Chapter Text
Chifuyu can hear his ears ringing. After all this time...
Baji stands in front of him, his face and shirt smeared with blood. He hurriedly entered the pet store, with his biker jacket ripped on one arm. Blood soaks his jeans, and he grits his teeth so rigidly it's visibly painful.
After all this time... His thoughts immediately go back to their old life, to when they were part of the Toman. They haven't been in a gang for years, but the last time he saw Baji covered in blood was during one of those fights, and-
Something falls to the ground with a dull noise. It's the carrier Kazutora was holding in his hands, luckily it's empty. They both walk closer, Baji is barely standing on his legs, his face is contracted in a grimace of pain. He opens his jacket with trembling hands. On his fingers there is blood, it stains the fur of the creature hidden under there.
"It's... it's alive."
It's a rabbit, and the moment Chifuyu grabs the creature, getting it to safety, Baji collapses to the ground.
*
Kazutora is shaking. He is in shock, the floor is smeared with blood. Is that a piece of wood stuck in Baji's leg?
"We have to take him to the hospital!" exclaims Chifuyu, as he grabs the carrier that has fallen to the floor, and puts the animal Keisuke brought with him in there.
His heart gallops rapidly in his chest, he sees himself with a knife in his hands, and Baji lying on the ground in a pool of blood. He sees himself as a fifteen years old again, ready to make the worst mistake of his life, his mind fully dissociated from reality. He struggles to breathe. What has happened?
"Hanemiya!"
Kazutora blinks, forcing air into his lungs. Takemichi's fist deviated the knife's trajectory, the ambulance arrived in time. Nothing irreparable happened, and nothing will happen this time either. Baji cannot die. There is so much blood, and he sees himself wearing the Valhalla uniform again, in that battlefield.
Chifuyu is talking on the phone. He can barely understand what he is saying. The ambulance, Matsuno is calling the ambulance. Breathe Kazutora, breathe, he says to himself. He is no longer a teenager, he is no longer....
"They'll be here in a few minutes," Chifuyu says. "There has to be some gauze in the clinic, something..." Baji is the veterinarian among them. He is the only one who could, perhaps, do something.
They try anyway, dabbing at the blood but not touching that piece of wood stuck in his leg. He feels so useless, but neither of them stops trying until the ambulance sirens can be heard in the distance.
"I'm going with him," Kazutora states.
Chifuyu looks at him. "Are you... are you sure?"
He has always hated hospitals. Bandages and medicines remind him of his mother, they remind him of every defeat he suffered against a rival gang. He went so far as to have Mitsuya sew up one of his wounds once, just to avoid going to the emergency room. It got infected, and he still didn't go to the hospital.
"Yes."
*
"I'm sorry... I scared you both," laughs Baji. His face is paler than usual. It's night, the full moon outside the window casts a silvery light on his features. "How is the rabbit?"
Kazutora sighs. "The rabbit is fine." He, and Chifuyu, a little less so. "Don't scare us like that ever again."
The injuries are, fortunately, less serious than they look. Baji's bike swerved to avoid hitting an abandoned bunny in the middle of the road, and he crashed into a wooden fence. Instead of calling one of them to immediately get medical treatment, he chased the rabbit for who knows how long, and then walked to the pet store and veterinary clinic they run, with the terrified animal stuffed into his jacket. This is the reason his clothes were soaked in blood. The only serious injury is the one on his leg, but Baji is going to be fine. They have already updated Chifuyu, who will be there shortly.
"Sorry" Baji smiles, but he doesn't look like he's feeling all that guilty. Kazutora is not surprised, Keisuke is a veterinarian who has just rescued an animal. On one hand he can understand him, on the other...
"If you died it would be... horrible," he tells him, looking out the window.
"I think... I've never been so attached to life," Baji replies, with one of those all-canine smiles of his that, even in such a situation, make the world a little better.