[Fic] Centipedes: Chapter 1, Puke
Messypeaches and I have been writing collaborative GenRai (and other) fic for at least three years, but we've never really got it together for publication. (If someone wants to volunteer to help edit some of our vast volumes of text, speak up!) But the other day we were chatting, and I said the idea of shinobi brought down by insects amused me. Google Docs makes collaborative writing much easier. Thus this story was born.
Title:Centipedes
Authors: messypeaches and nezumiko
Genre: Drama, Romance
Rating: T
Characters: Genma, Raidou, Ibiki, Nenani, various OCs
Status: 1st chapter, Worksafe
Summary: Chapter 1, Puke: In which there are worse things than dying naked and puking because of some stupid little bug bites. Really. Like watching your husband die that way first.
Genma had been digging out Raidou's new fire pit for a good hour before he ran into his little visitors. In fact he didn't notice the hitchhikers at all at first. But then one of the little bastards bit him. A sudden, sharp, intensely painful bite on his back, high on the left side, and he yelped and turned around in a frantic whirl. "Shit, Raidou! Get out here! Raidou! Someone's tossing senbon at me or something!"
Raidou was there in a heart beat, wearing sweat pants and his flak vest. Scanning the yard. "From where?"
"I don't know! Behind me I..." Genma yelped again as another searing pain pierced his side, this time lower down. "Mother fuck! Where the hell are they coming from?
Raidou started to move, then paused. Genma was missing one of the tell tale signs of a senbon attack. Namely the senbon. He didn't drop his guard, but he did slide his kunai to one hand, kneeling and diverting more attention to Genma. "Show me where you're hit?" It could still be a smaller dart, like a blowgun dart.
"My back and side," Genma said, twisting around and reaching for the burning places he'd felt the needles pierce him. Another one got him then, in the inner curve of his hip, and he doubled over with an outraged hiss, reaching for the offending senbon. It wasn't there. "Rai?"
Raidou put a hand to his side. He had to stop scanning the yard to do it, but he looked at Genma's shirt a long moment. "Try a dispel. There aren't any holes in your shirt." His eyes snapped back to the garden wall, following motion. No, just a leaf.
"It's not a fucking genjutsu," Genma said, but he brought his hands up in a seal and did a dispel anyway, to humor Raidou. There was another fierce jab, this time right along the waistband of his trousers, near his navel. "Fuck. Mother fuck. That didn't do anything and..." Genma gasped and reached for Raidou as he felt something moving under his clothes, then another fierce stabbing on his side. It almost felt like a little fire jutsu being ignited just under his skin.
Raidou put down the kunai. "It's not a dart, either, Genma," he said, trying a dispel himself. "You said your side?" He pulled at the shirt.
"Yeah," Genma said and leaned over, pulling at the hem of his t-shirt. He needed to get it off. He was on fire. The places where he'd been hit were blazing with heat and pain, and it was starting to make him feel ill. "There's something.... oh sweet fucking gods!" He yanked the shirt up and grabbed for a large red welt on his ribcage.
"Is there a wasp in your shirt?" Raidou asked, yanking the cloth higher, searching for the buzzing wings and yellow black danger colors of most ornery stinging insects.
"Wasp stings don't hurt this bad," Genma moaned, and clutched at his abdomen. A centipede, deprived of its hiding place in Genma's shirt, made a dive for his pants.
Raidou saw that. Well, not saw the centipede. But he saw motion. Or thought he did. He moved without thinking, and when he couldn't really get his hand down Genma's pants from that angle, he opted to yank them open. The venomous bastard was crushed an inch above Genma's pubic hair.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Genma yelped, and then he saw it. Five inches long, reddish-brown, too many legs and a pair of terrifying-looking pinchers, and poised neatly to go for his tenderest parts. "Get it off me!"
Raidou swept it off and stepped on it for good measure before considering maybe he should have gotten an ID on it first.
There were huge red welts blooming on Genma's pale skin where the centipedes had bitten. In addition to two on his ribs, there was one on his lower back, one on the hollow of his left his hip, and two on his belly. And they hurt. Seriously hurt. Enough that he was relatively unconcerned about the fact that he was standing in a freshly-dug hole with his shirt raised up around his nipples and his pants and underwear stripped down to his knees.
Raidou pulled him out of the hole. Okay, inside and... Um. Ice? "Are you allergic to those?" he asked. He didn't think regular centipedes could kill you. "Hospital?"
"No," Genma said flatly. "No hospital. Nenani will just laugh at me." He whimpered and hobbled after Raidou, leaning on his arm for support. He was sure she'd laugh at him. And he felt like... like... His grip tightened, he made a little noise like a trod-upon cat, swung away from his husband and was sick in the hydrangeas.
"I don't think she'd laugh at you for this." Raidou said, pulling Genma's hair back and nervously eyeing the ground. Hell, there might be more of the little bastards. And he was barefoot.
Genma whimpered and straightened up, wiping at his mouth and casting the hydrangeas a regretful look. "Hope I didn't just kill those," he said weakly. "Can we go inside now?"
