Headache? Genma looked like his skull had caught fire. Kakashi had been bracing for the word 'stroke' to stutter out of his mouth, armed and ready to ruin the whole morning.

"Why is it," he said, deadlocked-calm, "that every time I bring back wild game, you have some kind of episode?"

"Guess I'm a city boy," Genma said, in a voice that guttered ragged in the back of his throat. His words didn't flow quite right, inflections changing at the wrong moment. Still pain-shocked, Kakashi hoped fervently, rather than brain-damaged...

His hand had moved from Genma's elbow to his shoulders somewhere in the last minute, supporting that solid-muscle weight. His other hand wrapped securely now around the back of Genma's neck, fingertips calling seeds of chakra. Not another medic jutsu--not another medic jutsu ever--but just enough blue-white energy to sink through Genma's skin and touch the abused chakra coils winding around the base his brain.

They still felt the same. Kakashi just had no idea if that was good.

Genma's muscles twitched with a rolling shiver; he shrugged Kakashi's hands off and stepped away, looking pale but steady. Kakashi watched him for a long moment, lone grey eye cataloguing every shift, every breath, and comparing them to his mental picture of a healthy-looking Genma. After a minute, Genma squared back his shoulders, blew out a thin stream of cold-clouded air, and gave Kakashi a Do you mind? look.

Maybe it had been just a headache.

"You are so weird," Kakashi told him finally, and returned to the fire to rescue his quail.