Some wake-ups were weirder than others. Raidou jerked upright before his brain had finished registering what his ears were telling him, and stared at the door.

Or where the door should be.

"Wsfzl?" he said blearily, and remembered he was in Genma's apartment. Same set-up, but reversed. He turned and eyed the woodwork with appropriate confusion. "Huh?"

At his side, Genma groaned something incoherent and rolled over. Raidou glanced down and caught a flickering hint of yellow-brown before Genma closed his eyes again. He mumbled something Raidou couldn't quite catch, and settled back into sleep. Still exhausted.

Raidou's internal clock gave him a kick. "Two days?" he rasped quietly, disbelieving, and looked around for Genma's clock. In the dim light, red numbers glowed softly from Genma's bedside table. Raidou stared at them for a moment. "...I hope that's not four in the morning," he said finally. "Because otherwise I may have to choke someone."

Genma's eyebrows twitched, but he didn't stir.

In the hallway, something banged noisily.

"'m up!" Raidou tried to get out of bed without landing on his face. His balance was definitely on the uncertain side. Every muscle felt like someone had ripped it out and played a giant game of elastic bands before stitching them back in. Probably upside down. He groaned faintly. "'m never running again."

He staggered to the door and tried not to fall through that, either. A bit of complicated coordination and he managed to rip the seal off and yank it open. The brightly lit hallway was almost blinding.

He squinted, swearing under his breath, and found the idiot making all the noise. "Rookie? Gods, what?"

Ryouma spun around, blinked, and blinked again. No one had answered Genma's door a moment ago, but Raidou was most certainly leaning against the open doorframe now. His eyes were narrowed and crusted with sleep, his hair tousled as if he'd just barely rolled out of bed. He wore his dogtags, a pair of silver rings, an old pair of plaid boxer shorts, a bandage over his scarred shoulder, and nothing else.

In the big rumpled bed behind him, Genma lay sprawled and equally shirtless, dirty bare feet twitching a little. A curl of the blanket over his hips and around one leg kept him--just barely--from total indecency.

Ryouma's lips pursed. His eyes danced. "Well," he breathed. "Guess you won't need that naked chick after all."

Insane rookie, Raidou amended, staring. He glanced down at himself, realized exactly how little he was wearing, and made a noise far too manly to be classed as a squeak. Both arms jerked up and folded themselves quickly over his chest, hiding dogtags and the one nipple his scar had destroyed.

Then his brain connected what, exactly, Ryouma was looking at: Genma. Behind him. Sprawled mostly naked over a bed.

Raidou slammed the door and flushed red up to his roots. "It's not--we're... he's..."

Argh, said a small internal voice, as important parts of his brain fused together.

He glared at Ryouma and struck out for sanity. "What the hell do you want?"

The slamming door did for Genma what the previous commotion had for Raidou: woke him up. He twisted around and sat up before he realized quite where he was or what he was doing. The blankets were snarled around him and the bed was empty. The last time he'd managed anything like consciousness Raidou had been there. In fact Raidou had gotten him up, to the toilet, back to bed, and gotten some pain pills and orange juice into them both, on the theory that blood sugar was a helpful thing to recovery and pain would impair it. And then Genma had passed out again with Raidou right next to him. It had been safe there in his own bed, with Raidou beside him.

But now Raidou was gone and the room was still ringing with the echoes of the slammed door. Which meant Raidou had to be the one who had slammed it, right? The bed next to him was still warm, and the pillow still dented where his friend had lain. So it had to be that Raidou had just slammed the door, which had to mean that something was wrong. Genma disentangled himself from the bedsheets and tried to get up, but he couldn't quite manage the muscular coordination necessary, and pitched into the wall. His nervous system managed to relay a few urgent messages like "stubbed toes!" and "wall is hard!" and "good gods, what kind of idiot are you? this leg is injured!"

He stumbled and limped across the room, trailing bedsheet, and yanked the door open, leaning heavily against the doorframe and peering around Raidou's back. "Rai? S'wha z'?"

