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After they see off Himegawa and her shark, Hikaru follows Kinosaki home.
Kinosaki doesn't argue, though he does give Hikaru a few odd looks, and when they reach the front door of his building, he turns to face him, hands on his hips.
"Okay, why are you still here?” he asks.
Hikaru gestures in his general direction, because it's hard to point at someone's back when they're pouting up at you. "Well, you're hurt, right? Will you let me take a look?"
"Oh." Kinosaki considers this for about two seconds before shrugging—and wincing. "Yeah, fine. Just ignore the mess."
And then he's pulling open the door, barely holding it long enough for Hikaru to follow him before he's making a beeline for the elevator.
It's not exactly a high-end place, the opposite of the love hotel where they ended up when Kinosaki was recovering from Hikaru's toxin. Hikaru privately suspects that Kinosaki has the funds for much better—but then again, this is probably far from his only residence. It certainly looks lived-in, though: when Kinosaki unlocks the door and pulls it open, Hikaru is met with a veritable mountain range of piles.
In fairness to Kinosaki, very little of it appears to be actual garbage—though there's an area near the kitchen where there's a collection of deconstructed cardboard boxes and packing materials that looks like it's overdue for trash collection. The rest appears to be mostly clothes, heaping up on the furniture and the counters and wherever else it can conceivably be draped.
"How many clothes do you have?” he asks, jaw dropping.
"Not a great first comment on someone's living space," Kinosaki notes, probably by habit from their training. "We should do this on the bed, right? It's just, I'm guessing I should be on my stomach, and the couch is…well, you can see it, you know."
The couch, to be fair, has enough clear space for one person to sit—if they're fine leaning up against some more laundry.
"Sure," Hikaru answers automatically.
Kinosaki grins just as Hikaru's brain catches up wth his mouth. "Great. It's through here."
Hikaru gets a few glimpses of the space. It's small and covered in clothes and other accessories, some of which still have their tags, but underneath that layer of excess it's rather plain, with mismatched furniture that might well have come with the lease. Hikaru's lived in spaces like this before, though due to the jobs he was on he rarely spent much time in them. He never got them looking as lived-in as this—though given the amount of mess involved in the effect here, he's not sure that's a bad thing.
Kinosaki's hiss echoes through the doorway, drawing Hikaru's attention. He's laid out the futon and removed his wig, but is currently wincing, caught in the middle of a flex to remove his jacket from his shoulders.
Hikaru's sympathetic. Back wounds are the worst, not least because they're hard to treat alone.
"Here," he says, hurrying into the bedroom. "I'll help."
"Sure." Kinosaki gives up, letting his arms fall into a neutral position.
Hikaru lifts the jacket from his shoulders, gently tugging it free. Its frayed edges are stuck to the layer beneath by blood and seawater, but with a little bit of coaxing he gets it loose.
"Lift your arms, okay?"
He tugs at the hem of Kinosaki's shirt, trying to turn it inside out and slide it upwards to minimize the tugging. When his shirt reaches the base of the slash, he has to slow down to try to work it free where the fibers are stuck. Kinosaki goes very still under his hands.
"Sorry, is the analgesic wearing off?" he asked. He'd sprayed some on briefly before they'd left the ship, but it had been a temporary measure. "I can add more, but it'd have to be an injection this time. Otherwise I'll just wash it back out again in a minute."
"It's okay," Kinosaki says. "It almost kinda tickles, actually."
"Huh." Perhaps Kinosaki has a higher pain tolerance than Hikaru's given him credit for.
He continues peeling Kinosaki's shirt upwards, noting every tiny twitch under his hands. He pauses when he reaches a torn and ragged strip of pink frills, going stiff as his bedside manner deserts him.
"Oh, right," Kinosaki says. "It cut through the bra strap too, didn't it? I'll set the girls free, gimme a sec."
Hikaru carefully removes his hands as the severed bra strap slithers off Kinosaki's back. Twin thumps echo in a corner of the room that Hikaru carefully refuses to look towards.
(He knows he's being ridiculous—they aren't real breasts. They probably don't even look all that inappropriate…though with Kinosaki's history and skills at disguise, who knows? Maybe they're hyperrealistic. He decides he'd rather not find out.)
"Kay, they're out of the way," Kinosaki announces. "Have at it."
