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When Kakashi encouraged his genin to stop by his apartment if anything happened to them, he didn’t think Sasuke would be the first one to come stumbling through Kakashi’s window at 3:12 in the morning.
But that’s exactly what Kakashi was seeing. Sasuke stumbled around with the grace of a newborn doe, something that mildly concerned the jounin considering that Sasuke was highly athletic and moved in a feline grace that all Uchiha displayed.
“Sasuke?”
The boy whirled, a startled gasp falling out of his lips as he looked at Kakashi who was still lying on his bed pushed into the corner of the room. Sasuke swallowed, brushing sweaty bangs out of his face as he tried to find words to throw into an explanation.
“Hey, calm down,” Kakashi directed, slowly moving out of the bed so he didn’t startle Sasuke into jumping back out the window. “What happened?”
Sasuke twitched, erratically and randomly and then started visibly shaking. Beads of cold sweat gathered by his hairline but didn’t fall.
“I-” Sasuke started but was cut off by an involuntary shiver, his face flushed so suddenly that Kakashi worried he would drop unconscious right there. “I took more. "M’dizzy.” Sasuke slurred.
Sasuke rarely sweated, most definitely did not slur his words or stumble around. But here he was trembling like was about to start seizing and Kakashi had no idea what the hell Sasuke could have done to end up like this.
“More? Took more of what?” Kakashi asked. He just needed to keep Sasuke talking. He already knew that Sasuke’s answer would be the low-grade pain meds all shinobi took after a harsh training session-
“M-melatonin.”
“Excuse me?” Kakashi ground out as he put Sasuke’s unusual behavior together.
Sasuke was overdosing. On pills that could temporarily alter your sleep cycle and send you into la la land.
“D-didn’t mean t-to.” Sasuke shuddered, shivering and then stumbling into Kakashi’s desk, sending multiple mission report scrolls crashing to the floor. The noise startled the Uchiha enough to make him jump back.
Sasuke’s bare feet twisted on the floor and sent the boy sprawling back. Kakashi leaped up silently to catch the boy and save him from a concussion being added to the hypothermia the overdose was obviously bringing about. “Ok, you're definitely going to the hospital.” Kakashi sighed as he grabbed the blanket off his bed to wrap Sasuke in after another wave of shivers tore through the boy.
Despite the fogginess, Sasuke clearly still caught the word ‘hospital’ and immediately started thrashing. Feet, wrapped in the blanket, kicked uselessly in the air as Kakashi carried Sasuke bridal style. Kakashi frowned disapprovingly but didn’t lecture Sasuke about fighting him when hospital visits came up like he usually would.
Kakashi had never overdosed, but he knew enough about the symptoms to know that Sasuke was probably dizzy beyond imagination and didn’t want to make it worse by speaking more than need be.
But the hypothermia was starting to look bad and he didn’t need Sasuke passing out on him either. “Sasuke? Sasuke, talk to me, what happened?”
Leaping out the window and deciding to run on the sidewalk so Sasuke didn’t have to deal with jumping from roof to roof, Kakashi patiently waited for Sasuke to say something or just make noise in general-
“I t-took one like always,” Sasuke said, teeth chattering, “but I wo-woke u-up and my h-head hurt so I t-tried to take pai-painkillers but I took m-more of t-the Melatonin in-instead.” The sentence was said painfully slowly and about each word was accompanied with a stutter but Kakashi listened attentively anyway.
“How much did you take?”
“T-thought it w-was low g-grade painkillers, s-so I took t-three.” Sasuke answered, eyes slipping shut but snapping back open when Kakashi let out a grunt.
“Stay awake, Sasuke” Kakashi ordered, speeding up as he zipped down the streets towards the hospital.
“ ‘Kay.” Sasuke said but couldn’t fight when his eyelids started slipping over his large obsidian eyes. Kakashi cursed and weaved around early morning stragglers as he raced towards the hospital entrance.
“Help!” The jounin barked, startling the early morning desk lady and attracting the attention of three nurses. The nurses all but snatched Sasuke out of Kakashi’s arms and placed the trembling Uchiha on a stretcher before zipping off down a hall and into an elevator. They didn’t protest when Kakashi slipped in after them but instead shoved a clipboard into the jounin’s hands.
“What happened?” One asked. Kakashi fumbled, wandering how to place it lightly before deciding to be blunt about.
“He’s overdosing on Melatonin.” Kakashi deadpanned, filling out Sasuke’s name and birthday onto the lines of the paper attached to the clipboard.
The nurses relaxed, “Melatonin overdoses aren’t life threatening, but it does look like he has hypothermia and we do need to put him on a mandatory watch for seizures.”
“...ok?”
“Mind telling me why you allowed him to take over 3g of Melatonin?” She asked, pushing the Uchiha’s stretcher into an empty room and nodding towards her colleagues when they excused themselves to make rounds.
“I didn’t allow him to-”
“So how’d he take...how many did he take?”
“He told me four-”
“FOUR!?” The nurse snapped snatching the clipboard from Kakashi and reading over the info he wrote in. “He’s 12! They don’t sell over the counter melatonin gummies to minors so he had to have them prescribed in pill form. If you're his jounin-sensei why do you not have all his prescriptions in your possession!?”
Kakashi froze. What the hell did she mean in his possession. No one ever told him that he had to watch over his genins medication, the council had just flung the pre-teens on him and left him to figure it out.
“Hold on, let me grab his files…” The nurse muttered, “If he starts seizing, hold his tongue so he doesn’t choke.”
After throwing the morbid advice at the Hatake, the nurse strode from the room, mumbling Sasuke’s birthday under her name as she went to the front desk.
The heart monitor Sasuke had been hastily connected to chirped weakly. The boy whispered nonsense under his breath as he fought off the urge to sleep. The lights burned his eyes but he was too weak to move his head and didn’t want to bother Kakashi.
The man in question let out a weak exhale and sat down in the plastic chair near the bed. For a moment it was peaceful, although the slow, pathetic beat Sasuke’s heart was making was concerning, until the nurse flew back in the room.
A file was in her hand, freshly printed papers that she rudely tossed at Kakashi as she lectured him for irresponsibility.
“He suffers insomnia, for a while too. They prescribed him melatonin meant to be monitored by an adult . He also has dormant asthma that acts up when he’s chakra exhausted, the prescription for that hasn’t been filled in a while, Hatake-sama !” The nurse lectured as she wrote down something on Sasuke’s chart. She gave him one last disapproving look and then bustled out when the man didn’t respond.
“S-sorry…” A weak voice rasped from Kakashi’s side. Kakashi kept his eye on the spot the nurse had been standing but answered anyway, “What for?”
“S’my fault I took s-so many-”
“No it’s not,” Kakashi cut off sharply, “She’s right, I should have known to check up on your- on all three of you kids’ health problems.”
“Did w-we come w-with an i-instruction manual?” Sasuke sarcastically quipped, trembling voice tugging at something in Kakashi’s chest.
Kakashi chuckled, if Sasuke could crack jokes in a place he despised and in the cusp of consciousness and sleep with hypothermia symptoms racking through his body, then he would definitely be okay.
Maybe a little annoyed when Kakashi started monitoring his prescription intake after this experience, but okay.