As formidable as Raidou's glare was, some glee just couldn't be dimmed. Namiashi Raidou had been stammering, and he was still off-balance enough not to even notice the sheets of paper in Ryouma's hand. He was blushing. Ryouma would cheerfully have sold his soul for a camera.

Then it got even better, as Genma--swathed sarong-fashion in a bedsheet--reappeared, bleary-eyed and stubble-chinned. He leaned against the doorframe as if he'd rather not have been walking.

"Weren't you the one who was yammering at me about safe sex?" Ryouma inquired. He couldn't quite manage to wipe the grin off his face. "Geez, senpai, listen to yourselves sometimes..."

Raidou closed his eyes and, very slowly, counted backwards from ten. He skipped four. "You are so lucky I'm not armed right now," he said finally, when he could look at Ryouma's face without wanting to dent it. "Genma's my partner. Not--whatever you're thinking."

He needed to stop blushing right now.

Raidou dug his fingernails into his arms and focused. Genma standing to his right was making him itch--the man was still supposed to be sleeping. And definitely not walking on that leg. Raidou glanced right. "You can go back and crash. I'll deal with the visit from the idiot fairy."

"Mmnnh? Z'here? Time'zit?" Genma asked, trying to force his eyes to focus and his brain pull together meaning from his surroundings. Raidou was there, barring the door, and beyond him stood... Genma squinted and rubbed a sleeper out of his eye. Oh, the tall rookie. Ryouma, the idiot who OD'd on soldier pills and tried to bleed out and die of concussions. "Z'e hurt?"

He didn't look hurt. And Raidou didn't look happy. Genma yawned hugely, blinked several times, and took a step closer to Raidou, treading on a piece of paper in the process. He glanced down to see a blank mission report form. Right. Mission report. Then what Ryouma had said filtered through at last.

"W'er not having unsafe sex."

"Safe sex, then," Ryouma said brightly. "You're still limping. And you do know people use the word 'partner' for somethin' other than missions, right?"

Raidou's arms were still folded, but he looked as though at any moment he'd start swinging. Ryouma brandished the remaining mission report at him. "Some guy from Intel wants this by the end of the day." It was like baiting a caged tiger, but he couldn't help himself. "If you guys have time."

In Raidou's world, there were a lot of lines. Good and bad, right and wrong. Things you said. Things you took. And things you didn't.

Ryouma had just toed his way into the too far category of the latter.

Raidou smiled, took the papers, handed them carefully to Genma, and cracked Ryouma upside the head.

"You have this issue with words. Let me help."

Genma took the papers and was bending to pick up the ones on the floor when Raidou hit the rookie. He was standing back up when he woke up enough to get something resembling a clue as to why Raidou had done that. Oh that was rich. "Wait, wait. You think me an' Rai were screwing?" He laughed, wobbled a little and fell against Raidou's shoulder. "I can hardly even stand up, let alone get it up. Been knocked out cold the las'... what time is it? What day is it?"

Maybe Raidou wasn't wobbling as bad as Genma, but he wasn't really in the peak of condition, either. His open palm smacked against the side of Ryouma's head with little more force than a civilian punch. Ryouma didn't bother dodging. He was too busy choking on laughter.

"Saturday," he volunteered at last, when he finally caught his breath. "Think it's the nineteenth, or so. And, dude, if you were sleeping naked together and you weren't dancing the horizontal tango--which, sorry, but you expect me to believe that?--you've been wasting time."

He danced backward, out of range of another hit, and fired one last parting shot. "You got two or three hours till that report's due. If you work fast, you should have plenty of free time!"

Raidou weighed his chances of catching the rookie and administering a mild concussion. Or a major one. Ryouma looked fairly well rested. Of course, Raidou knew where he lived...

"Yeah, you better run," he muttered, and turned to Genma. "I vote we set his room on fire. The little bastard brought us paperwork."

