"Not gonna pitch over," Ryouma muttered. His tongue felt oddly thick; the words seemed to be coming out sideways. Had someone broken the water heater? Probably the same prankster who'd hidden his belt buckle...

"I think," he said, very carefully and clearly, "I'm going into shock."

He couldn't have bled that much; aside from the knot at the back of his head and the gashes his shattering mask had ripped into forehead and cheeks and lips, his worst injury was only the angling slice under his arm. And sure, head wounds bled a lot--and these had certainly done so--but he'd taken a blood pill along with the painkillers and the soldier pill this morning, so it was just stupid to crash now.

Of course, he was also concussed, and coming off the soldier pill- and adrenaline-high that had gotten him home. If he were going to crash, now would be a decent time to do it. But he wasn't. So.

He found his belt-buckle at last, and fumbled at it with one hand while the other traced around to the pouches on the back. Neither hand was really up to much manual dexterity at the moment, but found something--not the med-kit--at the moment he finally sprang the catch and his belt fell off his hips.

It was a very small bar of biodegradable soap.

Ryouma stared at it and waited for his brain to catch up.

"Huh," he said at last. "That's helpful."

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Kakashi took it all back. Ryouma was a rookie moron.

"Very helpful," he agreed, and wished he were capable of snapping his fingers in front of Ryouma's face. "Can we focus on the issue of you bleeding half to death in the showers? From your face." Anger was a wonderful thing, it kept you sharp and awake and alive when nothing else would. Kakashi took the burning-ice feeling the filled up his chest and stabbed himself with it, tearing away from the shreds of exhaustion that wanted him to lie down and fall asleep in warm water.

He knelt and caught Ryouma's belt with his right hand, ignoring the renewed shrill from nerve endings that wanted him to pay attention to the very unimportant fact that his palm was charred. He staggered upright again and shoved the belt at Ryouma's hand--his own left wasn't up to working, and he couldn't hold the belt and look for things at the same time. The fact that he was wearing his own belt didn't occur to Kakashi. "Take a blood pill and some painkillers. Then you are going to see a medic."

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Ryouma's fingers closed around the belt reflexively, calluses slipping and snagging on the wet leather. He blinked down at it, gritted his teeth, reached after coherence, and dragged it up by the scruff of its neck. "Blood pills'll do." He was mostly done bleeding now, anyway. It had to be just the drop in adrenaline, his body's decision that he was home and safe and it could therefore shut down, that had tipped him over the edge. Damn, he was cold.

It took him two dropped rolls of bandages and a tube of antiseptic, but he finally wrestled his medkit out, popped the cap off the little vial of blood pills, and promptly dropped two of the remaining three on the floor as well. They dissolved instantly in spiraling crimson curls. "Kinda pretty, really," Ryouma told the floor. "Nicer than when it's our blood." And there he went babbling again...

He tipped his head back and rolled the last pill from vial to tongue, without bothering with traitorous fingers on the way. The rich coppery tang blossomed as he bit down, thick and warm and faintly sweet, as if he were choking on a mouthful of his own clotted blood. Not a pleasant memory.

Swallowing didn't help the taste. He spat, hit his own foot, closed his eyes, and tried to convince himself that dying really would be a bad idea.

For one thing, Kakashi would never let him forget it.

"Medic won't do much for a concussion," he said at last. His eyelids didn't seem to want to open. "Ream me out an' tell me to sleep it off. Sugar for the shock. Got blood already. Gettin' warm would be nice..."

But his body could handle that on its own, once it had the oxygen and the fluids it needed to recover from its trauma. His face was more troubling. "'m I gonna need stitches? Gonna scar?"

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Definitely concussed. Either that or his latent insanity was blooming. Kakashi sighed very softly and conceded that Ryouma did have a point about medics. If his skull wasn't cracked. If he wasn't bleeding into his brain. If he wasn't bleeding into his stupid chest cavity from the hit he'd taken that Kakashi should've blocked--

Enough, stupid dog. Focus on the now.

Sometimes Kakashi's inner voice sounded a little like Pakkun. He didn't have the energy to be amused at that. Instead he lifted his right hand again, forcing the fingers to move, and caught Ryouma's chin, pulling it down a bit. Waited until Ryouma's eyes flickered open again and tried to gauge his pupils.

The rookie had black irises.

Nothing was ever easy.

Kakashi locked his jaw, steeled himself, let go of Ryouma's chin, and called on his chakra, bringing a blue-white spark to his fingertips. It lit up the water thundering down on them in weird ways, flickering through warm-clear with a ghostly glow that changed the shadows on Ryouma's face. Deadened his skin and made the blood look black. Kakashi held his hand a little higher and realize his glove had burned through and stuck to the blistered open wound on his palm. He ignored that and focused past it on Ryouma's eyes, relieved when the light turned his irises dark grey and showed a normal pupil constriction.

Kakashi let the light fade and dropped his hand, feeling his chakra flicker and lurch. It was too low, he needed to take a soldier pill soon. He needed to get his teammate dealt with. He needed to stop falling asleep on his stupid feet. Kakashi slapped his left hand against the wall and let the pain jerk him back awake.

Two options. Fight with Ryouma, drag him down to the medics, and hope he didn't turn violent on the way like so many ANBU did. Or push him to his room and let him sleep it off. Kakashi's visible eye flicked up, studying the gash that started at Ryouma's hairline and dragged across his forehead to end just above his left eyebrow. It was deep but clean-edged, bleeding freely. He could probably stitch that if he had to. Bandage it at least.

Kakashi sighed again. "Yeah, big scar," he said, deadpan. "Get clean, then we can go to your room and do something about it."

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"Scars're cool," Ryouma tried to console himself. He had more than enough already, and somehow his fingers couldn't help slipping over the smooth ridge of one that ran from the bottom of his ribcage to burrow under his waistband, stretching nearly to the opposite hipbone. The only memento he had of the time he'd probably come closest to dying, and a constant reminder that he'd survived instead.

He would've been happy to continue surviving without more of those reminders.

"You're gonna have some good ones, too," he said, forcibly refocusing his drifting attention. His belt had ended up coiled around his feet somehow, though apparently he'd managed to close the pouch before he dropped it. The tiny bar of soap was still in his hand, and he could still taste blood in his mouth. Slowly, carefully, he peeled the wrapper off the soap and lathered up. It wasn't much more than a cursory wash, a half-hearted attempt to scrub away the worst of the caked mud and dried blood. The back of his head seared with pain when he touched it; he hissed softly and jerked his hands away through his matted hair. Real washing could happen later.

Apparently Kakashi thought the same. He'd made no effort to find his own soap; he was leaning against the wall again, head tipped back to the water, hands hanging loose at his sides. The spattered blood was gone from his silver-grey hair, but pink water dripped steadily from his left hand, and his right curled loosely around itself without closing. Ryouma blinked, remembered blue-white chakra flickering at the fingertips of a hand so blistered and burned they'd probably have to cut the glove off...

"You idiot," he said. "How far're you gonna push yourself before you ruin those hands?"

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