[Pulling a small utility knife out of his pocket, he starts to cut through Ken’s pants- that’ll be easier to do than figuring out how to get them off normally. When he sees the extent of the damage from bruises to blood, a grimace actually spasms across his face violently. Considering that Chikusa keeps moving onto the next leg casually… It’s highly likely that he hasn’t even realized what he’s done.]
[Everything is getting distant again. His body moves, does its work, but Chikusa feels detached and away from the action. Like so many times, he welcomes the sensation. He doesn’t want to be near this… near the broken bones, the bloodied skin. He just wants to fix Ken and make things like they were again. Every trickle of blood and line of skin over the mismatched shape of Ken’s knee, he can make out in excruciating detail while simultaneously seeing the whole picture. It’s more than a little disorienting, but that’s fine. His mind is allowed to do that so long as his body does what it’s supposed to do.] [Someone’s speaking. Him? He thinks it’s him. This has happened before.]
If it’s not displaced, we could put you in a cast. No surgery.
[Ken has nothing to do while Chikusa is doing this. So what he does is watch Chikusa.
The level of scrutiny he puts Chikusa under, the way his eyes search his partner's face, would probably startle anyone who didn't know them. Some people probably wouldn't even consider Ken capable of paying that close attention to anything. But if Ken knows anything from living with Chikusa all his life, it's how Chikusa just seems to go away sometimes. Even when his body's still right there, doing things, Chikusa can be totally gone. It happens most often when things are really bad - Ken's certainly capable of recognizing patterns - and things are bad now. And Ken knows the signs.
He absolutely hates when Chikusa goes away. How it makes him feel alone, even when he's got Chikusa right there next to him. How it feels like Chikusa stops caring about things, about him, whenever it happens. But most of all, he hates how it scares him. He never knows when, or even if, Chikusa is coming back, and he doesn't know how to go get him from wherever he is.
So the spasm of Chikusa's features surprises him, and he hardly knows what to say about it - it wasn't what he was expecting, or looking for. But when he sees the way Chikusa's eyes go flat and dead, the way he knows so well, he knows exactly what that means. And he reaches out, injured wrists be damned, to grip Chikusa's own wrist.]
[Instantly, Ken’s touch makes Chikusa’s hand convulse and the knife drops from his hand. In the same moment, he’s twisting around to better face his partner and grabbing his hand to force it down again. His voice is quiet but sharp.]
[Ken flinches slightly at the voice, which reminds him that this is Authority and he's disobeyed it. Normally, he would've never disobeyed Chikusa - not when he talks like that - in the first place...but Chikusa going away in his head is something that always distresses him, that he's always responded to in the same way, and it's perhaps one of the only things that could override his obedience.
The look he gives Chikusa is unhappy and desperate. What is he supposed to do to keep Chikusa here if he can't even touch him? Touching him's always how he's called Chikusa back.] So don't leave, byon.
[But even Chikusa knows that's not what Ken means.]
[Averting his eyes to stare back down at the wounds, Chikusa brings a small case out of his pocket to get one of his more nonlethal needles, just a numbing agent.]
Ken... I have to take care of you. Don't hurt yourself more.
You were leaving, byon. [There's a faintly sullen tinge to the words, an 'I know what I saw' tone. He doesn't flinch when Chikusa takes out the needle; he trusts Chikusa implicitly, so whatever Chikusa has on the needle is meant to help him.
But it does, somehow, make him think of an animal being taken to a vet, which triggers a train of thought that Chikusa won't like. If only because of the question it prompts Ken to ask.]
...hey, Kakipi, what'll happen to me if I can't be fixed? [He doesn't seem terribly afraid or alarmed by the possibility, or by any answers to the question he can imagine; he just sounds thoughtful.]
[It’s a good thing Chikusa has already pierced one of Ken’s legs with the needle when he asks that question. His hand jerks at it and the firmness in his voice is strained.]
You will be fixed.
[He’s not hearing anything contrary to that. He won’t let himself believe that.]
"...does that mean it'd be bad?" That's all Ken can think, with a response like that. He's not the smartest at the best of times, and his brain's not exactly working up to par right now between pain and starvation - although at least with Chikusa's needles, some of the pain is fading. But Chikusa's evident alarm at the thought makes Ken feel like the answer to his question might be bad, and it doesn't occur to him that the very premise of the question might be the culprit instead.