Hikaru tugs the shirt off and over Kinosaki's head, taking Kinosaki's lead and letting it fall to the floor. "You can go ahead and lie down now."
Kinosaki lowers himself onto the futon with a sigh of relief. "Mmm, nothing like a bed after a hard day's work. Not that I shouldn't shower first, because I smell disgusting, but, well, priorities…"
"I'll get this sealed, and then you can shower," Hikaru promises. "You should avoid soaking it till the bandages come off, though."
Kinosaki grumbles but doesn't seem truly upset. Hikaru takes a seat on the floor beside him and examines the wound more closely.
The worst bit of the slash is right above this, between his shoulder blades. The skin is red and angry, with diluted bloodstains and spreading redness where the movement of Kinosaki's shoulders already pulled some of the fabric free—and pulled apart the edges of the injury.
It looks painful. Hikaru can imagine how it would feel on himself, and aside from the placement, it wouldn't be a big deal—but Kinosaki isn't a specialist. He's a civilian, and Hikaru's impressed he's complained as little as he has, all things considered.
Perhaps, Hikaru reflects, he should have insisted on treating the wound more comprehensively earlier. At the time, he'd only done basic care before they took getaway that Himekawa had offered. If he'd known the getaway vehicle was a shark and they'd be doused in seawater, he would have stopped to bind the wound, too. By the time he realized the problem, it was too late.
As long as he treats Kinosaki now, it shouldn't pose any serious danger, though. It's not particularly deep—it hasn't cut any important muscles or nicked any bones—but under the circumstances, it's hard to tell how much it's bled. Hikaru brings his nose close to it and smells the scents of iron mixed with the faint brine of seawater—and his own analgesic spray, of course. That last one is a bit fainter than it should be, probably also due to the seawater.
"I need to clean this," he says. "I'm going to inject those painkillers now."
Kinosaki nods, hair mussed against his pillow. "Sure."
Hikaru attaches a needle to some subcutaneous analgesic solution that's safe for civilian use, and injects it at a few strategic points on either edge of the wound. Kinosaki, again, twitches just slightly with each injection, but offers no other protest.
"I'll give it a minute to start working," he says. "In the meantime, I'm going to clean the area around the wound. Let me know if it starts hurting and I can wait a little longer."
Kinosaki hums his agreement, and so Hikaru begins, using some gentle alcohol wipes to clear out the worst of the blood and grime.
Kinosaki's pale skin is revealed with each stroke, and Hikaru tries to focus on the work without staring. He's seen plenty of bodies in his line of work, but rarely undressed and…defenseless, like this.
But at this distance, it's hard to miss that Kinosaki's skin isn't quite unblemished.
Hikaru makes sure the entirety of the area around the wound is clean, then leans forward, inspecting the minute, silvery scars that are scattered like a meteor shower across Kinosaki's back.
"These are…"
"Hey." Kinosaki turns his head, one eye turning balefully on Hikaru. "This isn't a peep show, you know."
"N-no, it's not—I mean—" Even with the makeup smudged in some places and completely washed away in others, Kinosaki is plenty striking enough to make him feel flustered about being in his close proximity, especially with that big, wide eye following him unblinkingly. "Sorry, it's just, injuries—I was already looking at this one and then—"
Kinosaki's gaze lessens in intensity and then slides towards the wall. "They're not exactly injuries anymore, are they?" he murmurs. "Now they're just scars."
"Well, I guess that's the normal way of thinking about it it, isn't it?" Hikaru's still babbling; he tries to force himself to calm down, to sound somewhat like a rational human being instead of one who's been hijacked by nerves and stray curiosity. "Fresh injuries are easiest to treat—I should be able to get this one to close without a scar if you're fine with letting me do my thing—"
"Yes please," Kinosaki says immediately. "I want backless dresses to stay on the table, and a big old scar down the middle of my back would draw attention."
"Leave it to me." Figures it'd be for a reason like that—he'd figured scars would be objectionable for civilians generally, but hadn't considered the fashion aspect. Now that Kinosaki's mentioned it, though, that's fair. He sure does seem to like showing skin under the right circumstances, and identifying marks could get him in trouble.
"So then…do you want me to try to help with these, too?"
