the sky, watching himself run to Raidou, watching himself administer antidotes too weak and too late to help. Watching himself slit his best friend's throat with a kunai rather than let him suffer.

He paled. Choked. Eyes wide and locked on Raidou's. Teeth bared in an unconscious face of revulsion as he sucked in a breath sharp as that imaginary blade.

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That hadn't been quite the reaction Raidou wanted. He gave Genma a confused look that shifted quickly into dismay when his friend turned white and made a noise deep in his throat. When he stared at Raidou as if he'd tacked up mug shots of his own corpse. He looked like he'd just taken a low blow in the stomach.

At least he'd taken the point.

Hopefully.

Raidou put his hand on Genma's shoulder again and gave him a little shake, fingers slightly clumsy in the thin cloth of his hospital shirt. "Hey, lover boy, I appreciate the concern, but remember how I'm not dead?" He smiled faintly, lines bracketing one side his mouth as it quirked higher on the right. "See me sitting here all breathing and everything? It's a thing I do when I'm not dead."

Raidou wasn't thinking about himself being dead. If you let yourself slip that way you'd never put the armour back on.

"Anyway, I can't be dead. We still have a hot springs thing to do, remember?"

Stop looking at me like that, Shiranui.

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"Y-yeah," Genma stuttered, voice breathy and shocked-sounding. "Yeah, hot springs. We definitely have to do that. Soon as you're better and I'm better, we're blowing this popsicle stand and going to someplace nice. The onsen in Toyagawa, maybe. With the sushi." He gained color and strength as he spoke. Raidou was right there, alive and recovering. The image was nothing more than a bastardized flashback to something that had never happened. That Genma would never let happen.

Just a product of too much worry, deep-seated paranoia that only a veteran ANBU could have honed to such a perfect killing point, and too much pain and illness of late. It would pass. They'd sleep, they'd recover. They'd take their trip to the onsen and then they'd come back, and train and spar and take another mission, and the next one would be another good one.

"Rai, from now on our missions have to run like that one to Iwasato last month. Where everything goes perfectly and we get laid at the end of it."

Raidou looked worn, still worried. Genma was sorry he'd put that look on his friend's face, underneath that crooked smile.

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Raidou huffed a dry laugh. "Where you got laid you mean. As I recall my date for the evening was a bottle of fairly decent souchuu and a darts companion twice my age. Who was male." He thought for a moment, "Actually, the souchuu was kind of pretty..."

Genma was picking up some of his normal colour again, his mouth twisting back out of that ugly grimace into something a lot closer to the lazy curve it occupied when he wasn't smiling. He still seemed a bit tense, but he didn't look like he was watching some internal horror show anymore. Raidou let go of his shoulder and pulled his hand back, scowling when the IV tugged. He was going to dance a damn jig when he could finally get shot of the thing.

"Alright, oh fearless, if that's your plan, then it gets my vote." He settled back a bit, turning slightly sideways to ease up on his shoulder. "Both of them actually. S'been a long while since I've seen the inside of a decent hot spring.”

At least a few years. Raidou couldn’t really remember. It’d probably been back before he’d graduated. Maybe some time with his mother, before she'd gotten remarried.

“Medic's said I'd probably be outa here in a day or two, so you just need to get your walking up to speed before then." Raidou's smile flickered over his face again. "'cos there's no way in hell I'm carrying you back on this shoulder, lover boy. Not even for pretty souchuu."

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"Did you carry me any on this mission? I don't think you did," Genma said, finding himself comfortably back on ground he knew well. Bantering with Raidou. Smiling with Raidou. Laughing with Raidou. He reached out and patted Raidou's arm, tugging the IV line a little, resettling it so it wasn't so strained. "Quit yanking on that or you're just gonna get it all infiltrated," he said. When Raidou gave Genma's own arm a pointed look, Genma bobbed his head a little sheepishly and rubbed his arm where the needle entered and the tape pulled.

"Fine, fine, I know, medic treat yourself first, right? I took off my medic hat the fucking second the real white coats showed up. I'm just a stupid-ass shinobi patient who won't follow instructions cause he thinks he knows better than the medics now, just like you."

Raidou still looked ill. It was worrying, even though Genma swore he was done being medic for the moment. "Tell you what, I'll go back to my bed and let you sleep. I bet they kick me home before you anyway." Actually it was an interesting race: could they get Raidou's infection cured before they managed to purge the last of the poison, the wrong antitoxin, and the effects of both from Genma's body? Genma shut his eyes a moment, and realized bed actually sounded perfectly reasonable. "You good with that, Rai?"

