Someone holds me safe and warm

[spes_phthisica]

Who: One master and one sword
What: A reincarnated reunion
Warnings: Shit is going to hurt. Also injury and lung problems and fucked up people yo. tba.


***


It's one of those chance meetings, improbable and almost unreal, as if it belongs in a comedy with a varied and witty cast that can somehow make the Uncanny Valley implications not seem quite so bad. But though the cast really is in place and only waiting to speak their lines and lighten the mood, it's impossible to shake off the uncomfortable feeling of a disturbance in the fabric of the world. As if one of two parallel lines broke free of the shackles of mathematics, changing its course slightly, and now they will inevitably meet eventually, at the other side of the curvature of the universe if necessary.

Souji remembers it like this: He'd been training hard-

(Of course he'd been training hard. Just like everyone else at a prestigious dance academy is expected to do; harder, in fact, due to his disadvantages. The scarring on his lungs that would never go away, and no matter how much people told him that he'd been lucky, it feels like he's constantly branded as weak, frail, pitiable. When Sano refers easily to his 'busted lungs' and Heisuke hurriedly steps on his foot, it's the latter that Souji has to keep himself from glaring at.)

-He'd been training hard. He'd stayed behind in the studio after hours to repeat every single movement over and over again until he could feel his toes getting sticky from blood, and his breath had been running short for about half an hour already. He heard someone pushing the door open behind him, heard a testy, You're never going to be able to do that without breathing, and he'd opened his mouth to say that he was fine, just fine, when instead there was a harsh croak as the air ground to a halt in his throat. His legs turned unresponsive under him mid-jete, and he'd crashed to the floor, sliding until he hit the mirrored wall and saw his own face disappear behind a film of blood. He heard something between a gasp and a horrified groan, running footsteps, Souji? Souji! - then he heard nothing at all above the ringing, blood-scented darkness rising above his head.

He wakes up in the hospital. It's 3 am, and the only reason he isn't in pain is probably the pearly sheen of painkillers lingering over the world, which mutes the quality of every far-off sound, like someone sobbing in another room and the TV down the hall, which usually colors its walls faintly blue all night through. His head is bandaged, and so's one of his ankles as well as his left wrist. There's an oxygen meter taped to his toe. The call button is right by his hand, but he shoves it away from himself.

Then he looks up at the bed opposite of his, expecting to find an indistinct shape sleeping deeply, but he finds blue eyes staring intently back at him instead. He jerks away slightly, and somewhere behind the film of analgesics he can feel his head start up a low throbbing. Then he catches his breath, which comes shallow and tastes faintly of blood, and attempts a smile. "Hello."

Comments

[spes_phthisica]

Souji's smile doesn't exactly dim at Yamato's much more prosaic answer, but it does grow a bit softer. He recognizes the sensation, because it lies at the very core of his being, and it's the impulse to protect, to aid, to nurture. This strange odd bird in this white cage, his wings cut and replaced by IVs and sterile sheets, is someone Souji wants to make happy. He doesn't know why, and he suspects he really ought to be more alarmed by what the other young man is saying, but all he can feel is a strange kind of tenderness and... is it kinship? Is that what he's feeling? As if the two of them really are the same.

In any case he nods firmly, and he edges over his bandaged hand as well, to rest on top of Yamato's in a gesture of certainty, of promise. "When I get better-" And he believes it too, will keep believing it until the day when his lungs finally cannot hold anymore, when he's imprisoned within the red letters on the oxygen meter for good. He'll keep getting up and dancing, again and again, until that day. "-I promise I'll come visit you, okay? Being alone in a hospital is..." Terrifying. Painful. Cold. "...boring."

He hesitates slightly, but he's always been the kind of person to push his slim white fingers into cracks, widening them with steady determination and gentle words, as if nothing is so solid he won't try to break through. "Why can't you leave at all?"

[okitactless]

The tension that had crept into Yamato's shoulders slips out again, just as quickly and subtly as it had come. He's not being rejected, or abandoned. He isn't being pushed away. He'll be left behind sooner or later, but that's alright. That's his lot in life, he knows, and he's used to it.

"Thank you, Okita-kun," he says, and his tone is so reverent, it's like Souji's given him a precious gift. Maybe in some ways, he has.

The question doesn't get an immediate answer, but Yamato doesn't pull away, either. He doesn't stiffen up or shift uncomfortably. Souji is more than welcome to pick him apart and examine the pieces--and maybe Yamato shouldn't be so quick to trust, but he can't help himself. And there's no one here to stop him, not anymore.

"I hurt some people," he answers eventually. He speaks softly, distantly, caught up in memory. "They were cruel to someone I love, so I hurt them. The nurses are afraid I might do it again, so I have to stay in here."

He doesn't mention the toll it had taken on his own body. The way he'd collapsed, choking on fluid and blood, rasping and spitting like a rabid cat. Not because he wants to hide it, but simply because it doesn't matter. He'd been defending Kashuu, and the nurses are right to think he'd do it again. He's dying anyway, why not use what little strength he has to protect those precious to him?

[spes_phthisica]

Again, maybe this ought to be a cause for worry, something that rightly should make Souji pull away before it's too late, not get tangled up with this broken being, caught between scalpels and discarded needles. Maybe it's something that would repulse someone else, or scare them, or simply feel nothing at all, as if it had been wiped away with a sterile cloth, leaving only evaporating alcohol and coldness behind.

