TB/X - Protection
Title: Protection
Fandom: TB/X
Character(s): Seishirou/Subaru, Hokuto
Genre: A bit sad, but still pretty fluffy.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Nothing.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Aaand my third and final entry for mithrigil and puella_nerdii's Shut Up Subaru contest. This one is a bit less focused around the act of shutting him up (though I did try to include the middle bit for that), though I was hoping the bits on the outside still counted. I don't know. ...I also find it slightly amusing that I am basically the antithesis of the two authors holding this contest. Because the fluff, man, the fluff. I'm sorry. 8D;;
Summary: I'm so sleepy after I got my eye stabbed out!
Word Count: 577


The heat of summer isn't as oppressive as it could have been, but it's enough. Wind blows in through the window; someone left it open, but he doesn't mind, not so much in the way that isn't a bother, more in the way that he only half registers. The air that comes in isn't refreshing; it's too dry and it only gives the room a feeling of dust and long, tired evenings. But it's probably better than the scent of antisceptics and the glare of flourescent lights. He would be thinking these things, possibly, but he isn't right now, eyelid fluttering closed, a gentle inhale and an exhale the lulling movement preceding dreamless sleep.

When he was five, he twisted his ankle somewhere in the wilderness they loved to explore together, not so far from the family estate. On those summer evenings before the fireflies were leaving the mountains, they got lost in the trees casting shadowed canopies grey and green. And she held his hand in the twilight descending, breathing dust and air, transitory moments lingering in the stillness of the shadowed green canopy which hung above their heads, which kept them sheltered, hidden there.

A great white bird found them, hours later, and soon after household attendents came running to pick him up from her arms and carry him back. Shh, shh, don't cry, they had begged then, voices high and worried in the fiery glow of a sun setting, hands pressed gently against his sweat-soaked forehead, his face flushed from pain.

No, no, let me—she was always the obstinate one, always difficult, instigating small mischevious happenings here and there around the family estate but—she gripped his hand and he gripped back, and slowly the sobs were reduced to small noises caught in the back of his throat.

They had to walk back to the house like that—an awkward procession from having to accomodate the much smaller form gripping her brother's hand reassuringly as they made their way.

It was only a torn muscle, no bone damage, the physician had explained. But she slept by his side that night, cradled his head protectively against her shoulder. I'll always be there to protect you, she told him then.

But some 'always' are less than others. He would be thinking that now, if he were awake.

You don't touch, you just watch. The small rise and fall of the outline of his body beneath the spread of hospital sheets, leaning slightly to his left side—yes, leaning on his right side isn't going to be a good idea, not right now. You don't need any illusion for this moment, reality presented itself for your uses just fine. He lies there exhausted, one eye closed almost peacefully, the other hidden behind shrouds of fabric. You lean against the wall, besides the open window, and vaguely recall a story she told you once. But she isn't here to protect him, to calm and quiet him, not this time. He hates hospitals; you don't know that, precisely, not in so much as you were told, but you could have guessed.

But right now that doesn't matter—inhale, exhale, a rise and a fall—the sun spills in through the window with the wind and gets caught, golden-orange in the slack of his wrist, the palm of his hand, fingers lying limp and unresponsive. You leave with the sun, but you don't bother closing the window behind you.