Well hello there. It's been a while, yes it has. Mah, I apologise for my inability to upload. Well, not really. I've been busy, and fanfiction hasn't been a priority for me. In any case, to make up for my absence, I'm attempting another multi-chaptered fic for a while. To be honest, I'm not sure where I'm going with this one. All I know is that it's definitely 6918, it an AU, and that, including this one, I only have three chapters planned out.

SO! In the event that I will (likely) run out of ideas, I will now say this: I have pretty much little to no control over my updates, and I make no promises to stick to any sort of schedule. I can only hope that it won't last for eternity like certain other multi-chaptered fics of mine. ¬_¬

Also, it's recently been brought to my attention that people are having difficulty reading the dialogue I write when I use single speech marks rather than double. I've tried to change it so everyone will be satisfied, but since I'm so used to using the apostrophe key to mark speech, I'll have some troubles getting used to actual speech marks, so forgive any inevitable slip ups.

Take Off Your Clothes and Don't Fall Over

Hibari's dislike of hospitals was most definitely not a fear. That's what he always told himself anyway. It was an aversion. A simple dislike that was certainly much less herbivorous than it sounded. He hated needles, he hated doctors and he absolutely despised waiting rooms. Waiting rooms, with their out of date magazines and their potted plastic plants and their assortment of pamphlets that only served to scare patients rather than reassure them. And then there was always that one little old lady that would sit right next to him, despite there being plenty of free seats elsewhere, or the annoying small child that would be pressing the tap to the water cooler excitedly, only to accidentally spray the water everywhere.

It wasn't just the waiting rooms that Hibari hated. There was also that pungent medicinal smell that assaulted his senses, reminding over and over him that yes, he was reluctantly in need of medical attention. Every time he breathed in through his nose, that smell would be there, making his eye twitch in annoyance and his stomach churn unpleasantly. Not that he would ever admit that though.

And then there were the doctors. In their white coats and ties, their shoes polished to a high mirror shine that blatantly yelled out 'I'm making so much more money than you!' Stethoscopes draped around their necks and glasses perched on their noses, pens poking out of breast pockets and medical charts in their hands. They always had bright friendly grins on their faces, but their eyes would be wishing for the day to be over. Hibari hated them. Hated how they crowded together, or how they patronized him as if he were nothing but a child.

Self-righteous, stuck up bastards. The lot of them.

Hibari made a point to avoid visiting hospitals whenever possible, though that was difficult in his line of work. Being a police officer, he was bound to invite a few unwanted injuries that really couldn't be taken care of with just a splash of disinfectant, a bandage and a safety pin. Then again, Hibari wasn't usually one to actually let himself get injured so easily, not like his herbivorous coworkers. Nobody in Namimori was as strong as he was, so nobody in Namimori was able to land so much as a hit on him.

Unless guns were brought into the equation.

It was a peculiar feeling, being shot, but he didn't even really notice until he had chased down the criminal and turned him into a bloodied smear of an afterthought on the ground. Yes, he acknowledged that there was a light pain in his arm, but had quickly ignored it. After all, it was just a little shock, like someone had shuffled together a defibrillator and pressed it to his shoulder to awaken his pain receptors. But, like the dutiful police officer he was, he completely blanked out the light pain and continued with his job.

It was only when his adrenaline levels had dropped and when the bloodied pleb of a criminal was being carted away on an old rickety gurney that he realized that his shoulder was actually in quite a lot of pain. A decidedly odd sensation, a sharp stinging feeling, like someone had jammed their fingers into his skin and twisted.

He had looked down at himself with a deep set frown, blinking at the frayed material of his blue uniform, watching as the crimson blood oozed out and stained the fabric an unattractive brown. Curiously, he had cocked his head, finally acknowledging that he had been shot. And that was when the pain really started to kick in. It had been noticed now and had clearly decided that it would promote itself from a sharp stinging sensation, to a pain so vivid and biting that it made Hibari briefly question his mortality.

Quite frankly, Hibari was more annoyed that his uniform had been ruined.

