Oneshot - How Was Your Day?
Title: How Was Your Day?
Pairing: KameDa
Genre: AU, General
Rating: PG
Summary: At the end of his shift Tatsuya, the only paramedic currently in the hospital, has one last job to do before he can call it a day...
HOW WAS YOUR DAY?
Kame has always wondered what places such as banks look like right before they close. He’s twenty three and finally living in his own apartment after being told by his best friends Jin and Koki for almost three years that since he was no longer underage he should certainly be living on his own, now he is and they’re jealous of the nice apartment he’s renting.
He’s been to the supermarket at five minutes to closing, he’s been in schools long after they’ve closed for the night - but don’t tell his teachers - he’s been in clubs and bars long enough to be faintly surprised by the sudden switching on of white overhead lights, the signal for all the party goers that they don’t have to go home but they did have to get the hell up outta there.
He’s been in fast food places until closing, when they block off the upstairs seating areas so the employees can see all their customers right before they close up, he’s been in high street retail stores right before closing agonising frantically over whether he should buy Jin the black fedora for his 24th birthday, or the black and red tartan scarf that looks like it’s the perfect size and length for Jin to wind around his hips with his black jeans and that white t-shirt with the dramatically drooping neckline that never fails to pull a sizeable amount of attention - from both sexes.
Kame smiles as he remembers he decided to get both because the hat would complete the look he had pictured, especially if Jin wore his feather and fairy necklaces and those boots that wrinkle around his calves as though they’re too big but in fact they fit just perfectly and made his legs look even hotter than usual, which Kame and Koki had agreed shouldn’t have been possible.
He remembers being at a street market as most of the stalls were in the midst of closing up looking for Koki’s birthday present because something off a stall would be right up his street. He’d ended up finding a few old CDs by God knows who that he only recognised because their name was always flashing across the screen of Koki’s ever-present mp3 player.
Now he’s in a bank, as their last customer, after an older guy in a green hunting jacket and seriously heavy duty jeans and boots and a baseball cap setting up a new account. It takes a surprising amount of time and Kame is worried they’ll tell him they can’t serve him as a result, but the woman behind the desk and the pane of plastic smiles and beckons him forward as baseball cap man strides hurriedly from the bank. Kame cocks his head on one side, catching the glint of a gold band under the fluorescent lights, and wonders if the guy’s wife knew he was setting up a new account.
“How can I help you sir?” the woman is young, only a little older than him, she’s cute, her teeth are too straight to be true and too white too, why spend so much money on your teeth when you’re a bank teller? Maybe she moonlights. Her hair is pulled back in a braid with two thin bangs hanging at her temples, the smile she’s wearing is practiced and plastic and cold but she can only have good intentions, and Kame can’t help but sympathise when she’s working so late, and god knows when her shift started.
He smiles at her and slides a piece of paper across the counter and under the plastic patrician, shooting the clear plastic a glance and wondering if this bank bothered to spring for the real bullet-proof stuff.
The transaction is fast and he’s out of the bank, nodding politely to the security guard as he raises the grill enough for Kame to duck under before rolling it back down and shutting off the lights in the front half of the bank.
Kame is just tucking the receipt into a pocket of his bag when a shadow falls over him as he swings the bag onto his shoulder. Stilling he stares into the face of two guys, older, bigger, and in a much worse mood than him.
Kame sighs.
Somehow his day just got much worse, along with his mood.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Tatsuya is a big fan of films, he especially likes the ones that play around with the idea of fate and destiny and chance and eternity. He likes the moments when the unsuspecting characters are simply going through the motions like any other day, thinking normal things and expecting the day to go just like any other when suddenly the phone rings or they catch sight of the TV or someone knocks on the door.
Tatsuya likes that thing they all do at that moment when their day ceases to be run of the mill but they haven’t realised it yet. They all suddenly look up from whatever they were doing, toward the phone, or the TV or the door with a calm, innocent, curious expression on their faces.
He’s always wondered if people do that in real life, because he’s never had the chance, that kind of sudden change to his day that will turn out to be a change in his whole life has never happened, all the changes were pre-planned and prepared for, like studying hard to get into a good high school, and from there into a university with a good science department, to medical school where he studied to be a paramedic, to being permanently employed by the teaching hospital where he trained.