And it was Saturday. His internal clock hadn't been lying. Raidou felt a scowl settle over his face, pulling at his scar. He'd promised to drop by and check on his brothers Friday night. They'd think he'd ended up in hospital. Or worse.

"Dammit," he sighed, and looked down at the mission forms in Genma's hands. "Can you even see straight enough to do this? Or do I need to send down a clone to ask for a few more days?" A thought occured to him. "What did you do with those eyes anyway? They'd better not be in the fridge..."

"I can see," Genma protested. "Might need to sit back down a little though. I don't think you should make a clone. If you're as chakra-wiped as I feel, it will probably put you in a coma if you try." He yawned again, and looked at the vast distance separating him from his bed. It seemed like several kilometers, at least, and when you took into account the detour that was going to be necessary to stop at the toilet, and a second detour to locate more orange juice in the fridge, it was really daunting.

Raidou's question about the eyes, too was disconcerting. "I... had them. In my pack. They're in some preserving stuff so they didn't have to be kept cold, but where's my gear?" An untidy pile of dirty ANBU blacks lay quietly stinking of stale sweat near the bed. A related pile of discarded armour for chest, arms and shins cluttered up the space in front of Genma's shrine. Two pairs of sturdy boots lay on their sides in the entry. Their swords, his and Raidou's, were resting neatly on top of a litter of magazines and bills on Genma's table, but their utility belts with associated pouches were not immediately visible.

Genma took a single halting step away from the door and stumbled again, knocking a small decorative scroll on the wall swaying. "Damn, he can't seriously have thought that we.. That I... I mean you and me..." This time the laughter was more of a giggle. "Not that I'd turn you down, but damn. I can't even take two steps in a row. Sorry if it's been a disappointment."

Raidou dragged a hand over his eyes, wiping away sleep, and quietly requested that the whole world stop being insane. "I'd be more complimented if I didn't happen to know that you don't turn anyone down," he told Genma, and gave his friend a nudge between the shoulderblades, steering him towards the bed. "Go sit down before you fall down. I'll see if I can dig up those eyes."

He took a step and replayed what he'd just said. "And if your gods are merciful gods, I'll never have to say that sentence again."

A quick search through the ANBU blacks revealed nothing but various evil-smelling stains. Raidou wrinkled his nose and dumped the lot in Genma's laundry hamper, slapping the wicker lid down without any real hope it would do anything about the stench. Then he turned his attention to the pile of blood-crusted armour.

Something in his orderly soul gave a twinge as he looked at the mess. He crouched unsteadily and sifted through the heavy ceramic plates, placing them neatly in two piles: his and Genma's. Somewhere near the floor he found an ungodly tangle of utility belts wrapped around hip pouches.

"Success," he muttered dryly, and picked both up. "Any booby-traps on yours I need to know about? I'd hate to lose a finger post-mission." He staggered to his feet and headed back to the bed. "Mostly because then we'd have to do more paperwork."

Genma yawned and staggered a little ways back into the room, letting Raidou direct his motion only as far as the door to the toilet. "Dude. Gotta piss," he muttered, and stepped inside. He leaned heavily against the wall, not bothering to close the door, and took care of business. At least he was awake enough to stand up and take aim, even if the wall had to help. He was pretty sure he remembered some point in the last forty-eight hours when he'd been so exhausted he'd had to sit down like a girl, with Raidou holding him in place. That was a real friend, for you, Genma thought, a guy who'd hold you up while you pissed.

Raidou was making noise with their armour, shifting it into piles. The heavy thock of armour plates in their fabric shells clanking against one another was a sound familiar to any ANBU. Comforting in its normalcy. Genma flushed, splashed water on his face and made a nominal effort at washing his hands, then limped back into his room, still trailing the bedsheet.

"I wouldn't turn you down in a different way from how I'd not turn someone else down," Genma said, and used the wall as a crutch on his way back to the bed. "And don't worry, my pouches aren't trapped, just the stuff inside. If you try to open my summoning scroll you'll get bitten by a super pissed-off rat. But you've got stuff out of my kits before."