"I never liked them anyway." Raidou forced a grin. "Okay, step all the way out of your pants in case you have more little friends," he said, putting an arm around Genma's torso to support him. "Alright? We'll put you on the couch, and I'll get you ice and see what you're supposed to do for little brown fuck off bugs."
Genma kicked off his shoes and stepped out of his pants carefully, clinging to Raidou and still feeling utterly horrid. "Feels just like a senbon, only then it gets worse," he complained. Then a horror struck him. "You'd better strip, too."
"Now is really not the time," Raidou started, but he got Genma half in the door and took a step back, to pull off the vest. The step after this was meant to have been taking off his pants, shutting the door, helping Genma to the couch, and so on. It was a nice plan. A simple, solid plan. A plan that was utterly derailed as he stepped on what felt like a dozen angry egg shells filled with ooze and topped with point up stingers. If they even stung. Raidou didn't much care, just uttered a rather loud curse.
Genma was severely preoccupied with the raging fire the centipede bites had set burning under his skin, and the way his muscles were spasming into tight knots in response. He was also trying not to be sick again, but Raidou's shouting made him spin around in alarm. He leaned, white faced and sweating heavily, against the door and reached for Raidou. "Did it get you? What's wrong? Are you alright?"
It felt like thirty but by the time Raidou'd crushed his attackers into the doormat and looked at his foot he realized he only had twelve. On the arch of his foot. "Go lay down, Genma."
Instead of obeying, Genma lurched back through the door and slid a hand around Raidou's waist, pulling him in. He peered over his husband's shoulder and whimpered. "Oh gods, Rai-chan. You... are you okay?" He wasn't okay, so it stood to reason that there was little chance Raidou was okay. Hopefully they'd only got his foot?
Ow, ow. Like red hot senbon indeed. Raidou hissed. Fuckit. He'd call the hospital. Ask them for advice, or to send a medic out, please. "Go lay down. I'm gonna use the radio," he said. His foot throbbed in time with his heartbeat.
Genma was shaking, but he stood his ground. "Strip," he ordered, and swallowed hard against another wave of nausea surging up his gullet. "Make sure there aren't any more..." He didn't finish his sentence. It hurt, it hurt so very much, and somehow the five or six little bites had discovered a way to work in concert, so that it took Genma's breath away, wrapped him in a massive, lava-hot fist, and squeezed all at once. He didn't take his eyes off Raidou, though. "Strip," he gasped, "before I pass out and can't kill it if there's another one on you."
Raidou nodded, hopped out of his pants and tossed them back out the door. While balanced on one foot, because the other foot felt to be on fire. The nausea wasn't, much. It was starting, he could feel it, but the pain was more distracting. More pressing. He made himself turn once anyway, craning his head to look himself over for more crawly attack bugs.
When Genma was satisfied there were no more venomous invertebrates hitching a ride, he nodded at Raidou, gasped out a "You're clean," and made an attempt to turn. It wasn't happening. He was shaking now, and definitely feeling sicker and .... Raidou didn't look so good. No, do not puke. If you puke, Rai will puke, and it will be a mess because the toilet is all the way down the hall and I can't walk that far and he can't walk at all... Genma tried thinking of rainbows and puppies instead. It didn't work.
Raidou hopped awkwardly to the chair by the radio. "If you can't get to the couch, lay down, sit there. I'm gonna get help before I can't move either." He said, mostly for the sake of saying it out loud as he switched the device from passively receiving classical music to the medical emergency channel. It took a moment to fumble out the hand piece.
Genma did as Raidou bade him, lying down on the cool wood floor of the hallway, curled up with his arms around his belly. The bites looked like not much, just some big red welts, but it felt like he'd taken a kunai to the gut. And one in the ribs and one in the side.... Hard to believe such a little thing could cause so much trouble. Some part of Genma's brain that wasn't involved in actively dealing with the pain and nausea helpfully pointed out that he was lying ass-naked on the floor, and Raidou was ass-naked and balancing on one foot, and whoever came to help them was going to get a really odd idea about what had happened here.
"This is Namiashi Raidou, using the medical emergency channel, over," Raidou said, shutting his eyes and leaning on the wall. Oh, this sucked. It was like an instant flu.
There was a brief burst of static, and then a woman's voice answering. "Namiashi, I read you. Nature of your emergency? Over."
Raidou pressed the button and paused. Made a weak sounding laugh. "Fucking insect bites. Over."
There was silence on the other end, then the woman's voice, sounding a little incredulous, came back. "Could you repeat please? Over."
"Insect. Bites. Fucking little crawly bugs. I'm about to puke, and Genma's gone fetal. Send someone. Over." If the medic on the other end thought it was a joke he'd just start bombarding the different channels. So there. Ha.
"Roger, will send a medic," the woman's voice replied, crisp and calm. "Over." There were several hasty moments of conversation in the dispatch center, mostly centered on the fact that it had been Raidou who placed the call, and it being unlikely that he'd joke. And there were some really rather nasty insects out there.
Raidou dropped the handset and tried to hop to Genma. Crawling worked better.
Genma, for his part, made a miserable choking noise, and gave up on the notion of retaining any dignity whatsoever. They were going to find him whimpering like a child, lying in a puddle of his own puke, and there was not a thing he could do to prevent it.