"...I'm thirsty, byon." Somewhere in his talking, Ken suddenly became aware of his burning of his throat and the dryness of his tongue. He hasn't had nothing at all to drink since they started starving him, but it's been kept to a bare minimum on purpose.
There’s no answer. Chikusa’s lips merely thin, and he pulls out a scalpel stolen from the Corvi’s supplies before pausing at Ken’s words. Right… He’d almost forgotten, in the face of all of Ken’s injuries. Carefully, he sets the scalpel down. So much, too much… but this is important. He has to keep pushing.
“I’m going to have to go again to get something from up in the kitchen…” So that Ken knows. It’s the kind of thing that will only take a second, but Ken had panicked so much before.
"...okay." Ken agrees a little more readily this time, even if he doesn't look happy. But he does really want something to drink, and nothing bad happened last time aside from the fact that Chikusa wasn't there. And with some of the pain fading, some of the kneejerk fear has eased as well.
He senses something in Chikusa, though, with a sense outside the usual five. He knows his partner better than anyone, and he's seen Chikusa shut down and fall apart and everything in between. He can almost feel Chikusa pushing himself.
He'll get yelled at if he moves again, so he has to settle for simply looking at Chikusa. "...it's okay, Kakipi." The words are a little awkward; he's better at communicating this stuff, at reassuring Chikusa, non-verbally.
Chikusa is in the middle of getting up when Ken speaks up, and he pauses, just staring at him. It seems like he might not say anything at all before leaving, but, after a second- “No it’s not.”
And just like that, he shuffles away before an argument can be started up. He doesn’t want to deal with it.
As he goes up the stairs, he manages to observe some of the captured mafiosi starting to stir. Well, he should still have enough time before they snap out of it completely, and he can ignore them if they start up a fuss while he’s tending to Ken. For the time being, he focuses on getting to the kitchen and stepping over bodies as he gathers food and bottles of water. It only takes a few minutes- much faster than when he went to clear everything out- before he’s stepping back into the little medical room. “Don’t drink or eat too fast,” he warns, uncapping a bottle of water and holding it to Ken’s lips as he cradles his partner’s head to help.
Chikusa's advice falls on deaf ears, which isn't unusual - but, as it happens, Ken can't ignore the warning because it's Chikusa who's giving him the food and drink. Chikusa is setting the pace, so if he feels Ken is drinking too quickly - which Ken will, if he's allowed - he can just pull the water away.
He'll get whined at when he does, of course. But Chikusa must be used to that.
Chikusa isn’t at all surprised by this turn of events. Not even slightly. Still, being in control has its benefits, and he pulls the water away from Ken more than a few times to let his body have time to process it. Probably all too soon for Ken, he pulls the bottle away completely and sets it to the side.
"Now I'm hungry, byon," Ken complains as Chikusa takes away the water. His appetite had almost vanished over time, but somehow the water seems to have woken up his stomach and let it realize how empty it is. It growls almost as loudly as Ken himself ever has.
He's still thirsty, too, but hunger's overtaken any more desire for water now that his need for liquids is no longer critical.
“After I’m done.” Only so much can be done at any time, after all, and the sooner they get to his wounds the better. By now, the numbing agent has to have taken effect, so Chikusa takes a breath and starts to slice through damaged skin. So much care has to be taken around the joints, where the separation from skin and bone is so thin, and he’s almost not sure how he manages to go through with it so calmly. Because…
He’s still scared. Still terrified of what he’ll find, of discovering just how much Ken has been hurt.
There’s nothing but silence from him as he works, fighting back the terror by keeping his hands moving. What if he can’t even move his legs again- Slice, clean and simple, done a dozen times before. What if we need a surgeon- Pin the skin back, keep it out of the way, and he takes a deep breath as he goes to inspect the bone…
Fractured. Of course. But, as he stares at it, delicately inspecting the injury… It’s not displaced. His brain stutter-stops for a moment before he’s racing to think of the implications. That means no surgery, he thinks, which means all he has to do is stitch the skin back and keep the leg straight in a splint, or a cast, he’s done splints in the past-
There’s a strange feeling in his eyes, a kind of tug, but Chikusa is so detached from it, so unfamiliar with it, that he doesn’t even realize he’s started to cry as he quickly starts to stitch Ken back up. “I can fix this,” he rasps, so focused on his work that he’s oblivious to his voice’s own roughness or the tears slowly sliding down his cheeks.
