Gai wakes to the stark smell of antiseptics. His body feels like a threadbare shirt, patched too many times and held together by only tatters and desperation. He probably looks like one, too.
He doesn't have to move his arms to know that they are shackled to the bed.
The medics don't take kindly to patients checking themselves out, and Gai will be the first to admit that he is a serial checker-outer, the kind of impatient patient who views ripping out his stitches as a character-building experience.
It's always the same, whenever he wakes up in the hospital. The ceilings — sickly green. The pillow — too soft. The food — bland and inadequate. The nurses — completely immune to his outbursts. Kakashi — in the corridor.
Gai can sense his chakra hovering outside, its serrated edges pulsing in time with the beeping of the heart monitor, as familiar as his own.
He doesn't come in.
Gai closes his eyes and lets himself rest. Just for a minute.
When they finally release him from the hospital, the first thing he does is run a hundred laps around the village.
The exercise calms him. He loves it, the way the ground and the people and the buildings blur into one long continuous streak of semi-awareness, the way his body sings with the punishing-freeing rhythm he always sets for himself.
Next, he picks up a six-pack of beer (chilled, of course) and heads to Kakashi's flat.
Four knocks, evenly spaced, enthusiastic, but not so enthusiastic that they threaten the structural integrity of the door.
Kakashi doesn't answer, though Gai knows he is in.
"It's me," he bellows, because, even if it's unnecessary, there are certain things people expect of Maito Gai. Being too loud is one of those things.
He hates being a disappointment in any context.
Kakashi makes him wait a few minutes, as if he's got anything to do in his empty one-room no-frills flat other than stare at the walls or read his books for the twelve-thousandth time. Then he comes to the door, his expression carefully arranged into vacant boredom and his visible eye hooded.
"Wanna come over?"
Silence.
"We can watch Fearless."
More silence.
He lifts the carton and holds the other man's gaze. "I got beer."
Kakashi looks away. "I'll get my keys."
He doesn't let Gai in when he goes to fetch them.
Gai chatters at him as they walk, remnants of sun bouncing off his bared teeth. Kakashi slouches. A casual observer would find nothing unusual, but Gai notices the way his head is tilted a fraction lower than normal, the sharp planes of his face catching more shadows than light.
In the orangey haze of dusk, his uncovered eye looks almost red.
It could be normal, the way they're sat on Gai's couch, their shoulders four and a half inches apart, their faces illuminated by the flickering of the television.
Gai almost chokes on his beer when some girl crunches down a dozen live tarantulas. The things people will do for money, or fame, never cease to surprise him.
Ten minutes later, the stunts have escalated. A man slams his forehead into solid slab of concrete. It splits down the middle, like two halves of an orange. The man shows off an addle-brained smile, even as blood dribbles down his face, and in a matter of seconds his teeth are stained red.
The crisp sound of crinkling metal tears Gai's attention from the screen.
Kakashi has crushed his can, and his expression is rigid, tunnel-eyed. "What an idiot," he murmurs, softly, as if to himself. "He could have died, and he doesn't even care."
Gai lets the silence stretch, breathing in the suddenly-taut air, breathing out the suddenly-taut air, before gesturing to the kitchen with his own can. "The bin's that way."
The other man swallows once, twice, his hands still clamped around the can like pincers, and he doesn't move. Doesn't seem able to unclench his jaw, to stand without snapping into angry, jagged pieces. After a minute, Gai leans in, unfurls his fingers one by one, lingering on the last, wanting to give, give reassurance, give affection, give Kakashi all the things he needs. He doesn't, though. Kakashi would never take, he never takes, and he will never allow himself to. So he only brushes Kakashi's shoulder with his free hand when he gets up to throw the can away.
By the time he's back, Kakashi is lounged into the softness of the couch, his eye mellowing slowly back to its usual inscrutable grey.
As he's done a million times before, Gai sinks into the cushions and flicks open another beer, wordlessly passing it to Kakashi before opening one for himself.
As he's done a million times before, he closes his eyes, shuts out the inconsequential people on the television screen, and allows himself a few seconds to be grateful that Kakashi would never ask him to promise to try not to die.
It's a mouthful of a promise, even heavier and weightier when written in the corded tendons of Kakashi's forearms or painted in Kakashi's dark eye.
Gai is sure of a lot of things in life — the power of determination, the spirit of youth, the importance of loyalty — but he isn't at all sure what he would say in the face of a plea like that.
Only Kakashi, or hypothetical-Kakashi, ever seems to be able to wring this kind of uncertainty from him. He can't decide if that makes him stronger or weaker.