In fact, speaking of movies, today hasn’t been too busy but it was fairly eventful, a young guy got his hand stuck in a train door, the automatic door had some kind of fault and closed too soon before freezing entirely, clamped on a young law student’s hand. His friend had chattered nervously, non-stop, the entire time Tatsuya had been releasing his hand and treating it, the law student had smiled and rolled his eyes apologetically. After today Tatsuya is thinking a movie or two, some pizza and maybe ice cream, no matter how much Yuichi teases him and says he’s girly for liking ice cream so much, would be a perfect way to end the day.
He reaches up for the buttons of his white shirt and has literally just undone the first one when the door to the changing room flies open. Tatsuya looks up at the sudden intrusion, a calm and innocent look of mild curiosity on his face.
“Ueda-kun, are you off yet?” leaning in through the door, holding onto the doorframe stands Domoto Koichi, his senior here, much as it doesn’t seem that way most of the time.
“Just about, I was about to head home, why? Don’t tell me a call just came in!” Tatsuya doesn’t say this because he doesn’t want to take the call, well, he kind of doesn’t, he wants to go home since his shift technically ended thirteen seconds ago…fourteen…fifteen…sixteen…seventeen…
Actually he asks because he gets the feeling he has no choice because the next shift hasn’t properly started and the other paramedic team isn’t there yet. What makes it more annoying is that Yuichi already left a few minutes ago. He’s no trainee, Tatsuya’s perfectly capable of handling a call by himself as long as it’s not too serious, some stuff requires more than two hands, and gosh darn it, he left his spare ones in a box at home today.
“Yeah, looks like a guy collapsed outside a bank in the town centre and a passerby called it in, and Ohkura-kun and Yasuda-kun aren’t here yet,” Tatsuya sends his senpai a withering look.
“Koichi-senpai, Tacchon and Yassan are probably with Subaru-kun in the ER!”
“I don’t think so, it sounds quiet in there, please Ueda-kun, it doesn’t sound too serious, I don’t think it needs a bus*, the guy’s probably either drunk or diabetic, handle this for me while I find those two morons,” Koichi gives him a pleading look that would only usually work on his partner Tsuyoshi but Tatsuya must be in a people pleasing mood or something because he sighs and agrees to drive out to the call, even though there’s an odd nagging in the back of his head when he recalls the details ‘in front of a bank’.
Since Koichi says it’s probably not serious Tatsuya opts to just take the paramedics car instead of tying up an ambulance. He sighs as he slips behind the wheel of the white Honda Accord Tourer with its green and yellow stickers and the word PARAMEDICS splashed all over it in garish orange font. He shoots a glance at the ambulances lined up beside the paramedic cars, somewhat glad the job probably won’t require one of them, he doesn’t like driving them.
He wonders for a second whether or not he should turn on the siren, but it’s getting late and the roads are fairly clear so he decides against it. It’s not a long drive from the hospital to the bank Koichi mentioned so Tatsuya’s there in under ten minutes, but that’s where the smooth sailing ends and the rough waters begin.
Tatsuya had expected the passerby or whoever had called in to still be there with the guy who had collapsed, but there are no cars and no people and every shop is closed, the metal grills pulled down and all the lights turned off. The man he can see lying just outside the bank is completely alone. If Tatsuya hadn’t been able to see him he’d have thought the call might have been a prank and left, but he can see him so he grabs his kit from the seat beside him and hurries to the man’s side.
As he drops to his knees beside him and gets a look at his face he realises the guy is barely a man, he’s quite slender and small built, he can see fairly strong arms through the sleeves of his red shirt, which besides the white t-shirt and jeans is all he’s wearing, more to the point, it’s September, it’s late and there’s not even a hint of a jacket. And even more worrying, he’s not wearing shoes.
Tatsuya stares for a moment at the guy’s grey socks before looking back at his face. The guy’s eyes aren’t quite closed so he’s not sure if he’s unconscious or not, since he hasn’t moved or seemed to realise Tatsuya is there. His face is quite angular, proportioned in a way that Tatsuya is sure should not be attractive, yet this person is very attractive…despite the purple bruise Tatsuya can see on his cheekbone when he leans closer. The guy’s arm is wrapped around his stomach, while the other lies seemingly useless on the ground, and his legs are curled close to his torso, as if he were in pain or cold…or both.
“Sir?” Tatsuya says cautiously. He’s not entirely surprised when he doesn’t get a response, even if the guy were awake he’s apparently taken an impressive hit to his cheekbone, and judging by the positioning of his arms and legs he might have taken a hit to the stomach too. Can he hear me?
