Floaty was a good word, Ryouma decided. He floated down a maze of corridors again, blinking up at ceiling tiles. The wheeled hospital stretcher didn't dip or sway — much better than the litters they cobbled together in the field out of branches and oiled cloaks. He drifted along like a cloud, and almost protested when they tried to maneuver him off the gurney and into a bed.

His toes bumped the end of the bed, though, and Kakashi was right: they were still there. That distracted him long enough to be installed with clean sheets, an enormous ice pack for his knee, and reattached heart rate and chakra monitors. The IV tube had been disconnected in the surgery room, but the needle stayed in, taped down against his hand.

Kakashi stayed, too. The nurses gave him a chair, pulled a curtain closed around the little cubicle, and told Ryouma to stay put until someone came back to get him.

"We're supposed to sneak out of hospitals," he told them. "It's tradition."

The nurse laughed, patted his hand, and told Kakashi, "Keep an eye on him."

Kakashi waited till she was gone, then shifted to raise an eyebrow at Ryouma. "Why is that people think you're charming when you're insane, but I'm dangerous?"

"'Cause I'm hot and you wear a scary mask," Ryouma told him. "Should try taking the mask off if you wanna be charming. An' nobody would recognize you so you'd still be secret."

"And lose my air of mystery?" Kakashi said, but he still sounded amused. He leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on the edge of Ryouma's bed. "I'll consider your advice when you're less stoned. And also when it makes human logic sense."

"I guess people would still recognize your hair," Ryouma agreed sadly. He tried to scratch his nose, almost missed, and squinted cross-eyed at his hand. "Were you this fuzzy in the head? Hah. Fuzzy." Too bad Katsuko wasn't here to high-five him.

"Ha ha," Kakashi drawled. "You mean, was I out of it when I let you braid my hair and play Twenty Questions? Drugs were a definite factor, yes."

"Katsuko braided your hair," Ryouma clarified, just in case vengeance was forthcoming. He thought for a moment. "And it was pigtails."

"Because that's the part to focus on," Kakashi said. He folded his arms across his chest. "We could play Twenty Questions now, except that I actually have morals."

Ryouma frowned at him. "That some kinda mushroom?"

"Ueno is the worst influence," Kakashi said dryly. "Tell me another story."

"You won't even laugh," Ryouma complained. He sank down a little deeper into the papery-cased hospital pillows. "No good usin' up a story on someone who won't laugh…"

And he wasn't going to tell the other kind of story. Not with his eyelids weighted heavy and his brain misty as a cloud, words stumbling freely over his tongue. He blinked. "Dunno how you make it easy to talk to. 'Cause you're not. You shove me off balance an' then you just listen, an' I end up telling things I never told anybody. Like— like conservation judo. Conversation." He said that twice more, just to make sure he got it right.

Kakashi was still listening, damn him.

"An' you never tell anything back! Except the appendicitis. I guess that counts. Unless that was like the startin' feint — pretendin' to leave an opening…"

Kakashi was still silent. Maybe he'd stopped listening. Maybe he'd fallen asleep. He'd angled his chair so that he could see the gap in the curtains that closed off the rest of the ward, which left Ryouma on his blind side unless Kakashi turned his head. Ryouma blinked hard, but the dark mask and the slanting hitai'ate revealed no more than they ever had.

Then Kakashi said, "What do you want to know?"