Raidou put a hand on his husband's shoulder and shut his eyes, focusing on not vomiting on Genma. Genma was probably going to puke on him. That was fine. He felt his temperature flip and shivered. It was a selfish sort of sentiment, but for a few seconds there he'd really, really been hoping that Genma was just allergic to the damn things.
Genma opened his eyes, squinting at Raidou, who had crept closer. He looked awful. Pale and sweaty, biting his lip in that way that Genma recognized as his husband's most valiant effort to pretend like he wasn't going to be sick. And he knew, in that moment, that he wasn't going to be able to stop the bile boiling up from his own stomach, and that it would just set Raidou off if he did puke, so he really had an obligation to try to keep it together, no matter how bad it hurt. The fire of the bites burned brighter, and the muscles involved squeezed tighter, and the torrents of saliva and the burning in his ears were the last warnings he was going to get. Genma tried very, very hard to get away from Raidou. He shoved himself up and over, curling so that his back was to his partner, and then he gave up, retching helplessly and starting to wonder if it was actually possible to die from an insect bite after all.
Raidou held it together, miserably, for a few heartbeat's longer then pushed himself up, onto his elbows. He twisted a little, swallowed back the first wave of bile and gritting his teeth before what felt like every muscle from his hipbones to his eyebrows contracted in a surge. His strong stomach meant he got a rather disturbing about of pressure behind the foul internal stew. Oh, hell, he hated vomiting. Please let it stop when I'm out of food. Please no dry heaves. Please please. He really, really hoped the the next symptom wasn't diarrhea. Pleeeease.
Dimly, through his misery, Genma was aware of Raidou vomiting behind him, and he felt guilty. After all, he'd dug up the poisonous little vermin, and he'd been the one who started puking first. The smell was overpowering and acid. At least it was just the wood floors, he thought. He'd sealed them with polyurethane, so maybe they'd clean up alright. He finally managed to stop the heaves and catch his breath, and drag himself, shaking now with an astonishing chill, to see if Raidou was alright. His foot was red and swollen, the large ankle bones becoming hidden in puffy flesh.
Another feeble drag got him up to Raidou's shoulder, and he put a hand out to touch his shaking partner. "You okay?"
"Not really," Raidou said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Tiny blisters were forming around his bites, a rash of some sort. Itching. The sort of deeply intense itching that made you want to claw at your skin with broken glass. He'd read once that certain snake bites meant you had to get cuts put in your skin. So you wouldn't burst. Like boiled sausage. "Did we piss off a bug god?"
"Or something like that," Genma agreed and made a little whimpering sigh. "Fuck it hurts." It was an understatement. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to move, it hurt to even think. And the sick scent in the air was doing nothing to coax his stomach back to calmness. "We should move. Get dressed. Can you move?" It took a monumental effort to get that much out. Genma curled up again, moaning softly. He really hoped Raidou was doing better than he was.
Raidou took a brief moment that felt like bloody decades to come to an honest conclusion about that. "I could move us, if you helped. But probably only to the hall bathroom, at most. How much could you help?" Clothes were out of the question. Help was on the way; they'd probably just get cut off again anyhow. "Blankets, probably best. Get away from the sick," he mumbled.
"Okay." Genma had his eyes shut, and was taking rapid, shallow breaths, trying to keep the pain at bay. He thought about trying to move again, but the shivering was getting serious enough that his teeth were starting to chatter. Maybe if he just crawled a little. Or maybe not. "Okay," he said again, still not moving, and opened his eyes a little to glance at Raidou. "You look horrible."
"Gonna poison the fuck out of those leggy little bastards." Raidou took a deep breath and sat up. Slumped forward and almost vomited again. "Oh fuck." His head spun dangerously a second. Minute. Maybe two. "Fuckers." He put a hand on Genma's leg. "Can you. Can you get your head way from the mess?"
"Unh." It was as close to a word meaning maybe, maybe not as Genma could manage at the moment.
"Gonna. Bring the blanket." He took a deep breath. Tried to clam down. It wasn't working, and everything looked dull and wrong. He tried not to think about it. Blanket. Okay. That was what Genma needed. It took him a second to visually locate it, world blurring when his eyes shifted, then taking time for the image to settle enough. Where the fuck were those slow ass medics?
Raidou was going somewhere. OK, that needed looking into. Genma pushed himself up a little, away from the puke as Raidou had suggested, and tried to follow him. The fiery bites on his chest and abdomen were starting to feel like a tight band around his middle, and it was hard to breathe. Also hard to think. But Raidou looked really.... wrong. Not well. "Raidou? Wait..."
Raidou gripped the couch and pressed with his arms. Good leg under him, slowly swelling one at an odd and useless angle. And amazingly, for a second there, he was nearly upright. Everything looked crystal clear. Then the moment was over and for a few second he couldn't see at all. Everything washed out in bursts of black and white warring for control. He slumped and clung to the cushions a few seconds, wondering why the gravity was now coming from the left. The left.
Oh shit. Shit shit shit. Raidou was passing out or dying or something. Suddenly the pain, the nausea, the chills and fever, the breathlessness and weakness didn't matter at all anymore. Genma lurched up to his knees and got an arm around Raidou's waist before the toxins in his own bloodstream made him light-headed, too. Genma grabbed at the couch arm for balance but didn't let go of his husband. "Raidou?"