“Sir?” Tatsuya tries again with an identical result and he moves back to his kit, retrieving an eye light. The guy is already in the recovery position, but he needs to know what happened or there isn’t a lot he can do, but he’s starting to wonder if maybe he does need a bus after all…just as long as he doesn’t need a box…
“Crouching in front of the fallen young man Tatsuya holds the light in his left hand and gently touches his face with his right, carefully opening his eyes a little more. Shining the light across the guys pupils, which are blessedly responsive, he tries for a third time.
“Sir? Can you hear me?”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Kame had never experienced a blackout before, not a real one anyway. He’s been hit in the head with a baseball a couple times when he was younger, and his older brother had opened the front door and hit him in the head as he was just reaching to open it, but those blackouts weren’t serious, they lasted only the time it took for him to go from a standing position to a lying one and then he’d be staring at the ceiling trying to work out why and who it was he needed to punch for it.
He’s quite sure he’s never been beaten like this before too, he’s been beaten up before, what high school student escapes at least one beating in their three years at high school, but this kind of beating didn’t get dished out too much, a step further and he’d have started to wonder if his internal organs could take such treatment without coming to resemble Italian food.
Whatever is in front of his eyes doesn’t look like the street he was standing on before. It’s darker and there are spots of yellow-orange light everywhere, and stripes of glowing red and blue and green and white and yellow, and a hundred shapes he can’t put a name to and it’s beginning to confuse him enough to make him close his eyes properly again when he starts to get the feeling he’s being spoken to.
There’s a low sound, like the strings of a bass guitar being slowly, repeatedly strummed by expert hands, but it isn’t words, somehow his brain - having been thrown unceremoniously against the inside of his skull - can’t turn that low musical sound into words. But somehow he likes how it sounded, it’s calm, almost sleepy, but the more he listens to it, the more he begins to realise that it is indeed words. Meaning someone is speaking to him…
Damn, those bastards aren’t back are they!?
And then the fog on the speech-interpreting part of his brain seems to clear somewhat.
“Sir? Can you hear me? Sir?”
Sir? Kame can’t remember ever having been called ‘sir’.
He blinks and this seems to have somehow been the right thing to do, because the tone and words change a little, they sound less low now, not high, more like the last string of a bass than the first.
“Ah! Thank god! Alright, at least your brain is functioning, but sir, I need you to try and look at me or talk to me, you may be bleeding internally and I have to know whether there might be any damage to your brain,”
Damage to his brain!? Oh, right, because he got smacked around the head, of course, but he can hear and understand this person, and he’s blinking and thinking…talking, he can do that, right?
He swivels his eyes until they land on a dark shape that is probably the person who was talking to him, but the nearest street light is behind him so his face is in shadow. Suddenly the person is leaning closer and his fingers are against Kame’s face.
He tenses and blinks, unsure as to how to react to that, though he isn’t given much chance to mull it over before a bright light is shone on his eyes and he narrows them before feeling them be pried open again.
“T-That h-hurts,” he groans, his voice raw and hoarse. And there’s that voice made of music again.
“Good, you can talk, and your nervous system must be working more or less okay, and your pupils are completely responsive, but I still think I’m going to have to bus you,”
“Bus me?”
“Sorry, I mean, I think I’ll have to call for an ambulance, can you tell me what happened?”
“Uh, sure, but can you tell me who you are first?” the person laughs softly, and Kame can’t help but think it’s almost cute.
“Sorry, sorry, I almost forgot, my name is Ueda Tatsuya, I’m a paramedic,”
“A paramedic? How’d you know I was here?” his own voice sounds sluggish and strained, like he’s just woken up from a heavy, drug-induced sleep. Though the truth isn’t far off.
“A passerby called in for you, though I’m surprised they didn’t stay,”
“They must have thought I was drunk or something,”
Tatsuya frowned. He‘s glad this person is responsive, glad they’re conscious, even though he will probably need an ambulance and a night in the hospital. But he’s still worried and a little curious as to what happened in the first place. This guy is obviously not drunk.
“Can you tell me your name?” he asks, hoping this won’t be one of those movie moments when the person sits up and clutches his head wailing ‘Who am I!?’
“K-Kamenashi Kazuya,”
Thank god for that!
“Good, now, do you remember what happened, Kamenashi-san?” Tatsuya asks, still looking into Kamenashi’s eyes, before moving the light to look at the injuries to the guy’s face.
“Yeah, when I came out of the bank two guys beat me up,” Tatsuya pauses, glancing into Kamenashi’s eyes before reaching back for his kit, dragging it closer so he can see what he’s doing.
