The sound of his own voice rising up almost throws Chikusa off balance- he rarely raises his voice if he can help it, finding it annoying how even that can tire him out and leave his throat rough. It's foreign to his own ears. The only reason he isn't left standing there bewildered is because his body surges forward even as he's yelling, thin fingers digging into Ken's shoulders and trying to force him down again.
With Chikusa, it's the little things. Adjusting his glasses is a substitute for grimacing or glaring. A sigh is his version of a frustrated groan. After all they've been through, a feeling of peace is the closest he'll ever get to smiling.
Right now, even a complete stranger could tell he's terrified.
Blown out pupils, a grimace stretching out his mouth, wide eyes, and frantically quaking hands that won't stop.
Ken freezes. He pretty much stops thinking when Chikusa yells. So only later will he think that, if Chikusa yelled like that, even Mukuro-sama would probably stop in his tracks - if only out of shock.
Chikusa doesn't yell. Chikusa doesn't get like this at all. Ken hasn't seen him this violently...anything since back when they were being experimented on. After Chikusa would come back from what they were doing to him. And not right after, either. It was always like Chikusa's reactions lagged behind, back then - sometimes he'd be silent for half an hour, just sitting, and then freak out without any warning. It had always kind of creeped Ken out, because he couldn't begin to understand it. (And, also, because at all other times Chikusa was so quiet and emotionless that seeing him break down felt completely wrong.)
Ken feels something of that fear now - and just like back then, it's mixed with confusion and uncertainty about where it's coming from, why now. He simply stares at Chikusa, wide-eyed and fearful himself, but - for perhaps the first time ever - Chikusa's driven obedience into him all the way down into his bones, as deeply as Mukuro ever has.
"Kakipi...?" His voice is small. He's flat on the bed, all the resistance having been leeched out of him at Chikusa's bellow, and only the twitch of his fingers indicates how badly he wants to reach up and grab Chikusa's clothes for something to hold onto. But obedience overrides it.
No answer. Not immediately. It's the labs all over again in that manner, the way his responses take so long to formulate while his expression crumples into something undescribable. He's shattered, broken, all jagged pieces that he hasn't figured out how to put together again. For a moment, he's not even breathing. Absolute stillness has its grip all around him as he keeps his fingers dug into Ken's shoulders, still looming over him.
Ken's voice forces air into his lungs again, and he jerks back as if he doesn't know how to use his limbs again. His expression starts to force itself back together again but it's... not as it usually is. It's almost there, almost blank, but there's a tension in it that can't be ignored and Chikusa's pupils are still blown out in panic. He twists away on his heel to hide it, back to Ken. His shaking hands, he puts in his pockets.
"...You need to stop hurting yourself, Ken." Quiet, only the slightest shake. "It's going to be harder to fix if you keep messing with broken bones."
Ken doesn't know what to make of how Chikusa looks, how he's acting. It's different from when they were kids, different from anything he really knows. (The difference is that it's just him hurt now, not both of them. And that Chikusa's had years to get close to him by now, whereas when they were kids they were part of a crowd that had gradually thinned down to just him, Chikusa, and Mukuro. They hadn't relied on each other so much back then, hadn't yet fused together at the hip.) He doesn't know how to handle it. But it feels wrong, like it always feels wrong when something bad forces emotion out of Chikusa. Ken likes it when Chikusa actually emotes, but not like this.
He lies still like he's been told, even though his limbs quiver when Chikusa turns his back again. Chikusa's back says I'm leaving. And Ken's never sure. Never. It's one of his most dog-like traits, that he hates when people leave because he's never entirely sure if they're coming back. (And why he's always so ecstatic when Mukuro appears.) He'd seen lots of kids leave and not come back when they were with the Estraneo. Mukuro's not showing up at Kokuyo Land after their prison break had been like a knife to his gut. Now Chikusa's leaving, and Ken knows anything could happen. To him, to Chikusa. Chikusa's leaving and he might not come back, for any reason at all, and Ken can't go after him if he doesn't.
"...don't leave me, byon." He doesn't even know what Chikusa could be leaving him here for.
"I'm..." He doesn't want it to be seen. To be acknowledged. But he's sick, and scared, and he can hear it in the soft tremors of Ken's own voice too. Slowly, still shaking, he slides one hand out of his pocket and presses it against one of Ken's hands. His back stays to him.
"I'm not going far. I need to take care of the rest of the Corvi, Ken."
Ken feels the shaking immediately; physical gestures, things he can feel and hear and smell and see, always speak to him loudest. It's the first moment he realizes that Chikusa's scared, too.
