The blood dripping from Kaito's face was coming from a nasty cut that zig-zagged across his forehead and sliced through his eyebrow, painting the entire right side of his face as he stumbled home as fast as his adrenaline-driven legs could carry him. He knew he'd screwed up in starting that physical encounter, but there were some things he felt were worth fighting for, and the honor of someone near and dear to his heart was up at the top of the list.

He made it back before the blood had gotten much further than staining the collar of his shirt and jacket both, tinging them shades darker with a stain that wouldn't be released. At least he was used to having blood stains on his clothing, even if the soiled articles had long since been discarded and he'd replaced them all with fresh items. His keys were thankfully still in his pocket, but he was so disoriented getting them out and putting them into the door that it had already been unlocked and opened before he got there. "What the hell happened to you?" Maki asked, the concern in her voice masked by the anger she spoke with. "I'm not letting you in until you tell me exactly what happened."

"There was a bit of a fight," he replied, trying his best not to slur his words as he realized that his mouth had gotten hit once or twice in the whole ordeal and his lips and tongue both felt strange. "Nothing too terrible, you should've seen the other guy when I was through with him! Now lemme in, I've gotta get cleaned up."

"I'd say, you're probably going to need stitches for that cut there." Her eyes hadn't left his eyebrow and forehead since she'd noticed they were the root of the problem, and she soon took on a commanding role as she told him what to do. "Go sit in the bathroom and wash that with some soap, I've got a stitch kit I can use to patch it up without needing to get you looked at."

He blinked, feeling blood get into his eye and make it sting. "Why do you have a stitch kit handy? Shouldn't you leave that to the professionals?"

Never one to answer questions that related to her backstory outright, Maki turned around and repeated her direction before disappearing into their home, heading for her work things to check for what she needed. Shrugging, Kaito came inside, closed the door and tried locking it before giving up on figuring out the deadbolt, and then went into the bathroom, turning the light on and seeing that the damage done to his face might have been a bit worse than he'd realized it was.

The bleeding cut looked black and bruised from how hard he'd been punched to bust his skin open, and the blood was showing no signs of drying anywhere where it was actively falling, although what had dripped onto his nose had already hardened. He was thankful that the assailant hadn't decided to bash his nose in as well, deciding that enough damage had been done with the jaw blows and the ones to the forehead. "I know this is gonna hurt, but…I did it for the right reason," he told himself as he turned the water on, letting it get lukewarm before picking up a washcloth and soaking it, using that to start wiping the blood away. The cut began to throb with an intensity Kaito could only describe through grunts and groans, but by the time he'd gotten it mostly cleaned up, Maki appeared in the mirror beside him, a tube of antibacterial cream in one hand and a package labeled "adhesive stitches" in the other. "Ah, you did have 'em, huh?"

"Of course I did, a good assassin has what she needs to clean her own injuries up whenever she gets them, can you imagine how awkward it would be to explain how I got a katana slash on my leg to a doctor?" Either Maki was suppressing a laugh, or she was not amused at all by Kaito's doubt in her, and he didn't know which one it was even after she'd told him to sit down so that she could reach the cut. "Geez, Kaito, how'd you manage to make this happen? Who'd you piss off to get them angry enough to hurt you?"

"Some dude at the park," he bluntly replied, knowing that he'd been out taking a walk when everything had transpired. "Called me some names, didn't bother me. Told me no one would love me, bothered me a bit. Said you're not real, bothered me a lot. He should've stopped talking when I told 'em my girlfriend could kick his ass, but he didn't listen and told me that no guy like me would have a girlfriend."

"I get that you want to defend me, but that's a dumb reason to challenge a guy to a fight and get yourself beat up," she said, putting some of the antibacterial cream on the cut and making Kaito loudly scream in her face for it. "You stop that right now, or I'm sending you to the professionals you think should be doing this."

To try to keep himself from screaming again, he violently winced when she continued applying the ointment, the fact that there was anything touching the wound making him wish he was dead at the moment. "Maki Roll, what if I said that wasn't all he said?"

"Hm? Then I'd say you're a liar for leaving out part of the truth. What else did he say?"

He waited until she'd stopped making him feel more pain before he added on the piece of the story he'd left out. "The guy said if you were real, you'd have to be finding pleasure somewhere that wasn't with me, like a lady of the night or somethin', I think that's the term he used."

"He called me a…prostitute?" Maki repeated, sounded disgusted. "Well, I guess I can't be upset that you'd leave that out, or that you'd try beating the guy on my behalf. Just next time, make sure you aren't choosing to fight with someone clearly more skill in combat than you are, this isn't going to heal well for you."

"I knew you'd understand when you knew the truth." Kaito knew that fighting for the honor of the woman he loved would be appreciated, even if he'd been the one to pick the fight in the first place. It took some time, but she was able to stitch him up decently well, although the resulting scar would bisect his eyebrow and leave him open to many stares and questions, and they were able to salvage his jacket from the bloodstains, having to toss the shirt due to being unable to get all of the discoloration out. The scar and the loss of the shirt was a small price to pay for making Maki proud for him standing up for her, though, and he would've done it again and again if he needed to.

But if he didn't need to, that was preferred, and he hoped that he never saw the man in the park again or never interacted with someone willing to call a woman he'd never met a prostitute just because he didn't like a guy's look. Thankfully, with the new scar he'd be sporting, he looked moderately more rugged than he had before, and that seemed to deter people from choosing to pick on him. It also had the…unintended effect of making Maki love him even more than she already had, making it a point to trace the mark with her finger whenever she wanted to praise him for something he'd done right. If all it took to make her hopelessly head over heels for him was a little bit of facial markings, perhaps it would have been in his best intentions to get into more fights after all…

A/N: believe it or not, this is not the only time this week that Kaito gets beat up c: prompt was blood