As the pain grew, Hibari began to realize that he may actually need medical attention. Losing too much blood could potentially get problematic for him in the long run, and he didn't really feel like passing out in the middle of the street. It was an inconvenience born of his own carelessness, and he supposed that he needed to get it fixed, especially since the world seem to be turning maybe just a little bit faster than what he was used to. And was there always two of everything?

Fifteen minutes later, after outright refusing a wheelchair, he found himself sitting in a damned waiting room, a graying old lady chatting animatedly to one side of him, a seven year old sneezing boy on the other. The chair was uncomfortable, the air smelt like antiseptic, his arm was throbbing and there was a worryingly large vein in his forehead that was pulsing harder with every time the old lady on his left patted his hand with some sort of cooing proverb that quite frankly made no sense to him.

He breathed hard through his nose to stop himself from making a decidedly herbivorous noise as he clamped a hand around his hastily bandaged wound in attempt to stop it from bleeding too much. It had been a while since he had visited a hospital – the last time being because he broke his hand from punching someone just a little too hard in the face – so he was suddenly very aware of how uncomfortable he was. His leg was jumping, his stomach twisting and every so often his brow would twitch in a manner that only served to annoy him more.

Nurses in their white dresses and sensible shoes would scuttle in and out of the room, sometimes carrying a clipboard, sometimes calling out a name. Hibari often wondered why the hell the sniffles of a small child took precedent over a potentially dangerous gunshot wound to the upper arm, or why the chatty old lady was shuffling off with her hunched back and her chirpy pleasantries to see the doctor before him.

His name was called out after two almost unbearably long hours of sitting in that hellish waiting room, eyes flicking from a poster on the wall asking him if he had checked his urine for blood lately to a pamphlet on the table before him with a cartoon uterus giving him information on the stages of pregnancy. Not something he would usually choose to concentrate on, but it took his mind off being in a waiting room – especially when a tired young mother with a set of obnoxiously loud twins strode in.

The walk through the hospital only served to remind him why he hated such places. Old gray men in slippers and white gowns trudged down the hallways, using their drip stands as crutches, teenage boys were being carted about on wheelchairs with broken limbs – a leg, an arm, one even had a his foot twisted at a decidedly odd angle.

It wasn't just crowding. It was contagious crowding. A woman coughing weakly into her hand could easily have influenza, the young boy with red bumps all over his face could be a potential victim of smallpox, the middle-aged man with the rounded purple swelling above his eye could have the bubonic plague for all he knew. There were all sorts of germs and viruses floating about hospitals, and Hibari didn't want to be on the receiving end of one, thank you very much.

He followed the nurse silently, noticing with a spark of irritation that her feet were making soft slapping noises on the much too clean floor. Each and every step she took reminded him what had happened, what he had let happen. You got shot, you got shot, you got shot. Mocking him, laughing at him. He found himself glaring at the rubber shoes the petite nurse wore, half growling at them bitterly. He could feel his shoulder start to bleed again, and it seemed like the world around him was spinning, though he refused to acknowledged that this was a case of dizziness. There was no way he of all people could possibly have such a herbivorous symptom of being shot in the goddamn arm.

How did it happen again? One moment he was chasing after some criminal scumbag that needed putting down, and the next he was still chasing him, only now with a bullet lodged into his arm, and blood dribbling out and staining his beloved uniform. It was impossible for the bastard to have shot him, since Hibari had him in his sights at all time.

Unless, of course, he had an accomplice.

Almost groaning at the realization, Hibari slumped his shoulders, only to immediately return to his original position when he felt just how much it fucking hurt to convey his exasperation. His jaw set and his hand shot to his arm, trying to hold in the pain that he refused to acknowledge.

Upon arriving to the hospital not two hours and fifteen minutes earlier, he had been given basic first aid since he had outright refused to be treated like some herbivorous patient (you got shot, you got shot, you got shot.) A bandage here, a pain pill there and he was deemed by the power invested in the nurse at the front desk by the Namimori hospital ready to wait for some big shot, stuck-up-his-own-ass doctor. Now, however, the pain pill was wearing off, and Hibari was seriously considering overly harassing the unusually tiny nurse for a shot of morphine or some equally opiate drug that would send him into blissful semi-unconsciousness.