Raidou felt the arm, warm. Still couldn't see, no, wait, the anti colors were drawing back a little. Gravity was still not quite down yet, though, so his hands didn't relax. "Geeh," He swallowed, panting. His ears rang with a maddening sort of din. Had someone said something? Genma. Raidou's sight was losing ground again, then gaining, then losing a little more. His finger's tightened until the knuckles were pale. "Genma." He could almost count down how long he had left. What a stupid way to die. He gave up on seeing Genma's face and focused on the feeling, for a second. "Loveyou," was all one word. "Gonna,"
And then he passed out.
Dead weight. Dead weight in his arms. And Raidou was heavy. "Fuck, Raidou! Rai, wake up!" Genma pleaded, and tried to get his own unruly muscles to cooperate in at least getting Raidou lying on the floor. He was deathly pale, but he was breathing. No wheezing, which was a good sign, right? The pain of the bites was, if anything, getting worse, and it made it hard to remember what to do next. Get his feet elevated, some little, well-rehearsed voice in the back of Genma's brain sang, and Genma reached for the couch cushion, pulling it off to the floor. When he went to lift Raidou's feet, though, the awful-looking swelling on the stung foot made him pause. If he elevated it, wouldn't it just spread the toxin faster?
"Raidou, wake up!" Genma begged, and coughed. Gasped in a painful little breath, and froze. Someone was at the door.
There was a knock, and a pause. "We're coming in to assess the situation!" was yelled out once, clearly, before the front door was kicked in. The medics waited a moment, in case of wards or jutsu defense, then came in. All six of them.
It'd be nice to think that six was the standard number of medics sent out in response to an emergency call. Nice, but incorrect. Genma and Raidou were being treated to two teams due largely in part to an embarrassing incident a few years ago and the curiosity of everyone who'd been anywhere near the radio when the call had come in. Sadly, it seemed that the two they'd come to check on were, in fact, in need of serious medical attention. Damn. They'd been hoping for something weird and kinky to talk about over drinks.
Oh thank gods. Genma didn't even consider how absurd a sight he and Raidou made, mostly naked and obviously ill. "Get over here!" he rasped, and found it getting even harder to breathe. "You gotta help Raidou. Was some centipedes." He grabbed for the edge of the nearest medic's tunic. "He... he..." He passed out and I think I'm about to, was the sentence in his mind. It was just hard to get enough breath to actually make all those words. And to not follow Raidou into whatever blissful unconsciousness he was in. He'd better not be fucking dead.
Well, step one was obvious. One of the medics started to quickly assemble the stretchers while the other's pulled the two shinobi apart, stretching them out on the clean part of the floor. "Shiranui, can you describe the centipedes that... Attacked?"
"Big. Reddish," Genma wheezed and tried to see what they were doing to Raidou. "Got in my clothes... in the yard." He stopped to cough, a choke that threatened to turn into puking again, and curled up, trying to stop it. The urge receded enough that he could focus on the medic again. "Raidou stepped on one." Then it came back, irresistible, and he was sick again.
Hands lifted him, kept him from lying in it. "Outside? The back yard, right? Ishi, go see if you recognize it," Motoko said, pulling Genma's hair back, gloved fingers touching his face right in front of his ears. A low tingle of chakra to try to reestablish Genma's equilibrium. Try to give the man some relief, if that was what was triggering the vomiting.
The cool touch of the medic's hand and the nausea-easing jutsu were welcome. Genma tried to catch his breath, leaning against the woman and still trying frantically to see what the other team was doing with Raidou. It looked like they were moving him. "Is he okay? You gotta... gotta do something." It was still so hard to think clearly. "Can't breathe so great," he muttered and found himself tilting, not quite holding his own weight up anymore.
She frowned, put a hand on his chest, listening through her bones a moment to the way he rattled, his heart beat. "Takeshi, give me the epi." She deliberately didn't let Genma see the needle. "Alright Genma-san. This is going to pinch."
If he hadn't been in such agony already, Genma might have noticed the stab of the long needle into his thigh. He did feel the burn of the medication being injected, but in an abstract, 'oh hell now there's one on my leg, too' sort of way. His response was an inarticulate groan and a wave of one hand at the offending needle, as if to brush it away. The other medics were definitely doing something with Raidou now, lifting the stretcher and starting for the door. "I gotta go with him," Genma said distractedly. He hoped they were taking him to the hospital. "Need pants."
Ishi came back in, incredibly pissed off bug writhing between two senbon. "Got one," he started.
"Oh, fer fucks sake, kill it," Takeshi said, nose wrinkling. "We don't need it alive!"
Motoko ignored them both, for the moment. "We'll get you pants at the hospital," she told Genma, as a stretcher was laid out next to him. Other hands helped, lifting him while she supported his neck.
OK, good, they were going to the hospital. Very good, because when the medics touched the welts the centipedes had left, the nerves underneath blazed into life, and the muscles seized up, and there was no way Genma was gonna be able to take much more of this without breaking down and crying like a baby. As it was he just moaned and let the people in the white coats do their jobs. At least they were taking Raidou first.