Really scared. Chikusa has to be really something before he has a physical reaction. And Chikusa's usually only comfortable feeling, and expressing, nothing. Of what, Ken doesn't know - he's no smarter just because the cue was physical - but he doesn't even consider the Corvi as a possibility. It'd take more than one hostile mafia family to get Chikusa to emote at all, much less to frighten him.
Ken's fingers twitch with the urge to catch Chikusa's hand, make him stay...but Chikusa told him to stay. To stop making his injuries worse. So Ken doesn't move his hand any more than that.
...he hadn't known any of the Corvi were alive. That's a new thing to worry about. He can't not fight back if they find him while Chikusa is gone.
"Won't they come here, byon?" Ken has to ask, if only because he's trying to get a better idea if where Chikusa's reaction is coming from. It doesn't occur to him it's the state he's in; he's been in worse shape than this. In truth, it's the circumstances that have Chikusa upset.
Being reminded of what he still has to do, what he has planned, helps calm Chikusa. No, wait, that’s not right to say. It helps steady him, gives him something to refocus on instead of the emotions destroying his usually calm and apathetic demeanor. Slightly, bit by bit, his hand starts to stop shaking. “They won’t be able to come in here,” he murmurs slightly, eyes going cold again. “They’re too drugged to do anything.” The potent mix that he coated his needles with would put anyone out of commission. He still has a good long while before any regular humans start to come out of that.
...But he shouldn’t test that. Carefully, he undoes the buttons of his jacket and slides it away from his shoulders. “I’ll come back…” Turning around again, he drapes it across Ken’s body and makes sure that it’s close to his face. “So… Just stay here… I’m not leaving the house.”
"You drugged them?" Now Ken's baffled, and for once not from a general lack of intellect. That just doesn't seem to make sense. "What'd you drug them for? You could've just killed 'em, byon." Ken knows his partner, as well as he knows anything. If Chikusa hit someone with a drug that wasn't lethal, that was a deliberate choice on his part. Ken just can't imagine what the purpose would be for keeping any of this family alive.
He relaxes when Chikusa drapes his jacket over him, almost against his will. The smell of Chikusa is on his jacket, and it definitely calms him down a little. He's still not happy about being left behind, but his eyes are less panicked than before when he looks up at Chikusa. "Hurry up, then, byon."
Chikusa will come back, Ken reassures himself. He wouldn't leave his jacket unless he was coming back for it.
"...For reasons..." But he's already thinking of the huge amount of work that's laying before him. His mind and body, for the first time, are in disagreement. It's exhausting, his mind says, but his body doesn't care, and it's his body which is calling the shots. His fingers drag down along Ken's palm.
"...I'll be back."
And he shuffles out of the medical room.
It's a good thing he has no investment in making sure the Corvi have a comfortable time of things. Chikusa forces himself to move quickly again, ignoring the ache starting up in his back from where he carried Ken. Tying up the members he took out is easy, and getting them downstairs is easy- all he has to do is drop them on the floor and kick. Dragging them across each floor to stairs is the annoying part.
Funny, how there's a satisfied dark twist in him at every meaty thump of a body hitting hard stairs. He's not usually like this. In fact, it's completely opposite to how he is at all. Mukuro, Ken, that's not unusual even if it's too entirely different senses of satisfaction as far as Chikusa can tell. Ken likes the feeling of the fight. Mukuro relishes in his own sadism against the world that wronged them. Chikusa? Chikusa does his job, because that's all it is. There's no pleasure in it for him.
Even with his relaxed stairs method of moving the Corvi bodies, it still takes some time to get them all down into the basement, and longer still for him to put them all in the same kind of chains that they'd trapped Ken in. Chikusa does a very solid job. There's no getting out of this. A few of them are already dead. That's not surprising. Not everyone reacts to drugs so well, whether from overdose from their particular body type or an allergic reaction. There's even one whose neck snapped from the fall down the stairs. Chikusa leaves them where they lay after making sure they're dead. It saves him extra work from having to move them.
Only when he's done and traps have been set up just in case anyone does get free does Chikusa shuffle back to the medical room. He's starting to feel tired, now, and it's a mixed blessing. There's still so much to do.... Coming inside, his eyes go to is partner.
Ken doesn't respond. He's either passed out or gone to sleep waiting for Chikusa; he seems to have moved or wriggled Chikusa's jacket up so that the fabric's almost pressed to his nose, which may account for his being able to relax enough for sleep. If it's not sleep...well, he's got more than enough excuses for simply passing out.
He looks worse than before, somehow. Perhaps because any form of unconsciousness looks uncomfortably like death when someone's in a bad enough physical state.
