Private Nissan or niisan - they both gotta go

[Kakashi Hatake]

January 21

The mission had started outside the city, and it had gone smoothly up to a point. Kakashi had been largely hands-off with the targets - a surprisingly well-funded band of Robin Hood wannabes, who preferred to steal from the rich and give to degenerates - and the gun-katana hybrid Qrow had built him served its purpose with ease. The lack of a scope was more than compensated by the Sharingan, and Kakashi had picked off half the group from over half a mile away.

Things went downhill from there. The band of idiots had had the intelligence between them to flee into Ark City, and Kakashi hadn't had much choice but to follow, and to stow the rifle function of his weapon as he did. This had seemed like a minor issue at the time...

He hissed in pain as he hauled himself along, through the family-friendly streets of Levitton. Blood leaked through the hand he had clapped against his side, and Kakashi was pretty sure one of his legs was broken in a few spots, along with being damn near shredded.

Worst of all, the eerie feeling of having no chakra at all was haunting him with every step, and he felt compelled, every few feet, to check his own pulse. It was getting thready, but no worse than it had been a dozen times before. The chakra thing, Kakashi knew, had more to do with the blast of shiny powder that had been thrown right in his fucking face when he pushed his way into the warehouse the idiot gang had been trading from.

The effect had been immediate, and he'd taken corresponding damage just as quickly, but Kakashi wasn't the type to be subdued by circumstance for long. Fighting with broken bones, a bloody hole in his side, and no chakra wasn't ideal, but he had made it work.

Just like he made everything else work.

Getting home wasn't going to happen. Kakashi had realized that before the last body hit the floor. His head was already swimming from blood loss, and no matter how hard he fought to mold chakra in his hand, the palm clapped over his injury wasn't producing any familiar green, healing glow.

In short, Kakashi had a limited amount of time to find somewhere to collapse, and Pandopolis was off the table for now... so he went for the next best option.

Well... the next most familiar option, anyway.

He'd blame the blood loss if he had chosen wrong.

Getting onto the second floor of Sasuke's suburban shit of a house was an ordeal sent to try Kakashi for his sins. No chakra, bleeding out, that leg was definitely broken... he would be forgiven for making a breathy cheer of victory when he finally swung up onto the roof, wheezing bloody gasps into his mask. It was dripping with a combination of breathe, sweat, and blood. He probably smelled like he had already died.

Kakashi shimmied the bathroom window open, noting with some disdain that Sasuke hadn't even erected any seals around the potential entrance to his home... but then again, it was Sasuke. Who was going to be stupid enough to pull a B&E on him?

Besides his favorite teacher?

Kakashi fell into the tub with a muted shout of pain, sagging against the porcelain, eyes half-lidded. His weapon clattered in on top of him. Though he had no way of knowing it, the Sharingan was deactivated and black-brown, in stark contrast to his natural, gray eye.

"Maybe just... turn on the shower... unless you want to risk coming in contact with residual Prometheus Dust..." He slurred when he sensed a second presence in the bathroom... ideally, not Sakura. That would be a weird reunion.

"Sorry. Didn't... know where to go. 'M fine. No hospital."

 

[Sasuke Uchiha]

When Sasuke switched on the bathroom light, casting the tiles, the porcelain tub... Kakashi inside the tub with a warm Bed Bath & Beyond glow, he wished it was Sakura standing in his place.

Clad in a blue shirt and dark jeans, his empty sleeve streaming at his left, he didn't gape for longer than what was absolutely needed for his face to run the gamut of muted wariness, bewilderment, resignation — while his insides warred with the instinct to scream.

How was it— by what cosmic force was Kakashi repeatedly missing the one other person in this suburban shit of a household who could single handedly restore him back to working order within minutes?

Whatever. They were both going to be dealing with medical emergencies that night.

"Okay." His expression smoothed over with a shallow swallow, and he plodded over on nondescript and definitely not fuzzy slippers and switched the water to lukewarm. After that mention of Prometheus Dust and actually dying from a whole blizzard of the cursed substance, he didn't need to be told twice, but there lingered a questioning glint in his visible dark eye that he opted to hold silent for the time being.

And for that time being, he set briskly off to rummage through one of the medicine cabinets, the gentle pop and thud of magnetic doors opening and closing against the backdrop of the shower's spray. Long legs carried him back to the edge of the tub, where he sat and placed down a small glass containing several earthy round hyorogan with a distinct aroma of spice.

