:) I haven't forgotten about my other fic(s). The muse goes where the muse wants; what can I say?
Disclaimers: I own nothing; my only medical knowledge comes from high school anatomy class and Google search.
Rin studied her chuunin teammate as he started his second set of 50 push-ups. The two of them (minus their sensei, since he was off on a mission) were sitting near the entrance of their usual training ground waiting for Obito to finally show up. They had already run some warm up laps, stretched, and spent an hour sparring. It was definitely more of a workout for her than it was for him, so when she'd suggested a break, he'd only mildly chastised her for slacking off on her physical training and agreed to a half hour break for her while he worked on his own strength training.
She'd been content to simply sit and sip from her water bottle, happy to have a day with her teammates as a break from her intense medic training. She enjoyed her time with the emotionally challenged preteen, though she'd never let him know it was anything other than normal teammate camaraderie. So, she made a point to try not to blush when Kakashi interrupted her thoughts. She hadn't meant to stare absently at his arms, or to let her mind wander back to the previous day's lesson.
"What?" he asked bluntly in response to her continued gaze on him.
"Nothing," she started. "I was just thinking about my training yesterday."
"Hn," he answered. She recognized it as a signal that he was listening if she wanted to go on. Training of any kind was one of the few things she knew interested him, and she smiled to herself.
"Well, they usually start us in the morning with jutsu drills and practice, and until a couple of weeks ago, it was always practicing the one we learned at the very beginning- the mystical palm jutsu. But a couple of weeks ago, they taught us an assessment jutsu where you use your chakra to kind of 'see' inside." She paused for a minute, an idea forming in her head. "Then in the afternoon, it's usually lecture and studying. First aid, anatomy and physiology, paperwork stuff, that kind of thing. Yesterday the topic was all about how muscles work."
Yesterday, she hadn't quite grasped what the instructor had said about how muscle cells (or strands or something) sliding against each other is what makes a muscle contract or relax. She could understand that when a muscle tightened, it was actually pulling, but the lecture hadn't been very clear about why they were considered "relaxed" even when they still seemed tight.
She was not about to admit to the teammate she admired that she was having trouble with the medic training; the jutsus were fairly simple for her to understand, even if they took some practice to master, and she was proud of the fact that she was already better at the new jutsu than most of her fellow trainees.
This particular instructor just seemed to be more of an image thinker, whereas she was coming to realize she was more of a hands-on understander. She could keep up with the class fine by memorizing, but if she really wanted to understand something, as Minato-sensei was always insisting was the most important aspect of learning, then she needed to feel it for herself. The drawings and pictures yesterday had helped some, but not enough.
"Hey, Kakashi?" she said as he neared the end of his second fifty and the beginning of his third set.
"Hn?"
"Can I try my new jutsu on you while you do your push-ups?"
This actually earned her a mildly surprised glance from the corner of his eye, so she felt the need to explain her request.
"I feel like I've improved about as much as I can with practicing it on fish," she said. "I'm ahead of everyone else, and I want to kind of…'see' what the instructor was talking about yesterday. His diagrams were actually more confusing than helpful." And they weren't allowed to practice on their classmates yet, because several of the students were still struggling with the fish. She was itching to try it for real.
She could see Kakashi considering, so she took a sip of water and waited in what she hoped was a casual way for his answer. After two more push-ups, he shrugged with his eyebrows (since his shoulders were otherwise busy).
"Okay," he said, and she smiled and closed her drink. Even if he refused to think of anyone as a friend, she guessed he still wanted to help his teammates train with whatever would make them stronger (as shown by the earlier pounding he'd put her through in taijutsu—she knew that was definitely for her benefit, as it wasn't even a challenge for him).
She scooted to be within arm's reach of him, deciding to go for his upper arm where she'd been absently looking earlier. She tried not to be nervous—she'd only ever used her medical justu before under the close supervision of her shishou, and it had only been twice now.
This jutsu, though, she had never used on another person. She didn't think it was difficult; she'd tried it on herself a few times, but there's something very different about feeling around in your own leg with chakra that came from your own body and feeling around inside something that was not yourself. And the fish…well, you had to keep the fish alive with the mystical palm, so they weren't actually all that useful for practicing other jutsu because they just suffocated before you could really learn anything. So far they'd worked with a lab partner for that reason, taking turns doing the mystical palm and the assessment jutsu, but she was sick of the fish. She knew more than she ever wanted to know about the structure of a fish's gills, and their muscles were totally different than the human skeletal muscles she was confused about.
Kakashi seemed to be ignoring her, focusing on the ground in front of him as he continued to move himself methodically up and down. She focused her chakra, formed the seal for this jutsu, and when her hands began to glow green, she moved her fingertips to hover a few centimeters from Kakashi's bicep.
She half expected him to wince or pull away from her when she eased her chakra into his arm, or at least to make some kind of change in the rhythm of his exercise, but he didn't. It was as if he wasn't even aware of it, to her mild relief. She paid careful attention to his rhythm so that she could move her hands in perfect time.
She immediately noted the difference between human skin and fish skin. With the mystical palm jutsu, she wasn't really able to feel very much in her patient; she could tell if there was too much heat or tension or not enough blood or chakra in a general area, but it was like wearing a double layer of mittens where actual sensations were concerned. It was the first jutsu new medics learned because it was the most useful general healing technique, and it was the most useful because it poured chakra into the patient's body in a way that allowed the recipient's cells to absorb it and use it as they needed.