“Any idea why?” Kamenashi sighs and screws up his eyes and opens them again, blinking rapidly and harshly. Tatsuya frowns.
“Kamenashi-san?”
“My eyes keep going out of focus, is that normal?” Tatsuya shines his light into them again, moves it from side to side and tells Kamenashi to follow it. He does, without hesitation.
“Still hazy?”
“Yeah, but it comes and goes,”
“You’re following the light alright, so I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, probably just dizziness from the fall,” he hesitates.
“You know what, I’m gonna call for an ambulance to be on the safe side, I’m not a specialist, I’m just a paramedic,” Kamenashi looks like he’s going to nod but thinks better of it.
“Alright,”
“Don’t worry or anything, I’m sure you’re fine, but we should be sure, just try not to move your head, stay in that position,” again Kamenashi comes close to nodding but catches himself and sighs.
Moving down Kamenashi’s body Tatsuya thinks he should keep him talking, to keep tabs on his brain function, plus it’s dark, cold and quiet out here, if he doesn’t like the silence, his patient probably doesn’t either.
“So, Kamenashi-san,” he says, fumbling in his kit for a plaster for the cut on Kamenashi’s cheekbone. It’s surrounded by bruising so the hit probably came with a free ring for emphasis, just putting the plaster over the split skin would hurt “Do you remember exactly what happened? Why did they attack you, these people?”
Kamenashi is silent for a second and Tatsuya is about to check his consciousness again and repeat the question but then he speaks.
“I had a receipt in my hand from a transaction so I guess they must have thought I had taken some money out, but actually I was just transferring some money to another account, I only had about two or three thousand yen on cash on me,” Tatsuya, dabbing some ointment on the bruise forming on Kamenashi’s chin, glances at him and can’t help but wonder what account he was transferring money to but of course doesn’t ask.
“I suppose you told them you didn’t have any money?” he says, feeling Kamenashi’s waist and stomach, when he touches a certain place on his stomach Kamenashi winces and instinctively draws his legs up further.
“That hurt?”
A nod in reply.
“Kamenashi-san, I need to lift up your shirt to see the damage, so you need to straighten your legs out a little, it okay if I life your shirt up,” instead of replying straight away Kamenashi suddenly laughs hoarsely. In fact, it’s almost a hoarse kind of giggle, it’s cute and Tatsuya smiles even though he has no idea why Kamenashi is laughing.
“Not sure a guy has ever asked before doing that before, I think they usually just assume,” he says. Tatsuya grins.
“Oh? You get into this situation a lot?” he asks, a suggestion in his tone, pleased Kamenashi’s sense of humour at least is still intact.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Tatsuya glances up at his face before lifting up Kamenashi’s shirt and shining his light over a large bruise forming just below his diaphragm. He sighs and places three fingertips in the centre of the bruise.
“Kamenashi-san, does this hurt?” he presses lightly.
“Not really, a little,”
Tatsuya presses a little harder.
“How about now?”
“That hurts,”
A little harder. Kamenashi winces again.
“Now?”
“Yeah, that really hurts,” Tatsuya sighs and lowers the shirt.
“Kamenashi-san, you may have a bruised diaphragm, I’ll be sure to tell your doctor to check for you,”
“Quit calling me Kamenashi-san, sounds like you’re talking to my dad,”
“What do you want me to call you?”
“Everyone calls me Kame,” Tatsuya smirks. That’s cute.
“Alright, Kame then,”
In silence for a few moments Tatsuya checks over the rest of Kame’s body, but besides knocking him around the head, face and stomach the only other thing they went after were his shoes. Then Tatsuya realises something
“Kame-san, you said you had money with you, it was in a wallet or a bag right?”
“Yeah, I think they took it,” Tatsuya nods and sits back on his heels.
“Looks like it, you’ll need to file a police report, hopefully you’ll be able to get compensation for the things you lost,” noticing a shiver run over Kame’s shoulders Tatsuya rises and walks back to the car, taking a green blanket from the back seat.
Returning to Kame’s side he lays the blanket over his body, tucking it around his feet and shoulders. Kame looks up at him as best he can without moving his head, giving him a small smile and thanking him in a tiny voice. Tatsuya smiles back and, having done all he can at the scene decides that since Kame shouldn’t and quite probably can’t, move he should radio for an ambulance.