Raidou raised one eyebrow as Genma crashed down next to him. "Did you miss the part in the academy where they tell you to be careful? Just because I've not been jutsu'd before doesn't mean I'm going to go riffling through your stuff without asking." He yawned, cracking his jaw, and thought about Genma's mixed logic over turning people down. "And I'm complimented," he added dryly. "Witness how complimented." He reached over to ruffle Genma's long hair with one broad hand. "But I'm going to have to pass. My heart's a fragile thing, y'know."

He dropped the belts and their pouches into his friend's sheeted lap and staggered once more to his feet. "Gonna follow your example. See if you can find those eyes?" He headed to tiny bathroom on aching legs, vaguely entertaining the vision of a hot shower as he did so. But that would have to wait. Paperwork always came first.

"No, see, I would never break your heart," Genma said, raising his voice so Raidou could hear him over the sparkling sound of liquid echoing off ceramic. He pushed a hand through his mussed hair, combing out greasy tangles, and shared Raidou's dreams about a shower. A hot shower would be really fabulous, but there was the matter of his leg, which ached fiercely under bloodied bandages. And the paperwork. End of the day? What kind of assholes did they have in Intel who wanted it by the end of the day, even if it was... Genma glanced at the clock again. Even if it was overdue by more than twenty-four hours.

Genma pulled open one pouch to find his medkit, setting that carefully on the bed beside him. He'd need that when he got around to dealing with that dog bite. He hoped Tsume was okay. She'd been off ever since they'd left that mine, insisting on staying in wolf shape even though that had to be a chakra drain she could ill-afford. If he weren't so damn tired now he'd send a clone to look for her. But the very idea of raising the chakra to create a clone made his stomach turn and his body ache. Chakra-drain was really a pain in the ass.

Another pouch yielded the box containing the eyes, seals intact. It was cool to the touch, almost cold. Thank gods whoever had designed the thing had planned for the need to keep the precious prizes chilled for days, maybe even weeks. There was time to write the report, get these things turned in, and maybe get some food. Not that food sounded even remotely appealing, but that was a side effect of having gone too long without eating.

"Rai. When you finish, think you can see if there's any more juice or anything in my fridge? And something besides rat bars. We should probably eat."

Raidou leaned his head against the wall as he washed his hands. His shoulder and hip followed suit. Out of sight of Genma, he let the tiles hold him up for a moment. "'course you'll break my heart," he muttered quietly. "That's why you can't have it."

Something a lot more honest in the back of his mind laughed at him. Raidou ignored it.

When he was done, he made his slightly more steady way back into the room, and eyed Genma. "You found the eyes?" A glance at his hands was enough to confirm that. Raidou sighed with relief. "Good. I'd've hated to explain that one. 'Yes, Intel, we killed the bad guy, got the relevant body parts, and dropped them on the way home...'" he snorted softly and padded bare-foot into Genma's tiny kitchen. The fridge skulked under a counter. Raidou gave it a cautious look.

"Just... for interest's sake, I'm not going to get attacked by something if I open that, right? Because I've only just recovered from the monstrosity you tried to grow last time." He crouched down anyway, and managed to retrieve a carton of juice that was still in-date, and something that looked like a sealed packet of noodles. They were probably safe, he judged. It took more than a week for noodles to go off. He grabbed chopsticks and headed back to the bed, dropping the lot next to Genma.

"You mind if I open a window?" he asked, before he sat down. "It's pretty ripe in here." Raidou's arms folded across his chest again. "And, uh, maybe borrow a shirt? I'd go home, but I'm feeling lazy and all your stuff's here." He crooked a vague grin that asked Genma not to dig deeper.

"I wasn't trying to grow that thing. If I'd been trying to grow it, I'd have put the leftover oden in one of the incubators in the lab, not in my fridge. It was just that we were on that mission and I forgot about it. Besides no-one told you to open that container, you did that all by yourself. If I'd been the one who found it, I'd have thrown it out without looking inside."