Ken doesn't really feel much of anything, thanks to Chikusa's anesthetic. He's also not particularly bothered by Chikusa's cutting his legs open, even though he's conscious and bleeding and if he lifts his head he can watch.
They've been through worse. When it comes to most things, they've always been through worse.
Still, it's kind of weird to watch, not to mention boring. So he watches Chikusa instead...and when he sees those tears, he moves on instinct.
Chikusa hasn't cried since Mukuro saved them from Estraneo. Even when the Vindice caught Mukuro again, and Chikusa was as upset as Ken's ever seen him, his eyes had stayed dry. But Ken remembers him crying from when they were little. Chikusa would be dead silent, and then suddenly he'd be a shaking, crying mess with no warning. It had always scared and upset Ken, the way crying just exploded out of Chikusa for no reason - delayed reaction wasn't a thing Ken could understand very well even now, much less when he was a child - but he'd discovered that Chikusa calmed down easier whenever Ken curled up with him. Chikusa would cling to him and slowly wind down.
This...isn't like that at all. Never mind that it's been so long since Ken can remember Chikusa crying; he's never seen him cry like this, silently, like he doesn't even know the tears are there. Somehow that's even more unsettling, but Ken's response is the same as it always is whenever he senses Chikusa needs comfort - he reaches out. The fact that Chikusa is slicing into his legs, that Chikusa's got blades centimeters from veins that would kill Ken in minutes if they got cut...it doesn't occur to Ken to worry about them.
Chikusa is crying.
"Kakipi, why're you crying...?" He's never had to ask that before.
Except there’s something dripping onto the back of his hand, and Chikusa raises it up to stare uncomprehendingly at the drops along his skin. Good thing he does; his hands jerk as Ken reaches out to him. “Ken-” And there it is, a strangled sensation to his voice that even he can’t deny.
He… feels lost. And, for once, it’s a feeling that shows on his face as he looks back to Ken: brows drawn together, eyes and cheeks still wet, almost like the child he once was when they first looked out onto the carnage Mukuro had wrought and his outstretched hand an offering.
Chikusa tries again, stoic voice trembling. “Ken, I told you… You’re not supposed to move, I have to stitch up your leg, and set your leg, and your arms-” He takes a breath, shoulders shuddering, like that will do anything for how strange everything feels.
But Ken's not going to be deterred this time. He's seen Chikusa cry before, after all, no matter how rare it's been in recent memory, and it's always upset him. But it's also something he knows how to make better, at least to some degree.
So his open, bleeding legs, his broken bones, his aching shoulders and mangled wrists - they're shoved aside. Even Chikusa's enforced obedience is discarded. He lifts himself enough to dig his fingers into Chikusa's clothes - even without his channels, those nails are as good as claws - and jerks Chikusa to him, wrapping his arms around him and burying his nose against his partner's neck.
Honestly, there may be an element of comforting himself in this. But Chikusa crying is definitely the main focus, something he can't ignore or allow.
"Don't cry, stupid," he mutters, and it's exactly like they're kids again. There's even the same upset, choked up quality to Ken's voice that was so familiar back then, like Chikusa crying is enough to almost trigger him doing so, either in pain or sympathy. The words are similar, too - if not verbatim to what they told each other back then, it's still close enough. "I'm here, so don't cry."
Ken, if your legs just stay sliced open indefinitely without Chikusa stitching them shut, you won't be here much longer. But that's not the way Ken thinks, if Ken is thinking at all right now. It's reaction and instinct, blind and powerful and not concerned with common sense.
That is to say, he feels like a child again, knowing that he’s not, tentatively safe for a few seconds in the burning heat that Ken has almost always seemed to give off. All of it is just- too nostalgic.
His distress, the smell of coldness and blood in the air, Ken wrapped around him… And that gut wrenching need to never let go of his partner, to never be separated. It shake him to his core, always has, and he almost doesn’t let himself pull away.
But… He has to. Tears still staining his face and now Ken’s shirt, he pulls away with a slow but wet and ragged gasp. “Ken, you’re being an idiot, you’re going to bleed to death.”
"You can't fix me up if you're crying anyway, byon!" Ken contests hotly, even though he's feeling woozy already. Whether it's blood loss or exhaustion or starvation or pain or some hideous cocktail of them all, it doesn't really matter. He's not in a good state, and Chikusa will see he's pale. In fact, when Chikusa tears himself free, Ken falls back down with nothing to hold onto.
Ken's never cared about himself nearly as much as he's cared about the few people who mean anything to him. Seeing Chikusa's distress means that's all he can think about.