"Sakura's specialty." Normally, this was self-explanatory, but he had to remind himself that Kakashi probably wouldn't have known what that meant yet, because timelines were bullshit. "It'll accelerate your healing, replenish your chakra without impacting anything else." He raised his one hand, lowering it toward the older (...who was at one point younger) man with visible intent as he tried to coax Kakashi into moving his own hand away from what was obviously his most concerning injury.

Soon enough there was that telltale hum of warm chakra seeping into broken flesh, slowly stitching tissue back together. Sasuke didn't have Sakura's honed finesse, but he could get by enough so that Kakashi wouldn't die.

And he wasn't going to die. Sure, there was hardly any meaning in it, in Pandora, but it still fucking sucked.

But it was slow going. To his credit, he waited long enough for Kakashi to return to a stronger sense of reality before finally asking, in his way, "So? What are your plans? Any loose ends, or was that a closed book?"

 

[Kakashi Hatake]

The benefit of Sasuke, Kakashi was learning now that Sasuke was an actual adult with a personality beyond fuck you, Itachi, was that Sasuke had an innate talent for remaining calm. This was, of course, a skill he suspected had been honed later in the man's life than age 12 thru however-old-he-was-when-Bad-Things-happened, but Kakashi didn't really care about any of that now. He was just grateful that he didn't have someone screeching over his nearly-dead not-corpse, despite his surprise arrival. Sasuke, as per usual, was efficient. Brutally so.

Kakashi sucked in a breath when the water turned on, and he realized absently that he was probably going to really screw the pooch if he kept the mask on, seeing as the lion's share of Dust had landed on and around his face. He yanked it off ungracefully and threw it in the corner of the bathroom, sluggishly running his hand over his exposed face, then yanking off his shirt and pants to slough blood and any residual Prometheus Dust off his skin and out of his wounds. He kept his pug boxers on for propriety's sake, and because he really liked them.

Kakashi hoped the bloodstains would come out.

The hole in his side was the problem. His leg was a bit mangled, but the bleeding was sluggish in comparison. Kakashi didn't make a sound as he pressed his hand against it, keeping what pressure he could against the gash.

He reacted with a semi-feral start when Sasuke got in his space, and without a mask to hide his expression, Kakashi brief moment of defensiveness was obvious to anyone with eyes. He thought he felt the stirrings of chakra reigniting in his system as the Prometheus Dust worked its way out of his body, but after a moment of intense deliberation, Kakashi relented enough to let Sasuke touch him (not without another wavering glare) and sluggishly fumbled for one of the... adapted soldier pills?

Ration pills, by the sounds of it. A soldier pill would have been helpful, but it also would have knocked Kakashi on his ass in a few days. By the sounds of it, these were kinder on the body. "Sakura?" He mused, trying not to look as skeptical as he felt. He popped one into his mouth.

Ex-Anbu, completer of S-rank missions, copier of a thousand jutsus, pride of Konoha, Kakashi immediately gagged like a cat who had been force-fed something dreadful at the same time that Sasuke started pumping chakra into his wound. "What the fuck did she put in them?" He croaked, even as he felt the immediate swirl of energy returning to his limbs. He only realized that the Sharingan had been effectively dead when it abruptly spun back to life.

The chakra drain was enough to make him nauseous, and Kakashi clamped his eye shut, still gagging around the hyorogan. He reached for another one anyway and ate it, making a horrible whimpering sound as he did. "It tastes like dirt and cat piss." Kakashi was an adult, so he didn't weep, but it was a close thing.

Sasuke's line of questioning drew him back to the present. More specifically, to the mission. Kakashi felt a spike of annoyance that it was even a question, and he knew it showed on his face without the fucking mask. He was an open book. "My plans involve taking a few days off to sleep and force Qrow to do nice things for me." He mused in a forced, jovial tone. "The mission was a success. Everything went as expected... not counting the Prometheus dust they were smuggling on the side."

 

[Sasuke Uchiha]

"Ask her that yourself." It was a flippant remark, but Sasuke held onto the thought that if Kakashi did wait, perhaps long enough for Sakura to return and give him a bona fide iryo-nin check-up, they would actually have a shot at being in the same room within the next five years. Otherwise, he took the liberty of moving his hand to tug the rifle-looking weapon out of the tub and slant it against the edge. He didn't know how... waterproof that thing was.

Kakashi's condition was no longer critical, which was all that mattered in the end. Sasuke made a light scoffing noise at the sputters of protest (despite knowing very well how shit those things tasted). Over time, after being endlessly barraged by things that should not be but were now, he'd gotten increasingly accustomed to Kakashi no longer bothering (as much) to spare him from the facets of him once kept hidden when he was a child.

