| [Feb. 9th, 2011|09:58 pm] |
“I’m fine, I’ll be fine,” Ginta said, knowing he was lying. Knowing that Pakkun, who would scent the lie, would accept it anyway, because there wasn’t a choice, Pakkun had made that clear.
Pakkun’s breath was hot against Ginta’s torn cheek. “Good,” the pug said, with an underlying threat of dire consequences should Ginta not be. Then he was gone, claws clicking over the broken tiles. The sound stopped as Pakkun turned back, sniffing one last time, and then the soft scraping as he pushed through the crevice in the rubble he’d discovered.
Ginta took a breath, shifted Kakashi’s weight, and reached up with a hesitant hand to touch his own face. It was slick and sticky with blood, and swollen, stinging. He felt gingerly along the edges of a raw laceration on his right cheek, shuddering at the grating of something that shouldn’t be moving under his touch. His nose was still pouring blood over his lip and down the back of his throat in a nauseating surge. He swallowed and tried to figure out how to pinch it shut without making it worse, giving up the effort after only a moment when it made him light headed.
“Baiji, you’re okay, right?” he asked into the darkness. A soft whuff of a reply came from the dog.
“Kakashi? Genius?”
There was no answer.
Ginta pulled Kakashi closer, pressing his bloody fingertips against the masked angle of Kakashi’s jaw to feel the pulse again. His arm around Kakashi’s chest lifted by the expansion of ribs with every breath.
Alive.
He reached up and pinched Kakashi’s earlobe hard, hoping for a twitch, a gasp, for any response at all. There was none.
“If you die here, Ryouma will kick your ass. I will too. And you don’t get to die just because you think he’s dead. Especially if you think he’s dead. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to fucking die right now.” Raspy words, broken and blocked through a fractured face, barely echoing in their tiny sepulcher.
The cold dark made the air heavy.
Baiji whined.
Ginta choked on a blood-clotted cough.
Kakashi didn’t do anything at all. |
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