He coughed, and felt the warm spray of blood on his face before he saw it smeared across his fingers. Thought 'shit' and started to sit up, too bruised and irritated to be alarmed, hands roaming down his body – looking for whatever had stabbed him, surprised he couldn't feel it already. Gut wounds were ugly all the way around, and if he could feel the sting of road rash on his face and the dull, heady throb from the lump on his head – both take-home prizes after kissing the asphalt from a two-story swan-dive, lucky him – Casey should have definitely been feeling whatever had him shishkabobed, too.

So far, though, nada. If it was a blade, he'd have found it by now, right? His face was dripping sweat or something, something heavy and sticky that stung his eyes. He winced, and closed them, and got an elbow underneath himself for leverage. This sucked out loud, but it would probably suck less if he could find his feet, and a bat, too, to swing at the same assholes that kicked him off the roof.

But before he made it upright, and before his fumbling self-assessment could get very far, a shadow fell over him, and two big paws held him still. It was crazy that silence could be familiar, that he had reached a point in his life where calloused, three-fingered hands were so comforting all the breath could leave him in a sudden whoosh.

"Hey, knock it off," Don said, just above him, so close he had to have been inches away. One of his hands pinned both of Casey's to his navel, and the other was curled gently around his head. "I know you know better than to move around after a fall like that."

Casey did know better, that was a good point. This wasn't his first rodeo, wouldn't be his last. Still, though, "Get it out, Donnie," he said, and he groped uselessly with the fingers Donnie held trapped against his stomach. "Whatever it is, get it out. Can' fight with it stickin' out of me–"

"Shh, Jones." Don's voice was gentle, folding down the middle and straining at the seams. His thumb was rubbing slow, smooth circles against Casey's temple, somehow having found the one square inch of Casey's body that didn't ache. "You weren't impaled. There wasn't much down here to break your fall."

"But 'm– bleedin'."

"You just bit your lip. Hey, it's okay," he said, when Casey started trying to sit up again. "Easy, Casey, you're okay. You weren't stabbed, you aren't bleeding out, I promise. You just– you just hit your head, really hard, and I need you not to move until I can get you home and make sure you're okay. I'm the field medic around here, aren't I? Can't you trust me?"

"Ffff." That wasn't fair. Casey forced himself to relax, even if it went against every hardwired survival instinct to just lay still and pliant on the cold asphalt. "What about– the fight?"

"It's over. April and Mikey finished off the Footbots, then went to pick up the Party Wagon. And I'm stuck here looking after you." It was meant to sound caustic, but it came across more concerned than anything else. He took up stroking Casey's forehead again with just the tips of his fingers, like a good luck charm. How someone so big and so built could be so soft, Casey had no idea.

Well, as long as everyone else was okay…

"–you dare go to sleep, wake up! Jones! Casey!"

"Wha–" He coughed, alarmed, and the bruising grip on his wrists and his face loosened only fractionally. He opened his eyes, and they were caked and crusted with something that definitely wasn't sweat, yuck – but he had to get a good look at his friend's face, because that was real fear in Don's voice, and he never sounded like that without a good reason. "Donnie, what–"

"You–" Donnie was livid, a live-wire with snapping red eyes, but it was all toothed worry and fierce compassion, and not one inch of actual fury. "Don't fall asleep again. Do you hear me?"

After all these years knowing him, Casey could read him like a book; one with dog-eared pages and a worn-soft cover, and lines so loved and familiar that Casey could string the words together in his sleep. And it was dumb that a genius like Don could forget that from time to time, but he never forgot for long; and sure enough, all the false sharp edges in his expression gave way to something kinder, more vulnerable, more hurt.

"I've got you," Don added, much more gentle. "I won't let anything happen to you. Just stay with me, please."

And Casey tried, he really did. Gritted his teeth, and curled his fingers as tight around Donnie's as he could. Didn't mind staying awake through the pain if it would wipe that awful look off Donnie's face, didn't mind at all.

But his concussion had other ideas, and Don's worried, red-rimmed eyes were the last thing Casey saw before he faded out for real.

Casey flirts with consciousness two or three times before he makes any real commitment to it. His whole body is an ache – even blinking seems to shoot railroad spikes of pain back through his eyeballs and into his brain – but there's a sixth sense tugging him into wakefulness, something primordial telling him 'you've slept long enough.'

So he blinks himself alert, ignoring the subsequent headache, and goes through an unfortunately well-practiced mental checklist. Still breathing, all extremities accounted for, no medical hardware attached to his person – check, check and check. He's in pretty good shape so far.

So now Casey just needs to puzzle out why he's in the hospital in the first place. Details are sketchy.

And 'hospital' is more of a blanket term. He's in the lair, he knows that right off the bat – there's a pretty distinctive aroma. But even more distinctive, impossibly familiar, is the combined smell of engine oil and antiseptic and hazelnut coffee and the heated edges of something electric and burning.

He would know that smell anywhere. He would know it eighty years from now. When he's forgotten his own name and where he was born and what his mother looked like, he would remember April down to the crooked tilt of all her playful smiles, the unobtrusive way Mikey's kind presence could fill a room, and Don's inimitable personal scent of medicine and mechanics.

Casey smiles. It hurts his entire face, but god help him, he smiles anyway. And when he squeezes the curled fingers of his left hand, they tighten around a work-hardened, three-fingered hand.

"I told you not to fall asleep," Don says quietly, sandpaper rough, without so much as lifting his head. "You can't do anything right."

"I won't let anything happen to you," Casey remembers Don whispering, what feels like moments or years ago. "Just stay with me, please."

"That's me," Casey agrees cheerfully, even though it comes out a few shades too pale. Anyone not a ninja wouldn't have noticed, but Don has him pegged. He's treated to a narrow look from muddy, masked eyes; and then Don unfolds his tired body from the side of the cot – doesn't unfold his hand from around Casey's – and reaches for him.

"Next time you scare me like that," Don tells him succinctly, "I'm throwing you off the roof myself."

Casey closes his eyes – rewarded when Don's forehead touches his, a proximity that isn't usually allowed. And in that shared place between the two of them, Casey promises, "I'm not goin' anywhere, Don."

"Damn right you're not. You're on bed-rest until I say otherwise. Doctor's orders," Don replies right away, and it should put everything back to normal, Casey knows that's what he was aiming for.

But Don's voice wobbles, just a little, and his hand in Casey's clutches tighter. So Casey lifts his free arm to hold him that much closer, and they'll stay that way until Mikey and April barge in with breakfast.

Their family is a lot smaller these days, but they still know how to take care of each other. They'll always know that, Casey thinks, even when they've forgotten everything else.