“I’ll fix you,” Chikusa mutters stubbornly, hastily moving into action. His quick hands have been one of his few blessings in life; he threads a needle through Ken’s skin to patch him back up together with well practiced speed. All the while, his mind is repeating in relief so potent that it’s a miracle he hasn’t fallen to his knees yet.
He can fix this. He can fix this.
Once that’s done, he sweeps an unsteady hand through Ken’s hair. It’s not a fond gesture he makes often, but everything about this situation has him feeling unlike himself. For a second, it felt as though he’d be alone for the first time in his life, that Ken might actually die, and that…
It only happens in a second before he pushes away, gathering the necessary supplies in the room so that he can make some splints for Ken’s wrists and leg. The other one he’s still not sure about yet, but it’s obvious that Ken isn’t in the condition for Chikusa to go poking about in it. That’s fine. “Just stay still through this, and I’ll get you food,” he promises his partner, starting with the leg first.
Ken leans into that touch weakly for a moment before Chikusa pulls his hand away, but with the blood loss and the pain and the exhaustion and the not-yet-abated starvation, even Ken's resilient body is giving out. By the time Chikusa finishes gathering supplies for the splints, Ken's barely conscious, eyelids fluttering a little at the promise of food.
It’s going to be okay. Chikusa repeats the words, over and over again, hastily working on splinting Ken’s limbs. It’s going to be okay. They’ve survived worse than this. They’ve survived hell, and a few other things besides. Ken will survive this.
When he’s finished up Ken’s arms, he doesn’t let himself stop. If he stops, even for a moment’s breath, Chikusa isn’t sure he’ll be able to start up again. That’s something he can’t do. So he cups Ken’s face again, tipping tiny drops of water into his mouth to see if that helps or at least wakes him up a little more.
Ken does stir a little, his throat working as the water touches his tongue. His eyes flicker open slightly. "K'kipi," he mutters, not particularly distinctly.
It's just as well he's out of it, honestly. He'd hate the splints. They feel like restraints, and only his dazed state and stillness stand between Ken tolerating them, and Ken trying to tear them off in a fit of kneejerk panicked rage.
“I’m still here, Ken.” Another few careful tips of water, making sure Ken doesn’t drink too much and throws it all up, before Chikusa sets the bottle to the side and starts to cut small slices of fruit. One small step at a time, and they’ll get through this. “Here- careful.” He presses a small chunk of banana to his mouth. Hopefully the squishiness means that there’ll be no problems even if he does just swallow the piece whole.
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badliifechoiice22016-01-08 10:36 am
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[Pulling a small utility knife out of his pocket, he starts to cut through Ken’s pants- that’ll be easier to do than figuring out how to get them off normally. When he sees the extent of the damage from bruises to blood, a grimace actually spasms across his face violently. Considering that Chikusa keeps moving onto the next leg casually… It’s highly likely that he hasn’t even realized what he’s done.]
[Everything is getting distant again. His body moves, does its work, but Chikusa feels detached and away from the action. Like so many times, he welcomes the sensation. He doesn’t want to be near this… near the broken bones, the bloodied skin. He just wants to fix Ken and make things like they were again. Every trickle of blood and line of skin over the mismatched shape of Ken’s knee, he can make out in excruciating detail while simultaneously seeing the whole picture. It’s more than a little disorienting, but that’s fine. His mind is allowed to do that so long as his body does what it’s supposed to do.]
[Someone’s speaking. Him? He thinks it’s him. This has happened before.]
If it’s not displaced, we could put you in a cast. No surgery.
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The level of scrutiny he puts Chikusa under, the way his eyes search his partner's face, would probably startle anyone who didn't know them. Some people probably wouldn't even consider Ken capable of paying that close attention to anything. But if Ken knows anything from living with Chikusa all his life, it's how Chikusa just seems to go away sometimes. Even when his body's still right there, doing things, Chikusa can be totally gone. It happens most often when things are really bad - Ken's certainly capable of recognizing patterns - and things are bad now. And Ken knows the signs.
He absolutely hates when Chikusa goes away. How it makes him feel alone, even when he's got Chikusa right there next to him. How it feels like Chikusa stops caring about things, about him, whenever it happens. But most of all, he hates how it scares him. He never knows when, or even if, Chikusa is coming back, and he doesn't know how to go get him from wherever he is.