If Raidou was dead, he'd have to kill somebody. Possibly himself.
To Be Continued...
Title:Centipedes
Authors: messypeaches and nezumiko
Genre: Drama, Romance
Rating: T
Characters: Genma, Raidou, Ibiki, Nenani, various OCs
Status: 1st chapter, Worksafe
Summary: Chapter 1, Puke: In which there are worse things than dying naked and puking because of some stupid little bug bites. Really. Like watching your husband die that way first.
Genma had been digging out Raidou's new fire pit for a good hour before he ran into his little visitors. In fact he didn't notice the hitchhikers at all at first. But then one of the little bastards bit him. A sudden, sharp, intensely painful bite on his back, high on the left side, and he yelped and turned around in a frantic whirl. "Shit, Raidou! Get out here! Raidou! Someone's tossing senbon at me or something!"
Raidou was there in a heart beat, wearing sweat pants and his flak vest. Scanning the yard. "From where?"
"I don't know! Behind me I..." Genma yelped again as another searing pain pierced his side, this time lower down. "Mother fuck! Where the hell are they coming from?
Raidou started to move, then paused. Genma was missing one of the tell tale signs of a senbon attack. Namely the senbon. He didn't drop his guard, but he did slide his kunai to one hand, kneeling and diverting more attention to Genma. "Show me where you're hit?" It could still be a smaller dart, like a blowgun dart.
"My back and side," Genma said, twisting around and reaching for the burning places he'd felt the needles pierce him. Another one got him then, in the inner curve of his hip, and he doubled over with an outraged hiss, reaching for the offending senbon. It wasn't there. "Rai?"
Raidou put a hand to his side. He had to stop scanning the yard to do it, but he looked at Genma's shirt a long moment. "Try a dispel. There aren't any holes in your shirt." His eyes snapped back to the garden wall, following motion. No, just a leaf.
"It's not a fucking genjutsu," Genma said, but he brought his hands up in a seal and did a dispel anyway, to humor Raidou. There was another fierce jab, this time right along the waistband of his trousers, near his navel. "Fuck. Mother fuck. That didn't do anything and..." Genma gasped and reached for Raidou as he felt something moving under his clothes, then another fierce stabbing on his side. It almost felt like a little fire jutsu being ignited just under his skin.
Raidou put down the kunai. "It's not a dart, either, Genma," he said, trying a dispel himself. "You said your side?" He pulled at the shirt.
"Yeah," Genma said and leaned over, pulling at the hem of his t-shirt. He needed to get it off. He was on fire. The places where he'd been hit were blazing with heat and pain, and it was starting to make him feel ill. "There's something.... oh sweet fucking gods!" He yanked the shirt up and grabbed for a large red welt on his ribcage.
"Is there a wasp in your shirt?" Raidou asked, yanking the cloth higher, searching for the buzzing wings and yellow black danger colors of most ornery stinging insects.
"Wasp stings don't hurt this bad," Genma moaned, and clutched at his abdomen. A centipede, deprived of its hiding place in Genma's shirt, made a dive for his pants.
Raidou saw that. Well, not saw the centipede. But he saw motion. Or thought he did. He moved without thinking, and when he couldn't really get his hand down Genma's pants from that angle, he opted to yank them open. The venomous bastard was crushed an inch above Genma's pubic hair.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Genma yelped, and then he saw it. Five inches long, reddish-brown, too many legs and a pair of terrifying-looking pinchers, and poised neatly to go for his tenderest parts. "Get it off me!"
Raidou swept it off and stepped on it for good measure before considering maybe he should have gotten an ID on it first.
There were huge red welts blooming on Genma's pale skin where the centipedes had bitten. In addition to two on his ribs, there was one on his lower back, one on the hollow of his left his hip, and two on his belly. And they hurt. Seriously hurt. Enough that he was relatively unconcerned about the fact that he was standing in a freshly-dug hole with his shirt raised up around his nipples and his pants and underwear stripped down to his knees.
Raidou pulled him out of the hole. Okay, inside and... Um. Ice? "Are you allergic to those?" he asked. He didn't think regular centipedes could kill you. "Hospital?"
"No," Genma said flatly. "No hospital. Nenani will just laugh at me." He whimpered and hobbled after Raidou, leaning on his arm for support. He was sure she'd laugh at him. And he felt like... like... His grip tightened, he made a little noise like a trod-upon cat, swung away from his husband and was sick in the hydrangeas.
"I don't think she'd laugh at you for this." Raidou said, pulling Genma's hair back and nervously eyeing the ground. Hell, there might be more of the little bastards. And he was barefoot.
Genma whimpered and straightened up, wiping at his mouth and casting the hydrangeas a regretful look. "Hope I didn't just kill those," he said weakly. "Can we go inside now?"
"I never liked them anyway." Raidou forced a grin. "Okay, step all the way out of your pants in case you have more little friends," he said, putting an arm around Genma's torso to support him. "Alright? We'll put you on the couch, and I'll get you ice and see what you're supposed to do for little brown fuck off bugs."