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"Yeah, yeah, mother medic. If you need to sleep, you can just say so, y'know," Raidou teased as he brought his knee up, ignoring the burn of slowly fading bruises to nudge Genma on his unwounded hip. "Really I'm fine. I'm sure I'll survive with you all the way over there."

They both needed sleep. If only to pass the excruciatingly long hours spent in hospital beds. Raidou could feel the drowsiness sweeping through him already, payment for his loss of temper and the effort of sitting upright. It was frankly pathetic how hard it was to sit upright. He was going to be putting in some long training hours soon.

Still, maybe he'd get lucky and his fever would break while he crashed. It'd be nice to wake up and feel decent for about the first time in a week.

"And you won't catch me pissing off the medics again," Raidou added, tone colouring to wry. "I've had enough of damn manacles for one visit. They didn't even offer me a safeword or anything."

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In a single word all the fatigue left Genma. In an instant. He'd been pushing himself up to stand, grabbing his IV pole for support, when Raidou completely derailed his train of thought and possible every train of thought he might have been planning to have for at least the next half hour. He stopped, half on his feet, leaning on an outstretched arm pressed to the mattress, and looked up at Raidou through a fall of brown hair that badly needed washing.

Stared at him, incredulity written all over his pale face.

"You know what a safeword is?"

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Sometimes Genma was prone to moments of being just plain weird. Raidou paused mid-way to rolling more comfortably on his side, and blinked at his partner. Then he blinked again. It might've been the fever messing with his brain, or the fact that he'd been stuck in a bed for forty-eight hours with nothing to do but look at the ceiling and feel sore, but there was something about winning a look of blank shock from Genma that made Raidou feel just a little bit pleased with himself.

He kept a perfectly straight face. "Yeah. Don't you?"

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"I... thought I did," Genma said, attempting to recover his composure. How the fuck did Raidou--Raidou, the most plain vanilla man on the fucking planet--know what a safeword was? On the other hand, Genma thought, reflecting back on a career that had included all manner of seduction runs and the need to learn the concept of 'safeword' at the tender age of twelve, kink came in all kinds of packages, including repressed, uptight best friends.

The look though. Raidou's face might have been blank, but his eyes were dancing.

"Oh gods, Rai, don't tell me you were running the same kind of missions I was when you were twelve." He didn't think so. He was pretty sure not, in fact, especially because Raidou looked like he was laughing inside, not holding a sodomized inner-child in check.

"Maybe you'd better tell me, just so I know." There was at least as much mischief in Genma's tired eyes as in Raidou's. "What's a safeword?"

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Raidou seriously doubted he'd been running the same missions Genma had been at age twelve if they'd required a working knowledge of safewords. Even his current missions at age twenty-four didn't need that definition. Raidou's personal skills focus tended to lie much more in hitting people until they stopped hitting back. Or stepping in front of a hit for someone else. That he had been doing since age twelve and younger.

Safewords at twelve.

Raidou locked a scowl away. They both knew what the village could take, and they both gave it freely. Some days it just took more.

"Lover boy, if you don't know what a safeword is by this point, I'd hesitate to shock your virginal ears." Deserts were drier than Raidou's voice. "The nurses already had to drag you through two seizures. Three in a week is just overkill."

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"Whatever you say," Genma said, pulling himself upright again with a yawn and a groan. "But in case you ever need to know it, the one for you will be 'spicy curry.'" He grinned lazily at Raidou and made his way back to his own bed again, repositioning the IV pole and sitting on the side with another small pained sound. Looking at Raidou huddled up on his side, with his cheeks flushed and his shoulder bandaged kind of took the fun out of the moment, though.

"I um... You heard about the seizures?" Well obviously he had. Doctors and nurses had both been in to talk about it with Genma, and Genma had too much medical training of his own not to demand the details. Especially since it concerned a wrong antidote to a new poison. He'd been able to discuss it with the medics almost as if it weren't himself he were talking about. He'd tried to keep it low, have the discussions when Raidou appeared to be asleep. He should have known that was a no-go.

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'Spicy curry', Raidou reflected, was not a pair of words he tended to use even in polite company--having something of a pathological hatred for that particular foodstuff--let alone any other kind of company which meant it was the perfect safeword and he could stop thinking about it right now.

Yep. Definitely still fevered.

He focused on the real world just in time to catch the tail end of Genma's question and felt his heart sink a little bit. Of everything, Genma nearly dying under the medics hands--people they were supposed to trust, dammit--wasn't something he wanted to think about. Not until he could get up and do something and hit people about it, anyway. "Yeah, I heard." Raidou shifted, curling his good arm up underneath his head to ease his sore neck a little, wary of the IV. "Sounds like you had a fun time."

Nearly dying was always a hoot.