So the spasm of Chikusa's features surprises him, and he hardly knows what to say about it - it wasn't what he was expecting, or looking for. But when he sees the way Chikusa's eyes go flat and dead, the way he knows so well, he knows exactly what that means. And he reaches out, injured wrists be damned, to grip Chikusa's own wrist.]
Kakipi.
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I told you not to do that.
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The look he gives Chikusa is unhappy and desperate. What is he supposed to do to keep Chikusa here if he can't even touch him? Touching him's always how he's called Chikusa back.] So don't leave, byon.
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[But even Chikusa knows that's not what Ken means.]
[Averting his eyes to stare back down at the wounds, Chikusa brings a small case out of his pocket to get one of his more nonlethal needles, just a numbing agent.]
Ken... I have to take care of you. Don't hurt yourself more.
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But it does, somehow, make him think of an animal being taken to a vet, which triggers a train of thought that Chikusa won't like. If only because of the question it prompts Ken to ask.]
...hey, Kakipi, what'll happen to me if I can't be fixed? [He doesn't seem terribly afraid or alarmed by the possibility, or by any answers to the question he can imagine; he just sounds thoughtful.]
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You will be fixed.
[He’s not hearing anything contrary to that. He won’t let himself believe that.]
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"...I'm thirsty, byon." Somewhere in his talking, Ken suddenly became aware of his burning of his throat and the dryness of his tongue. He hasn't had nothing at all to drink since they started starving him, but it's been kept to a bare minimum on purpose.
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“I’m going to have to go again to get something from up in the kitchen…” So that Ken knows. It’s the kind of thing that will only take a second, but Ken had panicked so much before.
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He senses something in Chikusa, though, with a sense outside the usual five. He knows his partner better than anyone, and he's seen Chikusa shut down and fall apart and everything in between. He can almost feel Chikusa pushing himself.
He'll get yelled at if he moves again, so he has to settle for simply looking at Chikusa. "...it's okay, Kakipi." The words are a little awkward; he's better at communicating this stuff, at reassuring Chikusa, non-verbally.
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And just like that, he shuffles away before an argument can be started up. He doesn’t want to deal with it.
As he goes up the stairs, he manages to observe some of the captured mafiosi starting to stir. Well, he should still have enough time before they snap out of it completely, and he can ignore them if they start up a fuss while he’s tending to Ken. For the time being, he focuses on getting to the kitchen and stepping over bodies as he gathers food and bottles of water. It only takes a few minutes- much faster than when he went to clear everything out- before he’s stepping back into the little medical room. “Don’t drink or eat too fast,” he warns, uncapping a bottle of water and holding it to Ken’s lips as he cradles his partner’s head to help.
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He'll get whined at when he does, of course. But Chikusa must be used to that.
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“You’ll get more when I’m done, Ken.”
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He's still thirsty, too, but hunger's overtaken any more desire for water now that his need for liquids is no longer critical.
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He’s still scared. Still terrified of what he’ll find, of discovering just how much Ken has been hurt.
There’s nothing but silence from him as he works, fighting back the terror by keeping his hands moving. What if he can’t even move his legs again- Slice, clean and simple, done a dozen times before. What if we need a surgeon- Pin the skin back, keep it out of the way, and he takes a deep breath as he goes to inspect the bone…
Fractured. Of course. But, as he stares at it, delicately inspecting the injury… It’s not displaced. His brain stutter-stops for a moment before he’s racing to think of the implications. That means no surgery, he thinks, which means all he has to do is stitch the skin back and keep the leg straight in a splint, or a cast, he’s done splints in the past-
There’s a strange feeling in his eyes, a kind of tug, but Chikusa is so detached from it, so unfamiliar with it, that he doesn’t even realize he’s started to cry as he quickly starts to stitch Ken back up. “I can fix this,” he rasps, so focused on his work that he’s oblivious to his voice’s own roughness or the tears slowly sliding down his cheeks.
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They've been through worse. When it comes to most things, they've always been through worse.
Still, it's kind of weird to watch, not to mention boring. So he watches Chikusa instead...and when he sees those tears, he moves on instinct.
Chikusa hasn't cried since Mukuro saved them from Estraneo. Even when the Vindice caught Mukuro again, and Chikusa was as upset as Ken's ever seen him, his eyes had stayed dry. But Ken remembers him crying from when they were little. Chikusa would be dead silent, and then suddenly he'd be a shaking, crying mess with no warning. It had always scared and upset Ken, the way crying just exploded out of Chikusa for no reason - delayed reaction wasn't a thing Ken could understand very well even now, much less when he was a child - but he'd discovered that Chikusa calmed down easier whenever Ken curled up with him. Chikusa would cling to him and slowly wind down.