“Wait a moment, I’ll be right back, I’m going to call for an ambulance for you,”
“What about you? Are you just going to stay here?” Tatsuya stares at him.
“I can’t just leave you here, if I did I’d lose the right to call myself a human being!” Kame seems both surprised and pleased by this response but says nothing as Tatsuya walked back to the car a second time and radios briskly for a bus.
Returning to where Kame is still lying on his side, one hand curled around the edge of the blanket, his fingers repeatedly stroking the green fleecy material, he sits beside him and leans back against the wall, one leg stretched out in front of him, one knee drawn up, which he rests his arm on. He tips his head back and stares up at the clear night sky.
After a moment of silence he figures he should carry on talking.
“What was in the bag anyway?” he asks.
“My wallet, no chance of seeing that again, a notebook, the keys to my locker at work, a drinks bottle and a book,” Tatsuya glances down from the sky at Kame, who seems to be staring into space, still subconsciously caressing the fleece blanket.
“What book was it?” Tatsuya asks, only half aware of what he’s going to ask before he actually says it.
“I Am A Cat,” Kame says, a hint of a smile in his voice.
“Good thing I know that book or I’d be worried you’d suffered brain damage, you like it?”
“Haven’t read much of it,”
“I read it a couple of years ago, a friend gave it to me for my birthday,”
“You like it?”
“Yeah, it’s an interesting point of view, I’m sure you’ll receive compensation for it, actually, the force might replace it for you, they did that once when someone’s car was broken into and their CDs were stolen,”
“I’d kinda rather they replaced my wallet, my friend gave it to me,” Tatsuya glances down at Kame, his eyes are moving as he speaks, as though he’s constantly checking he can still control them. He blinks slowly and curls slightly tighter into himself against the cold of the night.
Tatsuya rubs his arms and stares up at the sky thinking over his day and how he has simply done his job up until now and how it had indeed been one of those moments when he had been, as usual, changing out of his uniform to go home for the day when suddenly Koichi-senpai had appeared suddenly and changed his entire fate.
He looks down at Kame again and smiles. It isn’t movies and ice-cream with the comfort of his sofa, but maybe it’s just as good in its own way.
“Ueda-san?”
“Tatsuya,”
“Eh?”
“If I’m calling you Kame, you should call me Tatsuya,” he watches Kame’s face in an attempt to gauge some kind of reaction and is relieved and pleased to see a small smile, before Kame swivels his eyes up to meet Tatsuya’s.
“Okay,” is all he says for a few moments. Tatsuya goes back to staring at the sky until Kame speaks up again.
“I guess this isn’t really a normal callout for you,” Tatsuya smiled at the stars.
“Actually, I expected to wait around for ambulances with people quite often but usually there are friends or family members making a fuss and I don’t end up saying much, it’s kind of a nice change to my usual routine actually,” Kame laughs softly, stroking the hem of the blanket again.
“Funny thought really, isn’t it?” he says softly, as if to himself.
“You have to ask questions, get details, tell them what’s happening and what you’re doing to help, but they don’t ever ask you anything besides ‘will I be alright?’, doesn’t anyone ever ask you about…you? Don’t ask about your life, your family, even your day?” Tatsuya looks down at Kame, looking slightly perplexed as he realises this is true. Kame looks back, eyes wide and innocent as he waits for an answer.
“Now that you mention it…no, sometimes they don’t even ask for my name,”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“A lot of the time those people don’t have time to think about me, I’m there to help not make small talk,” Kame smirks.
“So what’s your excuse now?” Tatsuya smirks back and absent mindedly raises a hand to brush his fringe out of his eyes.
“You’re just too damn interesting,”
Kame grins and for a minute there is a comfortable silence and in the distance, if they both strain their ears, the sounds of cars and sirens, but are they ambulance sirens or police sirens?
“So, Tatsuya,” Kame says suddenly, his voice still soft and Tatsuya looks down at him, meeting his gaze and his smile.
“How was your day?”
おわり
A/N I know, I said no more oneshots until the multichaps were finished, but I got this idea when I was in town the other day. Someone was lying under a blanket outside a bank and a paramedic was sitting with her. Anyway, I’m working on the next chapter of ‘Strive For Something Better’, only a couple of chapters to go, and as soon as it’s done I’ll work on finishing ‘Whisper in the Darkness’.
*A bus is jargon for an ambulance and a box means coroner’s van, usually I think cops are the ones who use this jargon but I like it for some reason so I stuck it in, jargon makes it sound more authentic or something…whatever.