He places a delicate finger on the faint, silvery marks, indicating the locations. They've got to be hard to see without a set of mirrors, so Kinosaki might not know where he's talking about—
Kinosaki flinches, and Hikaru pulls his finger away like he's been burned.
"Those dumb old things," Kinosaki laughs, and it's…off. It's not the way he usually laughs, a note too loud and harsh, like he's swallowing down anger. "I thought they'd faded already. No one's said anything in ages, but I guess you can still see them in direct light. That sucks."
Hikaru, thoroughly deterred, refocuses on the task at hand, poking at the wound's edges. Kinosaki shows no reaction whatsoever, so it should be safe to start gluing it back together.
"Hold still," he warns. "I'm not stitching, but once I start closing the wound, the glue I'm using is going to set quickly. To minimize scarring, it needs to line up neatly."
"'Kay."
Kinosaki goes silent as Hikaru works, his breathing shallow and even.
The skin is easy to piece together—Hikaru couldn't do this neatly on his own back, but on someone else's, where he's got full visibility and range of motion? It's a piece of cake.
He still goes slowly, not willing to accept even the smallest risk of a flaw that would make traces of the wound more visible once it's healed.
When he's done, he sits back. "Don't move for another minute or two—give it time to set fully." Kinosaki blinks, opens his mouth, hesitates. "Oh, you can talk, though."
"Your stuff is amazing," Kinosaki mutters. "I didn't feel any of that."
Hikaru smiles, a little touched and definitely a bit embarrassed. It's a nice feeling to have someone compliment his more helpful concoctions, but one he's far from accustomed to.
"So, uh." Kinosaki's gaze flickers around the room again. "You were saying? About the scars?"
"Right. Uh." He honestly thought Kinosaki had wanted him to drop it. "For the sake of, um, reference…how…?"
"Whip," Kinosaki says shortly. "A pretty nasty customer. You can probably imagine the rest."
Hikaru briefly sees red. He sucks a breath in through his teeth and mentally curates a menu of poisons he'd like to subject to someone who'd torment someone like that. Who'd hurt Kinosaki like that.
"Don't look like that," Kinosaki says, tone still carefully detached. "It was before I figured out how to curate my customers properly—well before I switched over to marks. It's practically ancient history."
That just means that the lowlife had done all that to a much younger and more vulnerable Kinosaki than the one Hikaru knows. He mentally increases a few poison concentrations, using the calculations to cool his head.
"Scars can be tricky," he says, when he's mostly calmed down. He starts to lay out the gauze, bandages and the roll of plastic wrap he'd picked up on the way here. "The older they are, the harder it is to erase them. But these ones are pretty faded—like you said, they're already easy to miss in low light. And if you'll let me treat them, I can probably get them to fade further."
"Huh." Kinosaki looks thoughtful. "You'd do that?"
"Sure."
It's only after he's answered that he realizes it's a slightly odd offer. It has nothing to do with their deal as they've arranged it up till now. Giving Kinosaki first aid makes sense, both because Hikaru should have kept Kinosaki out of harm's way in the first place and because shortening his recovery time benefits them both.
But scar care? It might have a slight benefit for Kinosaki's scamming work, but there's no particular benefit to Hikaru. Not to mention that it's kind of…well, personal. Intimate, even.
But now that he knows about it—even if it's a relatively minor thing—Hikaru doesn't want to leave it alone. And besides, he's not one to back down from a challenge, especially one related to refining his compounds.
Once the glue is set, he carefully bandages the wound, taping the gauze around the edges, wrapping the plastic wrap around his torso over it.
"Okay," he says. "You should be good to bathe now. You can take the wrap off after, but leave the bandages alone."
Kinosaki cranes his neck, trying to see the work Hikaru's finished.
"It's not too tight, is it?" Hikaru asks.
Kinosaki shakes his head. "Nope, it's fine. I'm off to wash up."
And he's off, stepping out of his remaining clothes as he goes. Hikaru deliberately turns his back, and a moment later he hears the shower turning on.
He could probably leave at this point. Kinosaki's injury has been seen to, and he's got a new drug to figure out. But he wants to check that his bandages are still dry afterwards, so he starts scanning the vicinity for signs of recently worn pajamas to hand over when he's done showering.
Besides, he needs to check what time to come over tomorrow to change the bandages.