This...isn't like that at all. Never mind that it's been so long since Ken can remember Chikusa crying; he's never seen him cry like this, silently, like he doesn't even know the tears are there. Somehow that's even more unsettling, but Ken's response is the same as it always is whenever he senses Chikusa needs comfort - he reaches out. The fact that Chikusa is slicing into his legs, that Chikusa's got blades centimeters from veins that would kill Ken in minutes if they got cut...it doesn't occur to Ken to worry about them.
Chikusa is crying.
"Kakipi, why're you crying...?" He's never had to ask that before.
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Except there’s something dripping onto the back of his hand, and Chikusa raises it up to stare uncomprehendingly at the drops along his skin. Good thing he does; his hands jerk as Ken reaches out to him. “Ken-” And there it is, a strangled sensation to his voice that even he can’t deny.
He… feels lost. And, for once, it’s a feeling that shows on his face as he looks back to Ken: brows drawn together, eyes and cheeks still wet, almost like the child he once was when they first looked out onto the carnage Mukuro had wrought and his outstretched hand an offering.
Chikusa tries again, stoic voice trembling. “Ken, I told you… You’re not supposed to move, I have to stitch up your leg, and set your leg, and your arms-” He takes a breath, shoulders shuddering, like that will do anything for how strange everything feels.
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So his open, bleeding legs, his broken bones, his aching shoulders and mangled wrists - they're shoved aside. Even Chikusa's enforced obedience is discarded. He lifts himself enough to dig his fingers into Chikusa's clothes - even without his channels, those nails are as good as claws - and jerks Chikusa to him, wrapping his arms around him and burying his nose against his partner's neck.
Honestly, there may be an element of comforting himself in this. But Chikusa crying is definitely the main focus, something he can't ignore or allow.
"Don't cry, stupid," he mutters, and it's exactly like they're kids again. There's even the same upset, choked up quality to Ken's voice that was so familiar back then, like Chikusa crying is enough to almost trigger him doing so, either in pain or sympathy. The words are similar, too - if not verbatim to what they told each other back then, it's still close enough. "I'm here, so don't cry."
Ken, if your legs just stay sliced open indefinitely without Chikusa stitching them shut, you won't be here much longer. But that's not the way Ken thinks, if Ken is thinking at all right now. It's reaction and instinct, blind and powerful and not concerned with common sense.
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That is to say, he feels like a child again, knowing that he’s not, tentatively safe for a few seconds in the burning heat that Ken has almost always seemed to give off. All of it is just- too nostalgic.
His distress, the smell of coldness and blood in the air, Ken wrapped around him… And that gut wrenching need to never let go of his partner, to never be separated. It shake him to his core, always has, and he almost doesn’t let himself pull away.
But… He has to. Tears still staining his face and now Ken’s shirt, he pulls away with a slow but wet and ragged gasp. “Ken, you’re being an idiot, you’re going to bleed to death.”
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Ken's never cared about himself nearly as much as he's cared about the few people who mean anything to him. Seeing Chikusa's distress means that's all he can think about.
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He can fix this. He can fix this.
Once that’s done, he sweeps an unsteady hand through Ken’s hair. It’s not a fond gesture he makes often, but everything about this situation has him feeling unlike himself. For a second, it felt as though he’d be alone for the first time in his life, that Ken might actually die, and that…
It only happens in a second before he pushes away, gathering the necessary supplies in the room so that he can make some splints for Ken’s wrists and leg. The other one he’s still not sure about yet, but it’s obvious that Ken isn’t in the condition for Chikusa to go poking about in it. That’s fine. “Just stay still through this, and I’ll get you food,” he promises his partner, starting with the leg first.
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When he’s finished up Ken’s arms, he doesn’t let himself stop. If he stops, even for a moment’s breath, Chikusa isn’t sure he’ll be able to start up again. That’s something he can’t do. So he cups Ken’s face again, tipping tiny drops of water into his mouth to see if that helps or at least wakes him up a little more.
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It's just as well he's out of it, honestly. He'd hate the splints. They feel like restraints, and only his dazed state and stillness stand between Ken tolerating them, and Ken trying to tear them off in a fit of kneejerk panicked rage.
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