Genma kicked off his shoes and stepped out of his pants carefully, clinging to Raidou and still feeling utterly horrid. "Feels just like a senbon, only then it gets worse," he complained. Then a horror struck him. "You'd better strip, too."
"Now is really not the time," Raidou started, but he got Genma half in the door and took a step back, to pull off the vest. The step after this was meant to have been taking off his pants, shutting the door, helping Genma to the couch, and so on. It was a nice plan. A simple, solid plan. A plan that was utterly derailed as he stepped on what felt like a dozen angry egg shells filled with ooze and topped with point up stingers. If they even stung. Raidou didn't much care, just uttered a rather loud curse.
Genma was severely preoccupied with the raging fire the centipede bites had set burning under his skin, and the way his muscles were spasming into tight knots in response. He was also trying not to be sick again, but Raidou's shouting made him spin around in alarm. He leaned, white faced and sweating heavily, against the door and reached for Raidou. "Did it get you? What's wrong? Are you alright?"
It felt like thirty but by the time Raidou'd crushed his attackers into the doormat and looked at his foot he realized he only had twelve. On the arch of his foot. "Go lay down, Genma."
Instead of obeying, Genma lurched back through the door and slid a hand around Raidou's waist, pulling him in. He peered over his husband's shoulder and whimpered. "Oh gods, Rai-chan. You... are you okay?" He wasn't okay, so it stood to reason that there was little chance Raidou was okay. Hopefully they'd only got his foot?
Ow, ow. Like red hot senbon indeed. Raidou hissed. Fuckit. He'd call the hospital. Ask them for advice, or to send a medic out, please. "Go lay down. I'm gonna use the radio," he said. His foot throbbed in time with his heartbeat.
Genma was shaking, but he stood his ground. "Strip," he ordered, and swallowed hard against another wave of nausea surging up his gullet. "Make sure there aren't any more..." He didn't finish his sentence. It hurt, it hurt so very much, and somehow the five or six little bites had discovered a way to work in concert, so that it took Genma's breath away, wrapped him in a massive, lava-hot fist, and squeezed all at once. He didn't take his eyes off Raidou, though. "Strip," he gasped, "before I pass out and can't kill it if there's another one on you."
Raidou nodded, hopped out of his pants and tossed them back out the door. While balanced on one foot, because the other foot felt to be on fire. The nausea wasn't, much. It was starting, he could feel it, but the pain was more distracting. More pressing. He made himself turn once anyway, craning his head to look himself over for more crawly attack bugs.
When Genma was satisfied there were no more venomous invertebrates hitching a ride, he nodded at Raidou, gasped out a "You're clean," and made an attempt to turn. It wasn't happening. He was shaking now, and definitely feeling sicker and .... Raidou didn't look so good. No, do not puke. If you puke, Rai will puke, and it will be a mess because the toilet is all the way down the hall and I can't walk that far and he can't walk at all... Genma tried thinking of rainbows and puppies instead. It didn't work.
Raidou hopped awkwardly to the chair by the radio. "If you can't get to the couch, lay down, sit there. I'm gonna get help before I can't move either." He said, mostly for the sake of saying it out loud as he switched the device from passively receiving classical music to the medical emergency channel. It took a moment to fumble out the hand piece.
Genma did as Raidou bade him, lying down on the cool wood floor of the hallway, curled up with his arms around his belly. The bites looked like not much, just some big red welts, but it felt like he'd taken a kunai to the gut. And one in the ribs and one in the side.... Hard to believe such a little thing could cause so much trouble. Some part of Genma's brain that wasn't involved in actively dealing with the pain and nausea helpfully pointed out that he was lying ass-naked on the floor, and Raidou was ass-naked and balancing on one foot, and whoever came to help them was going to get a really odd idea about what had happened here.
"This is Namiashi Raidou, using the medical emergency channel, over," Raidou said, shutting his eyes and leaning on the wall. Oh, this sucked. It was like an instant flu.
There was a brief burst of static, and then a woman's voice answering. "Namiashi, I read you. Nature of your emergency? Over."
Raidou pressed the button and paused. Made a weak sounding laugh. "Fucking insect bites. Over."
There was silence on the other end, then the woman's voice, sounding a little incredulous, came back. "Could you repeat please? Over."
"Insect. Bites. Fucking little crawly bugs. I'm about to puke, and Genma's gone fetal. Send someone. Over." If the medic on the other end thought it was a joke he'd just start bombarding the different channels. So there. Ha.
"Roger, will send a medic," the woman's voice replied, crisp and calm. "Over." There were several hasty moments of conversation in the dispatch center, mostly centered on the fact that it had been Raidou who placed the call, and it being unlikely that he'd joke. And there were some really rather nasty insects out there.
Raidou dropped the handset and tried to hop to Genma. Crawling worked better.
Genma, for his part, made a miserable choking noise, and gave up on the notion of retaining any dignity whatsoever. They were going to find him whimpering like a child, lying in a puddle of his own puke, and there was not a thing he could do to prevent it.
Raidou put a hand on his husband's shoulder and shut his eyes, focusing on not vomiting on Genma. Genma was probably going to puke on him. That was fine. He felt his temperature flip and shivered. It was a selfish sort of sentiment, but for a few seconds there he'd really, really been hoping that Genma was just allergic to the damn things.
