"Milk's in the fridge, but it's probably gone bad." Ryouma pulled a face. "I meant to get some today, but Kakashi dumped me with the rat, and...and people kept looking at me funny. I dunno if it was the rat or the crutches or what." They'd all been very careful not to ask questions, though he was certain they were hinting at all kinds of questions he couldn't quite hear. It was like being in a roomful of Inuzuka, except they kept expecting him to hearing with his nose, too, and drifted away disappointed when he couldn't.

He wondered what he'd pick up from Tsume, if he could. Kakashi said he could smell emotions. Could he pull out the reasons behind them, the connection between Tsume's too-wide smile and her nails scraping against the steel sink? Would he know how to deal with it if he did?

Given that Kakashi dealt with emotions just about as well as Ryouma dealt with his crutches, probably not.

He thumped sideways at last, allowing Tsume access to both coffeemaker and sugar jar, and then found himself with absolutely nowhere to go. If he collapsed on the floor, he'd probably never make it up again. Same problem with the bean-bag chair. The bed was the obvious choice, but this wasn't quite the hospital, anymore. Kakashi was hiding in his own room, and neither nurses nor random Inuzuka were likely to burst in within the next five minutes. The rat-dog was a poor substitute for Kuromaru.

At the moment, his bed looked a lot more like a cramped bedroll in a tiny tent than it did a hospital cot.

Well, they'd still made that tent work, hadn't they? He'd got an answer, and if things hadn't been quite the same after that, at least she hadn't bitten his nose--or anything else--off the next morning. She'd come here as a friend. She wouldn't pinch any of his stuff, and he wouldn't ask for what she couldn't give, and they'd drink their coffee and then--

She'd leave, and he'd spend the night watching TV with the light on.

"Lots of sugar," he told Tsume gruffly, and hobbled over to collapse on the bed. He threw his crutches against the opposite wall, and cracked a small grin when the rat jumped and glared at him.