Chapter Text
It has been a fortnight and not once have I left him alone. In the time that I have spent watching him, not daring to leave his side, I have noticed many things. Things I once found enjoyable, things I delighted watching in others. In his case though, each small thing I notice ads to the heaviness that weights on my chest. He twitches in his sleep, restless and spastic. The hollow of his neck dips deeply when he sucks in uneven breaths, and the bones below his collar protrude like the legs of spindly insects from a thorax. He’s too thin. His brow creases often in his sleep, his fingers grasp at the covers so tightly that he has caused the beginnings of tears in the silk, his teeth grind, his spine twists and turns and drags the rest of him along as he writhes. He cries at times, very silently. He screams at times too. It is when he screams that I cannot bear to be near him, it is when he screams that I long to mutilate every last shadow before I separate my own limbs from my body. His fear is something I used to incite, something I used to welcome. Now his fear and screams make me ill. He is no longer afraid of me, that much is certain. His terror is for something else, and when he screams during these times, it is my name and no other that he calls.
One day he finally opens his eyes. It is an ugly affair, and any thoughts I had of him being sound in the mind die quickly. He claws himself awake and tears apart the covers. He throws my robe off his shoulder with a shriek so that he is naked save for oozing bandages. His eyes are at first unseeing, glazed an ugly, dull grey. His mouth is half open with his tongue rising and falling slightly while he pants for breath. His eyes focus and he darts them around, searching franticly. He seizes up when he sees me. His pupils dilate, his breathing becomes more rapid, the bones in his chest push at his skin as if they wished to break free from his flesh. I can hear the blood in his veins, the rattle of his lungs as he draws air, the creaking of his joints. His terror rolls over me in waves so much stronger than when he slept and rather than becoming drunk, I feel as if it chokes me and that I might drown.
He moves quickly. It startles me. Me of all things! And yet it’s the truth, his new state makes me uneasy, makes me recoil from him in the way that one recoils from the guilt of a crime. He lunges forward and gathers the front of my robes in his matchstick fingers, tightly, desperately. He pulls me down to him and buries his face in my chest. His tremors move through me and I am lost. His body is so cold, so boney, his hair is damp with sweat, and all about him there is a brittle quality like spun sugar on a winter’s day.
Unease slides abruptly into shock when he stretches for my neck and chapped skin burrows into the hollow where my tendons intersect with bone. There is a pause and I feel all of him. Fingers twitch, his stomach writhes, the lips upon my skin suck in a shuddering breath. The blast of air burns me with cold as the temperature drops to match his insides.
"I like you. I like you. I-"
He stops dead when I stiffen, when I recoil the smallest amount. His fingers become like brambles, or moist skin against frigid metal, loath to release me. They stick to my chest; one creeps up to the back of my neck and rests there, grasping at my hair like straws. He moves in ways I do not know of him: cautious, subdued, plaintive and appeasing. His lips part again and he checks himself, as if searching for the right words, as if trying to fix a dire mistake. His fingers once again take up their habit of scrabbling at my skin like he does not know what to do with his body.
"Let me stay, please...I really do...like you."
The please is punctuated with need and my pulse jumps beneath his touch. I try to breathe but only manage to pull in feeble staccatos of air. I don't move, afraid that I misheard. But he grabs me tighter and presses himself so close that I can barely string a thought together.
This—what I've longed for—he, the sweetness is back and oh, how... he wants to stay wants to stay. This is perfect, I...
I reach up, grasping his shoulders, shoulders that do not flinch do not flinch at my touch, and hold him away from me to see, to make sure. This cannot be. It is a trick…he doesn’t, not really. It’s a lie—But those words… I thought I would never hear them! But he—this boy, he said them—to me! He said those words to me! My brain buzzes excitedly, euphoria climbing uncontrollably inside me, euphoria that blasts away my unease and makes me want to embrace him so tightly.
His eyes, like hoarfrost now, almost white. The pupil still cloudy, but that must be because of his long sleep. Cheeks blooming with blue fire, veins of ice scattered down his face, the darker veins of his blood pumping beneath. His skin has always been this paper-thin hasn’t it? I was just too caught up in fighting him to notice. The redness rimming his eyes too, it must have always been there. The dark circles, like bruises, and the gauntness of his already sharp cheeks are new but... Those will fade with time. With sleep. I rub them, the dark circles, with the pads of my thumbs, willing them away. The palms of my hands burn as they rest against his cheeks but I can forgive anything, any pain so long as we stay like this.
I pay no mind to the bruises forming under my hands. He is simply weak at the moment, that is all. They will heal. He is resilient after all. Hi mouth moves, chapped and cracked, little lines of red run vertically along his lips, little beads of blood that I ignore because he’s fine,—there is nothing wrong with this—and he's about to speak.
His fingers clench more tightly, the cold seeps through to my bones.
"Please,"
I am drowning in this. Something I had never dared to dream of until I met him.
"Don't leave me. Don't leave me alone. I’ll stay, please let me stay."
I can no longer control myself, I gather him to me—he is so small— and wrap my arms around him tightly. He wheezes; I must be aggravating his wounds. I do not let go, I only hold him more tightly, never again. I will never let go. We will never have to be alone. I let my eyes close and take in everything, every sensation. He smells of me. I breathe in deeply, clutching him just short of strangling. Never again, never alone, never alone, never—
I pause when I feel his hand on my face. I pull back and open my eyes to look at him. His fingertips glisten strangely with ice and my face feels tight, frozen around the eyes. I’m crying. How strange.
He looks at his hand with an expression I cannot read. For a moment he seems terribly old, while I feel young and small, like I know nothing at all of this world. It lasts less than a second before he is back, the one I like. The one that is tired, and soft, and pliant beneath my fingers. He is back and I will never let him go.