Genma opened his eyes, squinting at Raidou, who had crept closer. He looked awful. Pale and sweaty, biting his lip in that way that Genma recognized as his husband's most valiant effort to pretend like he wasn't going to be sick. And he knew, in that moment, that he wasn't going to be able to stop the bile boiling up from his own stomach, and that it would just set Raidou off if he did puke, so he really had an obligation to try to keep it together, no matter how bad it hurt. The fire of the bites burned brighter, and the muscles involved squeezed tighter, and the torrents of saliva and the burning in his ears were the last warnings he was going to get. Genma tried very, very hard to get away from Raidou. He shoved himself up and over, curling so that his back was to his partner, and then he gave up, retching helplessly and starting to wonder if it was actually possible to die from an insect bite after all.
Raidou held it together, miserably, for a few heartbeat's longer then pushed himself up, onto his elbows. He twisted a little, swallowed back the first wave of bile and gritting his teeth before what felt like every muscle from his hipbones to his eyebrows contracted in a surge. His strong stomach meant he got a rather disturbing about of pressure behind the foul internal stew. Oh, hell, he hated vomiting. Please let it stop when I'm out of food. Please no dry heaves. Please please. He really, really hoped the the next symptom wasn't diarrhea. Pleeeease.
Dimly, through his misery, Genma was aware of Raidou vomiting behind him, and he felt guilty. After all, he'd dug up the poisonous little vermin, and he'd been the one who started puking first. The smell was overpowering and acid. At least it was just the wood floors, he thought. He'd sealed them with polyurethane, so maybe they'd clean up alright. He finally managed to stop the heaves and catch his breath, and drag himself, shaking now with an astonishing chill, to see if Raidou was alright. His foot was red and swollen, the large ankle bones becoming hidden in puffy flesh.
Another feeble drag got him up to Raidou's shoulder, and he put a hand out to touch his shaking partner. "You okay?"
"Not really," Raidou said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Tiny blisters were forming around his bites, a rash of some sort. Itching. The sort of deeply intense itching that made you want to claw at your skin with broken glass. He'd read once that certain snake bites meant you had to get cuts put in your skin. So you wouldn't burst. Like boiled sausage. "Did we piss off a bug god?"
"Or something like that," Genma agreed and made a little whimpering sigh. "Fuck it hurts." It was an understatement. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to move, it hurt to even think. And the sick scent in the air was doing nothing to coax his stomach back to calmness. "We should move. Get dressed. Can you move?" It took a monumental effort to get that much out. Genma curled up again, moaning softly. He really hoped Raidou was doing better than he was.
Raidou took a brief moment that felt like bloody decades to come to an honest conclusion about that. "I could move us, if you helped. But probably only to the hall bathroom, at most. How much could you help?" Clothes were out of the question. Help was on the way; they'd probably just get cut off again anyhow. "Blankets, probably best. Get away from the sick," he mumbled.
"Okay." Genma had his eyes shut, and was taking rapid, shallow breaths, trying to keep the pain at bay. He thought about trying to move again, but the shivering was getting serious enough that his teeth were starting to chatter. Maybe if he just crawled a little. Or maybe not. "Okay," he said again, still not moving, and opened his eyes a little to glance at Raidou. "You look horrible."
"Gonna poison the fuck out of those leggy little bastards." Raidou took a deep breath and sat up. Slumped forward and almost vomited again. "Oh fuck." His head spun dangerously a second. Minute. Maybe two. "Fuckers." He put a hand on Genma's leg. "Can you. Can you get your head way from the mess?"
"Unh." It was as close to a word meaning maybe, maybe not as Genma could manage at the moment.
"Gonna. Bring the blanket." He took a deep breath. Tried to clam down. It wasn't working, and everything looked dull and wrong. He tried not to think about it. Blanket. Okay. That was what Genma needed. It took him a second to visually locate it, world blurring when his eyes shifted, then taking time for the image to settle enough. Where the fuck were those slow ass medics?
Raidou was going somewhere. OK, that needed looking into. Genma pushed himself up a little, away from the puke as Raidou had suggested, and tried to follow him. The fiery bites on his chest and abdomen were starting to feel like a tight band around his middle, and it was hard to breathe. Also hard to think. But Raidou looked really.... wrong. Not well. "Raidou? Wait..."
Raidou gripped the couch and pressed with his arms. Good leg under him, slowly swelling one at an odd and useless angle. And amazingly, for a second there, he was nearly upright. Everything looked crystal clear. Then the moment was over and for a few second he couldn't see at all. Everything washed out in bursts of black and white warring for control. He slumped and clung to the cushions a few seconds, wondering why the gravity was now coming from the left. The left.
Oh shit. Shit shit shit. Raidou was passing out or dying or something. Suddenly the pain, the nausea, the chills and fever, the breathlessness and weakness didn't matter at all anymore. Genma lurched up to his knees and got an arm around Raidou's waist before the toxins in his own bloodstream made him light-headed, too. Genma grabbed at the couch arm for balance but didn't let go of his husband. "Raidou?"