This jutsu, though much more limited in its healing abilities, gave her the ability to extend her senses into another living thing and feel, or see, or somehow simply know what was happening within the glow of her hands. She smiled to herself at the difference she felt from the fish—where the animal's exterior was cold and thin and almost like wet paper to send her chakra through, Kakashi's skin was more like cotton in comparison, warm, dry, a bit thicker, and definitely more pleasant.
Keeping her hands close to his arm but not actually touching, she made sure to stay exactly the same distance as he pushed himself up and down. With each rise, she noted that the muscle on the back of his arm bunched more than his bicep did; in fact, the front of his upper arm was tight, but wasn't really "constricting" as the lecturer had mentioned. It was simply...balancing the effort of the back muscle.
She turned her attention briefly again to the muscle that was contracting. Through the process of three more rises and falls, she noted that the volume of the muscle didn't change. It was either short or long, and when it was short, it was thicker, and when it was long, it was taller. And the texture didn't change either—she was almost surprised she could sense something like texture in the muscle her fingers weren't actually touching, and she wasn't sure that was quite the right word—but the density stayed the same.
So that's what he meant! she realized. The only way the density could stay the same was if the same kinds of things were there, simply more of them. So, there were just more of them in the middle when the muscle was short, and fewer in the middle when it was long. And the pulling effect must be because it took effort to group them together, and the natural position must be the "long" position.
Just as everything was beginning to click for her, Kakashi stopped his motion. Rin's concentration broke, and the green glow immediately dissipated as she jerked her hands back.
"You okay?" she asked, trying not to sound panicky. He had paused himself in the "down" position.
"I'm fine. Between sets," he told her. "Would it help if I'm still for a minute?"
Rin's face flushed slightly. She hadn't meant to interrupt his routine. "Um, actually I was already starting to understand. It's ok," she said, starting to scoot away again.
"You should practice while you can," he said simply.
"Are you sure? I didn't mean to make you stop doing your own training..."
"Obito may get here soon, and tomorrow you're back to fish."
Rin wondered if that might be just the slightest smirk in his voice when he made the comment about going back to the regular medic training. She wrinkled her nose. It was true that he could do the push-ups later with much more ease than she would be able to practice later...
"Okay, if you're sure..." She formed the seal again and raised her hands, this time to the back of his shoulder. She wasn't sure how it would change the jutsu, using it through his shirt instead of on his bare arm, but the worst it could do was make it a little less effective, right? She spoke while maintaining her focus, now that she knew he wasn't going to try to surprise her. "What does it feel like?" she asked quietly.
Kakashi thought for a moment while she explored the shape of the contracted muscle holding him a few inches from the ground. "It doesn't feel like much," he finally decided. "It's a tiny bit warm, and maybe a little tingly, and that's all."
"Oh," she said. After a moment, she felt like she understood the whole concept of "contracted muscle" much better. Then she decided that since she was already interrupting him, she might as well take his advice about practicing while she could. "Since you're already paused," she said hesitantly, "would you mind resting on the ground for a minute?"
Kakashi shrugged with his eyebrows and lowered himself the last couple of inches, relieving the tension from his arms and shoulders. Rin followed his body with her hands once again, noting the change from "contracted" to "relaxed."
Just then, Obito finally made his appearance. He ran up to them panting, and breathed out a quick "are you okay?" as he caught his breath. Rin was once more startled out of her concentration, so she pulled her hands back into her lap. Obito was scanning Kakashi, clearly trying to figure out why Rin would be using her healing jutsu on him on the training ground unless he was hurt somehow.
Kakashi didn't deign to answer, so Rin smiled at his concern for their prickly teammate. "Kakashi was just letting me try out my new jutsu, for training."
Obito's eyes didn't look any less confused, but he nodded. "Oh," he said. He took a breath to say something else, but Kakashi cut him off in a bored voice.
"You should start your warm-up," Kakashi told him. "Four laps, like Minato-sensei always gives you when you're late."
Obito's eyebrow twitched, and Rin stood up to prevent the oncoming argument. "And I've had enough of a break now, so I should probably practice my forms." She started walking toward the starting point for the laps, knowing that Obito would follow her. "I'll practice here in the sun," she said, "then maybe we can team up against Kakashi like usual."
Kakashi nodded, lifting himself to begin his third set. Sparring wouldn't be a challenge for him any other way, and even this way it probably wouldn't be much of one.
"You know, Rin, you can practice on me if you need to sometime too," Obito offered, and Rin nodded.
"Thanks. I might need to...I never thought about using practice outside of class to actually understand this stuff, but it seems like it really helped me."
With that, Obito nodded and began his first lap, and Rin looked back toward Kakashi. "Thanks," she said, and he gave a "hn" in response.
She smiled again to herself, feeling like the morning was off to a really good start. Both boys had a pretty rigid sense of personal space (though one was because he was "prickly" and the other seemed to simply be shy of her in that regard). Being a tactile, kinesthetic person herself, she had often missed that aspect of friendship with the two of them, which actually caused her to even enjoy the close-combat aspect of taijutsu practice— at least when Kakashi would go easy on them.
Her small smile widened into a grin as she settled into the first kata position. She could get used to this new role of hers.
This is meant to be platonic. I know Rin had a crush on Kakashi at least at some point; this is not intended show her as a pervert! I've kind of established in my mind that she's a touch-oriented person, so this seemed to fit. I was aiming for just the "friend" kind of touch here, because it's how I function too. I love hugs, personally.