Fortunately, his carnivorous nature overthrew his desire to accidentally land himself on the sex offenders list, and his shook his thoughts from his head.

After what seemed like a lifetime of thinking through his steps so he wouldn't stumble (left foot, right foot, left foot right foot) the nurse finally arrived at a room. She bowed politely to Hibari, clipboard held against her chest, and mumbled something about the doctor arriving shortly before she scuttled off with those horribly noisy rubber shoes.

(You got shot, you got shot, you got shot.)

Frowning, he pushed his way into the room and looked around, hand still pressed against his wound. This...this he was not expecting. It could have been his semi-delirious state because of the blood, but Hibari was certain that a physician's office should not be that messy.

The desk was strewn with papers and unfilled prescriptions, along with a tipped over pencil pot with one, two, three pens lying by it. Nearby the pot was an opened bar of chocolate, half-eaten, and a mug with the words 'world's prettiest princess' written across it in swirly pink English writing, topped off with a cute little glittery crown that had Hibari raising his brows in unsurity.

Some of the documents had been swept from the desk by the wind coming from an open window, and at least three papers had landed on a blue swivel chair that look like it had seen one too many twirls. Unprofessional? Hell yes. Hibari was suddenly very skeptical of who was going to walk through that door to see to his bloody arm that just so happened to have a bullet very rudely intruding.

He didn't hear the door open behind him – maybe that was because his ears were ringing obnoxiously loudly – so he almost jumped when a smooth and very male voice spoke behind him. "Take off your shirt and pants and sit down on the bed."

Instead of jumping in surprise, Hibari instead turned around a little too sharply to face the speaker. Under normal circumstances, Hibari would have pulled off a smooth move like that with an air of finesse that demonstrated his skilled performance when he fought (or, in layman's terms, made him look really cool.) However, due to his light head, the blood that never seemed to stop pouring from his arm, and the pain pills that had worn off enough to let him feel pain, but not enough to keep his head clear, he found himself victim to a rather disorienting wave of vertigo.

And so he stumbled.

The doctor didn't bother making a move to help him as the sudden turn sent him to the floor. Though Hibari did try to retain his dignity by grabbing something to stop his likely-to-be humiliating descent to the ground, his inhibited senses made hand-eye coordination just about impossible. His hand swiped at thin air and his leg gave out under him and he fell quite pathetically right on his arm.

Now, there were a few ways Hibari could have reacted to this situation, and he mused about these as he fell and as he lay there in half shock. Firstly, he could stand up, punch the doctor in the head and make a herbivorous escape that would taint his record as the invincible, stoic carnivore of Namimori. Secondly, he could blush like a girl, stand up and not meet the doctor's eyes. This too would ruin his reputation, and was an option that Hibari was ashamed of coming up with. (He blamed it on the blood loss.)

Instead, he decided to pretend that it hadn't happened.

Licking his lips, he sat up and blinked, immediately taking note that the doctor wore leather boots rather than the rubber shoes most other staff in the hospital wore. Languidly, slowly, making sure he wouldn't humiliate himself more, Hibari pulled himself up and ignored the searing pain shooting through his arm and now his leg from where he had twisted it at a peculiar angle. He nonchalantly brushed himself off.

"My shirt and pants?" he repeated, absently wondering if his face was flushed in the humiliation he was trying to ignore.

The doctor smirked. Cocked his head. "Well, the pants are optional," he said airily, moving to approach his chair, "but I think we'd both prefer it if they were off."

And that was when Hibari, even in his disoriented state, decided that he absolutely loathed this man.

First chapter up! That wasn't so painful. Maybe when I get a few more chapters written, I'll find a direction which I want to explore. For now, it's just a plotless AU that may somehow blossom into something worth the time I'm planning to spend on it. Hopefully, I'll manage to stick with this one. I must admit, I have missed writing 6918. Let's try and keep this fandom alive people! :D