Raidou felt the arm, warm. Still couldn't see, no, wait, the anti colors were drawing back a little. Gravity was still not quite down yet, though, so his hands didn't relax. "Geeh," He swallowed, panting. His ears rang with a maddening sort of din. Had someone said something? Genma. Raidou's sight was losing ground again, then gaining, then losing a little more. His finger's tightened until the knuckles were pale. "Genma." He could almost count down how long he had left. What a stupid way to die. He gave up on seeing Genma's face and focused on the feeling, for a second. "Loveyou," was all one word. "Gonna,"
And then he passed out.
Dead weight. Dead weight in his arms. And Raidou was heavy. "Fuck, Raidou! Rai, wake up!" Genma pleaded, and tried to get his own unruly muscles to cooperate in at least getting Raidou lying on the floor. He was deathly pale, but he was breathing. No wheezing, which was a good sign, right? The pain of the bites was, if anything, getting worse, and it made it hard to remember what to do next. Get his feet elevated, some little, well-rehearsed voice in the back of Genma's brain sang, and Genma reached for the couch cushion, pulling it off to the floor. When he went to lift Raidou's feet, though, the awful-looking swelling on the stung foot made him pause. If he elevated it, wouldn't it just spread the toxin faster?
"Raidou, wake up!" Genma begged, and coughed. Gasped in a painful little breath, and froze. Someone was at the door.
There was a knock, and a pause. "We're coming in to assess the situation!" was yelled out once, clearly, before the front door was kicked in. The medics waited a moment, in case of wards or jutsu defense, then came in. All six of them.
It'd be nice to think that six was the standard number of medics sent out in response to an emergency call. Nice, but incorrect. Genma and Raidou were being treated to two teams due largely in part to an embarrassing incident a few years ago and the curiosity of everyone who'd been anywhere near the radio when the call had come in. Sadly, it seemed that the two they'd come to check on were, in fact, in need of serious medical attention. Damn. They'd been hoping for something weird and kinky to talk about over drinks.
Oh thank gods. Genma didn't even consider how absurd a sight he and Raidou made, mostly naked and obviously ill. "Get over here!" he rasped, and found it getting even harder to breathe. "You gotta help Raidou. Was some centipedes." He grabbed for the edge of the nearest medic's tunic. "He... he..." He passed out and I think I'm about to, was the sentence in his mind. It was just hard to get enough breath to actually make all those words. And to not follow Raidou into whatever blissful unconsciousness he was in. He'd better not be fucking dead.
Well, step one was obvious. One of the medics started to quickly assemble the stretchers while the other's pulled the two shinobi apart, stretching them out on the clean part of the floor. "Shiranui, can you describe the centipedes that... Attacked?"
"Big. Reddish," Genma wheezed and tried to see what they were doing to Raidou. "Got in my clothes... in the yard." He stopped to cough, a choke that threatened to turn into puking again, and curled up, trying to stop it. The urge receded enough that he could focus on the medic again. "Raidou stepped on one." Then it came back, irresistible, and he was sick again.
Hands lifted him, kept him from lying in it. "Outside? The back yard, right? Ishi, go see if you recognize it," Motoko said, pulling Genma's hair back, gloved fingers touching his face right in front of his ears. A low tingle of chakra to try to reestablish Genma's equilibrium. Try to give the man some relief, if that was what was triggering the vomiting.
The cool touch of the medic's hand and the nausea-easing jutsu were welcome. Genma tried to catch his breath, leaning against the woman and still trying frantically to see what the other team was doing with Raidou. It looked like they were moving him. "Is he okay? You gotta... gotta do something." It was still so hard to think clearly. "Can't breathe so great," he muttered and found himself tilting, not quite holding his own weight up anymore.
She frowned, put a hand on his chest, listening through her bones a moment to the way he rattled, his heart beat. "Takeshi, give me the epi." She deliberately didn't let Genma see the needle. "Alright Genma-san. This is going to pinch."
If he hadn't been in such agony already, Genma might have noticed the stab of the long needle into his thigh. He did feel the burn of the medication being injected, but in an abstract, 'oh hell now there's one on my leg, too' sort of way. His response was an inarticulate groan and a wave of one hand at the offending needle, as if to brush it away. The other medics were definitely doing something with Raidou now, lifting the stretcher and starting for the door. "I gotta go with him," Genma said distractedly. He hoped they were taking him to the hospital. "Need pants."
Ishi came back in, incredibly pissed off bug writhing between two senbon. "Got one," he started.
"Oh, fer fucks sake, kill it," Takeshi said, nose wrinkling. "We don't need it alive!"
Motoko ignored them both, for the moment. "We'll get you pants at the hospital," she told Genma, as a stretcher was laid out next to him. Other hands helped, lifting him while she supported his neck.
OK, good, they were going to the hospital. Very good, because when the medics touched the welts the centipedes had left, the nerves underneath blazed into life, and the muscles seized up, and there was no way Genma was gonna be able to take much more of this without breaking down and crying like a baby. As it was he just moaned and let the people in the white coats do their jobs. At least they were taking Raidou first.
If Raidou was dead, he'd have to kill somebody. Possibly himself.
To Be Continued...