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"Yeah, well..." Genma trailed off. There was something very much not right in Raidou's tone now. Anger maybe and fear. His posture radiated tension and defense and something Genma couldn't quite read. Sadness, he thought. Raidou looks sad. He curled up on his bed himself, tugging sheets and blanked up, shifting stiff bandages and sore body as carefully as possible to get into a position that mirrored Raidou's, facing him.

"I don't really remember it. Mostly just a lot of yelling about breathing. And then I woke up later and yeah, that sucked cause I was in ICU then. You've been there, you know how much that place sucks. Plus I didn't know where you were, so..."

Sadness. Maybe it wasn't that Raidou was sad. Maybe it was that he was. There was always a risk of a post-mission let-down, especially one that had been as full of adrenaline as theirs had been. And spending a few days on your backside afterwards, at the mercy of other people's schedules, drugged and prodded and inspected, and left for long stretches in between to reflect on why you were there and not home or out enjoying a beer with your buddy, who was also there...

And there was Sumire. Sumire who had probably been, under her tiger-lady bluster, not so much angry as worried. Not so much thinking he'd fucked up as afraid he wasn't going to come back for either a lecture or prawn curry next time. She was his friend. She was practically a sister. And he'd probably just fucked things up with her in a way he'd never be able to undo.

Genma sighed, and the sound held all the heartbreak he'd never in a million years admit he carried around with him, in a hard little knot just under his diaphragm.

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Raidou knew that look. That was a look that never boded well. He knew that sound, too. But above all he knew Genma. If Raidou was going stir-crazy just from sitting, then Genma was probably going quietly insane. And turning on himself in the bargain. Genma didn't do well cooped up. He needed people--more people then a cranky, injured partner--and colour and light and sound and things to keep his agile mind occupied before he gnawed on himself just for something to do. He needed to be out of here, above anything. And Raidou had been too busy inside his own head to see it coming.

Some damn partner.

Raidou stretched his legs out under the blankets and shifted, tucking his arm under the pillow. Then he relaxed. Completely. Every muscle, every line on his face. Everything that screamed tension and pain and frustration. He started at his toes, then his ankles, then his calves. Up his legs, up his flanks. Belly, stomach, back, shoulders, arms, hands, neck... everything. He focused on each muscle group in turn and warmed his chakra up to make it easier. It was an odd sort of meditation, but it worked. When he was done he looked about as relaxed as a man with a fever and a sword wound could be.

Then he focused on Genma, letting a real smile give his face some better lines. Letting his chakra glow a low, slow pulse that was better then a radiator. More content then the sun. It worked for him, too. "After we get out of here, and after we do the warm springs thing, let's do something else." Cheer Genma up, what would cheer Genma up? What did he like best in the world? What did he probably miss the most?

Oh.

Yeah, that was easy.

"Let's go to that club. Might even dance if you're really lucky."

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Genma had seen that meditation before. It was one he used himself actually. Most shinobi had some chakra-restoring trance they could put themselves in one way or another. Genma's usually involved music and movement. But when he was too tired or injured to move, like now, then that quiet, self-induced hypnosis that Raidou was working was a good alternative. He watched Raidou relax, and could feel himself following the example almost unconsciously. It was so trained in, so carefully honed a skill...

Release the tension, let the blood stream clear out lactic acid from muscles and adrenaline from cells, breathe deeply so oxygen filled you with life. Feel the chakra presence of the living things around you--Raidou most of all, a chakra presence Genma would forever associate with safety and comfort, even at their worst moments.

Twenty minutes had passed, with Raidou attaining some level of serenity and Genma surfing his wave to get at least a little spillback of that serenity himself. When Raidou opened his eyes and smiled, the effect was like touching a live wire. Genma blinked, then slowly smiled back.

"Yeah? You'll go dancing with me? That'd be the best. You're the best, Rai."

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The only problem with relaxing yourself down until you found some real calm, is that an exhausted body would use the opportunity to snatch you into real sleep. Raidou breathed out a slow breath through his nose and realized his eyes were closed. He opened them again, turning his head into the pillow to get a little more comfortable. It wasn't his own bed, but it was a bed, and that was a lot better then some places he'd had to sleep.

And Genma was smiling again.

Score one, Namiashi.

"Yeah, I'm the best," he said, managing to attain his best deadpan voice purely because adding inflection was too much effort. "You're lucky to have me. Be grateful..." He didn't want to fall asleep yet, not when Genma wasn't quite okay. But he didn't have to go to sleep if he just closed his eyes. He could stay awake and talk and listen with his eyes closed. That worked, and it was less exhausting. Raidou turned his head a little more into the pillow and mumbled something that might have been, "Hmm... ve'y grateful..."

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