[Just when he’d thought himself losing energy, it spikes up again, propelling him forward to Ken’s side. Immediately, his hands start fluttering over him doing diagnostics: his heart beat, his breathing, if his broken limbs have been twisted further. Chikusa’s voice comes out soft and trembling as though he’s a child clinging to his best friend’s shirt.]
[At least there's no unnecessary suspense. Almost from the first touch, even before Chikusa speaks, Ken is jerking awake, with an actual little snarl as reflexive defensiveness in the face of pain and uncertainty takes hold. But the smell of Chikusa is strong in his nose, and the sight and sound of him are there too as his other senses kick on, and he relaxes almost immediately. Just as well; any more of a violent wake-up and he probably would've compounded his injuries a little more.]
Kakipi? [As he realizes there's no immediate alarm and the tiny burst of adrenaline dissipates, exhaustion and disorientation settle back in, and he blinks blearily at him. Then, with a frown, his gaze sharpens.] ...what's wrong?
[Strings of tension are cut loose from his shoulders, they drop so fast. Trying to hide the shaking in his hands- adrenaline or fear, he’s not sure- Chikusa adjusts his glasses.]
...I need to tend to your wounds now. I need to figure out how bad your knees are broken.
[Ken frowns. He wants to get out of this place entirely - he won't feel properly safe until they're back in Kokuyo Land, although he knows Chikusa and Mukuro and he doubts there's any living threat left within ten miles of them that hasn't been dealt with in some way or another - but there's also not a damn thing he can do about it. So he just huffs out a grumble.] Dunno what you can do about it here, byon... [Chikusa has the most extensive medical knowledge of all of them, but knowledge only goes so far. You need supplies and equipment and stuff, Ken knows, and his injuries are definitely extensive. He doesn't know what Chikusa can do about it all, right here and now.]
[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.
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badliifechoiice22016-01-08 10:36 am
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The sound of his own voice rising up almost throws Chikusa off balance- he rarely raises his voice if he can help it, finding it annoying how even that can tire him out and leave his throat rough. It's foreign to his own ears. The only reason he isn't left standing there bewildered is because his body surges forward even as he's yelling, thin fingers digging into Ken's shoulders and trying to force him down again.
With Chikusa, it's the little things. Adjusting his glasses is a substitute for grimacing or glaring. A sigh is his version of a frustrated groan. After all they've been through, a feeling of peace is the closest he'll ever get to smiling.
Right now, even a complete stranger could tell he's terrified.
Blown out pupils, a grimace stretching out his mouth, wide eyes, and frantically quaking hands that won't stop.
"Stop it- stop!"
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Chikusa doesn't yell. Chikusa doesn't get like this at all. Ken hasn't seen him this violently...anything since back when they were being experimented on. After Chikusa would come back from what they were doing to him. And not right after, either. It was always like Chikusa's reactions lagged behind, back then - sometimes he'd be silent for half an hour, just sitting, and then freak out without any warning. It had always kind of creeped Ken out, because he couldn't begin to understand it. (And, also, because at all other times Chikusa was so quiet and emotionless that seeing him break down felt completely wrong.)
Ken feels something of that fear now - and just like back then, it's mixed with confusion and uncertainty about where it's coming from, why now. He simply stares at Chikusa, wide-eyed and fearful himself, but - for perhaps the first time ever - Chikusa's driven obedience into him all the way down into his bones, as deeply as Mukuro ever has.
"Kakipi...?" His voice is small. He's flat on the bed, all the resistance having been leeched out of him at Chikusa's bellow, and only the twitch of his fingers indicates how badly he wants to reach up and grab Chikusa's clothes for something to hold onto. But obedience overrides it.
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Ken's voice forces air into his lungs again, and he jerks back as if he doesn't know how to use his limbs again. His expression starts to force itself back together again but it's... not as it usually is. It's almost there, almost blank, but there's a tension in it that can't be ignored and Chikusa's pupils are still blown out in panic. He twists away on his heel to hide it, back to Ken. His shaking hands, he puts in his pockets.
"...You need to stop hurting yourself, Ken." Quiet, only the slightest shake. "It's going to be harder to fix if you keep messing with broken bones."
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He lies still like he's been told, even though his limbs quiver when Chikusa turns his back again. Chikusa's back says I'm leaving. And Ken's never sure. Never. It's one of his most dog-like traits, that he hates when people leave because he's never entirely sure if they're coming back. (And why he's always so ecstatic when Mukuro appears.) He'd seen lots of kids leave and not come back when they were with the Estraneo. Mukuro's not showing up at Kokuyo Land after their prison break had been like a knife to his gut. Now Chikusa's leaving, and Ken knows anything could happen. To him, to Chikusa. Chikusa's leaving and he might not come back, for any reason at all, and Ken can't go after him if he doesn't.