The snapshots of vulnerability. The whining. It was all pretty normal. Out of the three of them, especially early on, it had probably been the easiest for Sasuke to accept that their cool and suave and renown jonin mentor was human.

But he still wasn't completely used to the ease at which the mask was now almost routinely discarded. His eyes followed the damp slip of fabric almost automatically, with an involuntary lift of his brows, but then his face did sour automatically at the second mention of the dust. "Hate that shit," he muttered—grumbled, even, as he pulled himself back to standing.

"Your ribs will thank your taste buds for their sacrifice later. Maybe even your leg," he wagered, a foot pivoting toward the door. He gave Kakashi one last sweep to double / triple-check that he hadn't missed anything important... No, he was going to be fine in that tub for a little while longer. "I'll be back," he said, swiping his hand against the towel on his way out.

It took a few minutes of rummaging through drawers followed by a downstairs trip to the kitchen, interspersed with mild yet blessedly inaudible curses of indecision to no one in particular. He managed to return balancing a mug of hot water in his hand and a bundle of dry, bloodless clothes clutched under his arm to change into.

The sweatpants were probably going to bunch slightly awkwardly around the ankles, the sweater a bit long past the waist, but he figured they'd still be more comfortable alternatives to the remains of the barely salvageable tactical gear on the floor. He left the mug on the rim of the tub and finagled the clothes onto the towel rack.

There was still the question of how Kakashi expected to return to the comfort of his own bed in Pandopolis if he preferred not to linger here for too long. Portals, he avoided using unnecessarily due to the excess energy signature they left. On the back of Garuda was a disaster waiting to happen while he was technically still injured. Riding Aoda through the city was similarly out of the question. Hauling him on his own back through the city hub network?

No. Absolutely not.

"When you're ready," he decided, turning his eyes up with a funny kind of resolution, "I'll take you back with my Nissan."

 

[Kakashi Hatake]

"No." Kakashi shot back just as swiftly. No offense to Sakura, but of his three students, Kakashi was well aware that he'd probably fucked things up with her most of all. At least he'd tried with the other two. Sakura, he'd been content to forever look the other way with. She'd been a perfectly capable girl - honestly, Kakashi had seen the makings of a damn good kunoichi in her from the start - but she'd always been outshone by Naruto and Sasuke.

Anyway, the point was, Kakashi didn't want to find out how else he had fucked things up with someone he cared about. So, he was content to ignore Sakura's existence for as long as humanly possible.

He opened his mouth to whine at Sasuke some more about what his taste buds had gone through, but in typical Sasuke fashion, he had already left the bathroom. Kakashi was left with his mopey thoughts, feeling his pain intensifying as the adrenaline in his blood dipped. He felt sluggish and tired, but at least he wasn't spitting up as much blood anymore. Qrow would be happy for it.

His head sagged against the side of the tub and Kakashi's eye rolled somewhat as the blood loss caught up with him. He breathed out hoarsely, forcing himself to stay focused. In a moment of phenomenal effort, he activated his aura, feeling the way it crackled feebly into life across his body. Kakashi immediately felt the way it honed in on his wounds, accelerating the healing process alongside Sakura's cat-piss-balls.

The only negative was the phenomenal amount of exhaustion it brought with it. His eye fluttered again, and Kakashi focused intensely on his breathing, keeping his heart rate steady as he slowly pulled himself upright, silently cursing as his injuries protested. By the time Sasuke was back in the bathroom, Kakashi had managed to perch on the edge of the tub, expression glazed with pain.

He looked at the mug of water and opted to ignore it. His hands clenched when Kakashi noticed the clean clothes, but... he couldn't seem to get his arms to move the way he wanted them to. He was too tired. Getting onto the edge of the tub had been a fucking feat.

His bleary gaze drifted to Sasuke, first in confusion, and then in open horror. "I don't care how much you... forgave him... or whatever..." Kakashi slouched to the side, eye unfocused. "I'm not going home with Itachi. I'd rather sleep here. 'M not showing him where I live. Qrow's there." He slurred tiredly, casting Sasuke a sour look. "Qrow's useless with genjutsu, Sasuke. Useless. Worse than Naruto."

 

[Sasuke Uchiha]

He eyed Kakashi dubiously from where he stood, his own lips thinning in confusion in the spell before he realized what the man was saying. Then his entire face grimaced with a pinched quality. He had to bite back against the rise of residual bitterness, and an impulse to immediately argue over how The Brother Situation wasn't like that.

Instead, he thumped his forehead with the meat of his palm and sighed, his eyes closing briefly against his wrist. "I'm talking about my car. Nissan is a type of car," he clarified slowly, turning an inscrutable gaze back to Kakashi. "Itachi hasn't been around in months." Since before... December. Since Sasuke wasn't even himself, and yet, he remembered the lion's share of it.