Instead, he feels relieved. He even feels a small portion of entirely inappropriate happiness, as something Yamato says rings so very true within him, it's just not possible not to allow himself just a little bit of joy. They're probably both irreparably messed up, that's what it is, and maybe they'll only help destroy each other a little faster together. Alone they are dangerous, but they're mostly weird and lonely little things, more tragic than anything else. Together, they might just make up all the components for something much more destructive.

But Souji doesn't care. Destruction is in his lungs; he breathes it every day, and sometimes each breath sounds like a shortening fuse.

His whole hand squeezes Yamato's harder, not afraid at all to break their transient frailty beneath the life that is slowly coming back to his fingers. "Sometimes- Sometimes, when something bad happens to people I love, it's as if..." He shakes his head, momentarily mute as he tries to find the words. "It's like a monster waking up. The world just becomes really simple and... I know how to put everything right." He breathes out sharply, and then has to spend a little while fighting back another coughing fit. Still, his eyes are unnaturally bright when he opens them again. "I don't like hurting people. But sometimes, you have to. Sometimes there's no other choice. And I can't see what's so wrong about that - I can't feel sorry about it."

[okitactless]

Yamato is used to being "that strange kid"; indeed, the weird and lonely thing that each group is bound to have. Kanesada was always helpless without Horikawa, he remembers, and Kashuu had been a mess of half-buried insecurities all on his own. But Yamato has always, always been the odd one. In school, when he could switch so easily between the soft-spoken, polite boy in 2-A and the wild, merciless combatant on the playground. (He'd been banned from sports early on.) In that first patchwork collection of chronically sick things, when he'd asked them with total seriousness, "Will you love me?". (Maybe that's why they'd been so shocked when he turned on them, after they said those things about Kashuu.)

He's the strange one, and because of that, he's never expected anyone to understand. So when Souji begins to speak, he snaps his attention back, eyes going wide.

Could it be? Is he hearing this right? Could this stranger really, truly be putting into words what he's felt so strongly his entire life?

(Has fate finally decided to be kind, or is he simply being taunted once again?

--No, it doesn't matter. If this single, perfect moment is all he gets, he'll take it. He's spent too long alone not to.)

"Yes. Yes!" He's whispering, but his voice holds clear excitement, the corners of his mouth pulling up. "Just like that, it feels just like that. I didn't think-- no one's ever understood that before. But when it comes to protecting them, I... it's like my blood starts boiling. Sometimes I feel like someone else completely."

[spes_phthisica]

"Like someone else," Souji repeats softly, trying to keep his breathing steady. "Yes. When I was younger, I really thought I had some kind of demon inside me, you know? I tried to keep it inside, I didn't want anyone to see, because I didn't want people to hate me and be afraid of me... I didn't want to end up alone. It's still scary, sometimes." Mostly because of the way people look at him afterwards, with eyes that are either like mirrors or like walls. He still doesn't want to be hated or feared, but now he at least knows that he'll never be alone.

It seems like maybe Yamato wasn't so lucky.

"But the thing is... at least this way, I know for certain that there'll be something I can do to help, if anyone ever threatens anything that's mine. It can be a good thing, as long as I only use it when I need it." He'll still stay away from fencing and anything that allows him to do damage when it's completely unwarranted, because there's still no excuse for that. It just means risking being taken away from the people close to him too early, and he wants to make every single second with them count. And without a word having been said specifically on the matter, his heart already aches for the desperate longing which opens like an abyss beyond the other boy's gaze. They're just the same, and yet so very different. And Souji... Souji needs to help him, somehow. He needs to make things better, he's sure of it.

"I never thought I'd meet anyone else like me either. It's a pretty lonely feeling, right? People accepting you even if they don't always understand is good, friends should do that, but... I think longing for understanding is a natural thing, you know?"

[okitactless]

As Souji speaks, Yamato lifts their clasped hands to his face, to his dry, pale lips--but then he's turning his head, brushing his cheek against the tangle of their fingers. His skin is smooth, softer than it probably should be after months of dark, lonely stillness. The hospital lights, he remembers Kashuu complaining, are anything but flattering, and he knows what he must look like. Some half-dead wisp of a spirit, haunting hospital rooms and aching for companionship; is this to be a cliche fairy tale, or a horrific tragedy, only to be whispered in the dark?

Either one, Yamato thinks, would be preferable to being forgotten. To being alone.

He hums in content affirmation--"anything that's mine", what a perfect way of putting it. Because they are his, aren't they? His precious people, they belong to him. Is it his fault, then, that he's lost them? Should he have taken better care of them? What if, what if, and oh, he'd thought he'd run the gamut of guilty sorrows already. What a nice surprise.

"I always thought new friends would be nice," he comments, almost dreamily. "I thought maybe we could join together, and take care of each other, and get stronger together... but that didn't happen." For a lot of reasons, but he doesn't want to seem like he's complaining. Far from it. "That was okay, though. I didn't mind being different, as long as others were with me. They only ever wanted to take care of me, isn't that funny?"

Yamato certainly seems to think it is. His eyes are closed, but he's smiling, like he's watching a scene play out behind his eyelids. "Ne, Okita-kun, will you let me take care of you?"