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

[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?"