They were content. For a while, things were content between them again, and he hadn't even been himself.

As for the here and now (which was what he needed to focus on), if he were Sakura or Naruto, he would offer to towel him down, help him dress— or at this stage, go through with it without even asking. He was not Sakura or Naruto. And they were within the safe and secured confines of a suburban home, not a battlefield.

He stooped to gather the torn and tattered clothing from the tiled floor, depositing them in the ... empty laundry bin like wet slops, for now. The whole bathroom could use a scrub-over before Sakura got back, but that was a lower priority until their teacher was fully tended to. "Do you need some orange slices, or something?" Nothing was strictly necessary beyond what nutrients Sakura's jam packed medicine had already provided, but one of the few elements it could not render redundant were the health benefits of fresh fruit. "I'm going to go cut some orange slices. They'll be ready in the kitchen... whenever." Whenever Kakashi could manage the dignified trek down the stairs. "Take it easy, or you'll trip and fall," he solemnly advised, before departing again.

It would've been infinitely kinder on the jonin's body if he would take it easy on one of the very near beds until Sakura could take a look at him, but Sasuke wasn't going to push again. Either Kakashi would manage himself, or end up bedridden for a few more hours (until Sakura), and Sasuke generally disliked underestimating Kakashi.

He also disliked rushing to ferry him out of the house when she had a right to see him as much as anyone, but he wasn't going to get in between their business. Besides, it wasn't as if they were both... logistically inaccessible to each other, on the day to day.

 

[Kakashi Hatake]

Nissan was a... "You drive a car?" Kakashi blurted immediately. He didn't bother pouring sympathy at Sasuke about Itachi not being in Pandora, mostly because Kakashi wasn't very sorry about it at all, and Sasuke was smart enough to know that. Regardless of reasons and excuses, Kakashi's mistrust stemmed from events more recent than the Uchiha massacre, and there was a vast difference between accepting that something outside his knowledge had led to the whole clan being eradicated, and pretending that he was sorry to see the back of Itachi in any world.

He opted not to say anything about the situation at all. He was too exhausted for a potential argument. Besides, Sasuke almost immediately dumped all of Kakashi's tactical gear into a laundry bin, muttered something about orange slices, and walked out of the bathroom, muttering something about waiting downstairs.

As soon as he was alone, Kakashi had to laugh, because that was more like the Sasuke he knew. Interpersonal skills of a wet mop, and even less natural helpfulness. A lifetime within Anbu left Kakashi comfortably at ease with the impersonal treatment, and he braced himself against the tub, shimmying his way onto his feet, eyes half-glazed with exhaustion and pain. Anyone else would have given up the ghost and accepted that he was stuck here for a while longer, but Kakashi was borne of stubbornness and no small amount of pride. He wasn't staying put now that he had been partially healed.

He wanted to go home and pass out on his own damn bed.

Putting on clothes was time consuming, and Kakashi was dimly aware that he opened a couple of wounds in the struggle. The aura was helping as much as Sasuke's battlefield-style patch job had, so at least the leak of blood was only enough to be a nuisance. Kakashi stuffed the last cat-piss ball in his mouth, gagging on it unapologetically.

He fished his pants out of the laundry basket and stole into one of the side pockets, pulling out a second mask he always kept on hand. They were a bit like condoms - it was always better to have one than to wish you had one. He pulled it over his head, then looked down at himself. The pants didn't fit right and the sweater was too big, making him feel a weird stab of nostalgia for the days when Sasuke was tiny and adorable.

He used the katana as a makeshift cane as he hobbled out of the bathroom. Every step meant feeling bones grinding against each other angrily in his leg, but Kakashi had felt that plenty of times in his life. He just favored his other side and kept on limping, taking the stairs slowly and relying almost entirely on his arms to hoist himself down.

"I was promised orange slices. For healing purposes." He teased as he hobbled into the kitchen, feeling slightly more human with a mask and some clothes that were only slightly bloodstained. He stared at Sasuke intensely, debated thanking him, then dismissed the idea. Both of them were too socially awkward for that shit. Sasuke knew he'd saved Kakashi a trip to the hospital, and by now, Kakashi assumed Sasuke knew how much that meant to him.

He collapsed into a kitchen chair, working hard not to act like just getting down a flight of stairs had exhausted him to the point of foolishness. The energy from the cat-piss balls was enough to keep him alert and less likely to collapse, but it also made Kakashi agonizingly aware of the pain flowing through his body. "Why do you have a car? It's faster on foot."