"...don't leave me, byon." He doesn't even know what Chikusa could be leaving him here for.
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"I'm not going far. I need to take care of the rest of the Corvi, Ken."
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Really scared. Chikusa has to be really something before he has a physical reaction. And Chikusa's usually only comfortable feeling, and expressing, nothing. Of what, Ken doesn't know - he's no smarter just because the cue was physical - but he doesn't even consider the Corvi as a possibility. It'd take more than one hostile mafia family to get Chikusa to emote at all, much less to frighten him.
Ken's fingers twitch with the urge to catch Chikusa's hand, make him stay...but Chikusa told him to stay. To stop making his injuries worse. So Ken doesn't move his hand any more than that.
...he hadn't known any of the Corvi were alive. That's a new thing to worry about. He can't not fight back if they find him while Chikusa is gone.
"Won't they come here, byon?" Ken has to ask, if only because he's trying to get a better idea if where Chikusa's reaction is coming from. It doesn't occur to him it's the state he's in; he's been in worse shape than this.
In truth, it's the circumstances that have Chikusa upset.no subject
“They won’t be able to come in here,” he murmurs slightly, eyes going cold again. “They’re too drugged to do anything.” The potent mix that he coated his needles with would put anyone out of commission. He still has a good long while before any regular humans start to come out of that.
...But he shouldn’t test that. Carefully, he undoes the buttons of his jacket and slides it away from his shoulders. “I’ll come back…” Turning around again, he drapes it across Ken’s body and makes sure that it’s close to his face. “So… Just stay here… I’m not leaving the house.”
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He relaxes when Chikusa drapes his jacket over him, almost against his will. The smell of Chikusa is on his jacket, and it definitely calms him down a little. He's still not happy about being left behind, but his eyes are less panicked than before when he looks up at Chikusa. "Hurry up, then, byon."
Chikusa will come back, Ken reassures himself. He wouldn't leave his jacket unless he was coming back for it.
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"...I'll be back."
And he shuffles out of the medical room.
It's a good thing he has no investment in making sure the Corvi have a comfortable time of things. Chikusa forces himself to move quickly again, ignoring the ache starting up in his back from where he carried Ken. Tying up the members he took out is easy, and getting them downstairs is easy- all he has to do is drop them on the floor and kick. Dragging them across each floor to stairs is the annoying part.
Funny, how there's a satisfied dark twist in him at every meaty thump of a body hitting hard stairs. He's not usually like this. In fact, it's completely opposite to how he is at all. Mukuro, Ken, that's not unusual even if it's too entirely different senses of satisfaction as far as Chikusa can tell. Ken likes the feeling of the fight. Mukuro relishes in his own sadism against the world that wronged them. Chikusa? Chikusa does his job, because that's all it is. There's no pleasure in it for him.
Even with his relaxed stairs method of moving the Corvi bodies, it still takes some time to get them all down into the basement, and longer still for him to put them all in the same kind of chains that they'd trapped Ken in. Chikusa does a very solid job. There's no getting out of this. A few of them are already dead. That's not surprising. Not everyone reacts to drugs so well, whether from overdose from their particular body type or an allergic reaction. There's even one whose neck snapped from the fall down the stairs. Chikusa leaves them where they lay after making sure they're dead. It saves him extra work from having to move them.
Only when he's done and traps have been set up just in case anyone does get free does Chikusa shuffle back to the medical room. He's starting to feel tired, now, and it's a mixed blessing. There's still so much to do.... Coming inside, his eyes go to is partner.
"...Ken?"
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He looks worse than before, somehow. Perhaps because any form of unconsciousness looks uncomfortably like death when someone's in a bad enough physical state.
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[Just when he’d thought himself losing energy, it spikes up again, propelling him forward to Ken’s side. Immediately, his hands start fluttering over him doing diagnostics: his heart beat, his breathing, if his broken limbs have been twisted further. Chikusa’s voice comes out soft and trembling as though he’s a child clinging to his best friend’s shirt.]
Ken?
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Kakipi? [As he realizes there's no immediate alarm and the tiny burst of adrenaline dissipates, exhaustion and disorientation settle back in, and he blinks blearily at him. Then, with a frown, his gaze sharpens.] ...what's wrong?
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...I need to tend to your wounds now. I need to figure out how bad your knees are broken.
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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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Later...
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