Genma took a long swallow of the juice, ignoring the noodles and utensils. Noodles were bland and easy things to eat. They'd probably be fine, but he figured he'd let his uneasy stomach get used to the idea of calories with the OJ first.

"You know where I keep my clothes. Help yourself," he said. Raidou complaining about the smell in the room was a little surprising, given he'd contributed at least half of it, and had been stewing in it long enough he probably couldn't smell it much anymore. Genma certainly couldn't. He sniffed at the air, then himself. There was the scent of sandalwood incense, and oranges. Steel and oil. Gunpowder and poison. And unwashed bodies and blood. On himself it was rather more unpleasant. Definitely a shower would be required in the near future.

Raidou wanting a shirt--that was less surprising. It was chilly, they were both nearly catastrophically low on chakra, and Raidou never liked to let Genma see his scar. Never let anyone see it, if he could help it. It was something Genma wished he had a better idea about. As close as he and Raidou were, he thought, it ought to be something Raidou could get past. At least with him.

"If you're gonna open the window, grab me a sweatshirt, too. I'm already kinda cold." He shivered, crossing his arms over his chest. The chill prickled over his skin, raising brown nipples into hard little knots.

"I don't even want to know what incubated oden would look like," Raidou muttered, heading for the window. "They could market it under 'the breakfast that breathed'." He undid the latch and pushed the window open, catching a breath of sweet fresh air as he did so. It swirled around him and laved a trail of goose-bumps over his skin.

"I know, I know. Shirts," he muttered, before Genma could protest again. He cast a glance at his shivering friend and amended that to thick shirts. He crossed the room to a chest of drawers opposite the bed and dug around carefully. After a quick search to find anything big enough to fit him, he turned up a faded pink hoodie with a laugh. The "an" character of ANBU was still emblazoned across the front.

"Y'know, you never did tell me why you owned something this big," he said with a crooked smile, and tugged it down over his head. The sleeves still hung past his fingertips. He twitched them back and tossed a dark blue sweater at Genma. "Catch."

"It's cozy," Genma said simply, and snugged the blue sweater on quickly. The cuffs were a little ragged from having been pulled one too many times, but he tugged them down again, as far over his hands as he could manage. Even with it he was still cold. He tucked one foot up under his leg, and would have sat cross-legged if his injured thigh hadn't screamed in protest when he attempted it. He frowned and shifted on the bed so that he could get his legs under the blankets without having to bend the left one over much.

"Also it looks good on anyone who wears it," he continued. "You look awesome in it. I look awesome in it. It's probably got a jutsu on it or something." Raidou actually looked somewhat adorable in the too-big, salmon-colored hoodie. Genma grinned at him.

"I got that on a mission when I was sixteen. And I was smaller then, so you can imagine it was pretty much a dress on me. I think I told you about it, actually. One in the winter where those guys died of frostbite? Well me and the guys who made it, we were messed up, too. Soaking wet and freezing. And these ANBU medics showed up out of nowhere. We had no idea we'd get backup from ANBU, right? So they stripped us down and warmed us up, and I'd broken my collarbone and they didn't want to make me lift my arm to get me dressed, so this Akimichi guy, Akimichi Ando, he pulls out this giant ANBU hoodie and gentle as you please, he puts it on me."

Genma looked up when Raidou settled himself back on the bed, raising the covers so his friend could put his bare legs under them in the warmth again, too. "Anyway, we all got carted off home and sent to the hospital for a few days, and when we got out I went to find the guy, only he was gone on another mission already. Didn't come back from it. I tried to give his shirt to his family, and they said to keep it. Said he'd sent them a letter telling them about some chuunin kid he'd saved with his pink shirt his sister liked to make fun of."

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Raidou blinked as Genma reached under his bed and retrieved a magazine. He took it, and the book, and gave them a cursory look-over. "Y'know, traditionally young single males tend to stash porn under their beds," he said finally. "Not ancient weapons guides and--" he flipped the book over to study the spine, "--doctrines on the manifestations of cobra venom." He blinked again. "I wasn't aware that could manifest."

He stacked both on his lap and dropped his paperwork on top, trying to summon up the energy to be awake. It was already a day late. Vague, misplaced guilt gnawed on his stomach. He hated it when things were late.

"I joined ANBU because the money was good and they needed people," he said absently. "And I should make coffee." He armed himself with a pen. "Or possibly amphetamines." He scowled at his paperwork and began. "Name. T-O-O...T-I-R-E-D...F-O-R...T-H-I-S...S-H-I-T..."

"I got coffee. Some of that stuff you liked from that mission down past Haradachou. You want me to make it?" He set the paperwork aside, partway through trying to describe in the most neutral terms possible Raidou and Kuromaru's little altercation on the trail. So far he had described the chase, the need to seek shelter for the night before the bad weather broke, and his own assessment that in order to pull the scent-intoxicated Inuzuka off the trail and get them to stop, he needed to get in Kuromaru's way. Now he was working on Raidou's attack of Kuromaru, the bite, the subsequent freak-out. Explaining it all in a way that didn't make it sound like a colossal series of fuck-ups was turning into quite a challenge, as the several blotted-out false starts on the page attested.

"Maybe I should just skip this part. It's not like it really makes a huge difference, right? I mean, that thing with Kuromaru, when you tried to stop him running over me and Tsume changed him and... you know." Genma hauled himself to his feet with the aid of the windowsill and dragged himself over to the kitchen. He located a little press-type coffee pot, a small paper sack labeled Raidou's good stuff from his freezer, poured coffee grounds from the sack into the press, and added hot water from his tea-heater.

He winced when he tried to crouch down to locate mugs, quickly giving up on the idea of flexing his thigh that much, and bending at the waist instead. His hands shook just slightly and he dropped one mug, which rolled to a rest at Raidou's feet. "Uh. Yeah. Definitely too tired for this shit. I'll bring the coffee over and then I'm sitting down, so you don't have to nag or anything." The distance between kitchen and bed doubled. "Also, we probably did a lot of soldier pills. Hangover from that makes you clumsy."

"Uh huh," said Raidou, giving his partner an unconvinced look. "Or--and this is just a guess--it could be the way you're staggering around on that injured leg. Have you even cleaned that since we got home, mother medic?" If Raidou'd been a better man, he would've gotten up to give his friend a hand. But two days worth of running crammed into seventeen hours--not to mention trying to keep pace with two bloody hellhounds--had left him with a new appreciation for sitting down.

He rubbed a calf muscle and kept a sharp eye on Genma, still prepared to get up if his partner did anything more foolish. Like faceplant with a hot cup of coffee.

"And don't cut anything out of the report," he added, as his brain circled back on the conversation and waved a red flag. "Firstly because I stand by whatever I did, good or bad, and secondly because if our reports don't match up with Tsume's, Arakaki'll eat your balls for kibble."

"When, exactly, were you thinking I was awake to clean it?" Genma asked. "Unless maybe I'm such a kick-ass medic that I can treat wounds in my sleep?" Which was a good point, he had to admit. As sore and stiff as his leg was, and as crusty as that bandage looked, it was probably looking just a little nasty under there. Definitely in need of cleaning. Might even explain the chill that had made him tremble and drop the mug, if it was starting to get septic. Which obviously it wasn't, because he had cleaned it, back on the trail. He was pretty sure.

He limped back over with the coffee press and another mug, handing the coffee to Raidou before easing himself back down onto the mattress. "Here. Coffee. And don't take any soldier pills for at least twenty-four more hours." As if somehow giving Raidou medical advice would distract him.

"You think Tsume's doing a report? I mean, she has to put one in, I guess, but it looks as bad for Kuromaru as for us, that thing with him and you." Genma didn't pick up the papers again. Instead he started to very carefully unwind the bandage from around his leg. It wasn't procrastinating one unpleasant task by doing another. Definitely not. It was just that Raidou was right and he needed to attend to the injury.