He was but a leek in the stew from which dreams are made. He was there, in the great pot of unconciousness, drifting and spinning and twirling his way through a great whirlpool of dreams and haunting memories, both good and terrible.
The sheets choked him, burying him until sweat dripped from every minute pore. Salty and sweet, the persperation choked him as the bedsheets choked him, until the bedsheets were choked by the persperation as well, and he was hopelessly lost in the tsunami of tiny sweat beads tumbling down his pallid, bruised flesh.
Air hung about him in great clumps, sticking to his fingers as he swatted at it, clinging to the flesh of his throat as he tried to breathe in great heaps of it at once; and he gagged on its thickness. Air was palpable and tangable and suffocating on this sultry night in August. There was not even a forgiving breeze from the Bay to cool his fears and his burning flesh.
He ached to the bone, his muscle and marrow screaming to be released from skin one size too small. He was parched, his tongue a miniature Gobi Desert, an angry kitten hissing and scratching dryly at the roof os his mouth and at his throat. When he reached for the water glass beside his bed, his fingers cramped and curled, and he knocked it over instead. The water inside was licked up by the carpet, and there appeared a darkened eye gazing up at him from below.
This, he thought, must surely be Hell. Wicked and delirious thoughts flickered in his mind, and again, until he pieced them together in a picture show of horrible notions (Forgive me, dear Mother, for the Devil made me do it … !)
He could bear it no longer. The stove had been turned up under the stew pot in which he remained a leek, staring, unblinking, into a bare white ceiling. He could not move; could not think, but for these terrible thoughts which plagued him so; could not speak but for the occasional gutteral moan of a wounded jungle cat.
"Though no angel, surely the gods would not do such things to me … !" he cried, one hot, salty tear squeezing its way through the lids of his burning eyes.
At once, the lid of hid stew pot opened, and a rushing light burned his fragile eyes; with it seemed to come a welcome zephyr of sweet-smelling clean air, and it brushed through his lungs as though he had never tasted air before.
Great stretches of cooling flesh was pressed to his boiling forehead and cheeks, his skin freezing over comfortably. New life was poured into him, and he longed to rise and stretch his arms into the furthest folds of the heavens. But the deliciously cool flesh was holding him here, that delicate pressure beside his lip, restraining him in a way nothing else could.
His dreams melted, those terribly wicked thoughts were banished on a sweet-smelling spring wind. Air thinned, and, beautifully cool, slid down his throat as water slides through a drain; his bones were not quite so painful.
When he managed to open his eyes, he saw warm, chocolate eyes, and a veritably endless field of softly curling auburn hair and beautiful long eyelashes. He smiled, his lips dry and chafed, and whispered, "Surely there is an angel beside me tonight."
--
He was wearing new pajamas when he woke, new and wrinkled and stiff from washing. Sunlight was alien; the shades were drawn tightly against the frame of the window.
There, in the kitchen, stood a rust-colored sweater which smelled of cheap generic fabric softener, and even cheaper shampoo. Weathered leather boots, one lace torn and barely long enough to be functional still. Soft lines on his face, there by his mouth from his crooked smile, and there, between his brows, from the worry in his eyes.
He was older now. They both were. But he was beautiful.
"You are my angel."
That blush, barely creeping along the rough, tanned surface of his high cheekbones. Beautiful, for such a rugged man to become embarrassed so. Schoolgirls become less embarrassed than this. It suited him wonderfully.
"I thought that was the fever talking when you said that," he mumbled, absently pouring more coffee into a mug from the cabinet.
"You hoped."
He did not look away from the mug as he answered, "Yes." He was blushing again.
"You're blushing." He turned even pinker. "When we were seventeen we did more to be blushed about than this, and you never even batted an eye."
"That was some time ago, you know … "
"Yes." He looked at the rust-colored sweater evenly, carefully leaving his expression open to his hopes and thoughts. For one so carefully guarded, he was not used to leaving himself so vulnerable. "I should hope you hadn't changed so much."
"I'm not the kid I once was." The sweater jutted out his chin. There was stubble, but from his vantage point in his pajamas in the kitchen, he was strongly reminded of the boy he once knew. "I've changed."
"It doesn't matter. You're still an angel, and you're still in my house after eleven years." The sweater blushed again, the tips of his ears flushing warmly. "I …"
He didn't finish, but the rust-colored sweater seemed to understand anyway. "Yeah, me too."
Impulsively, he said, "I want you to stay here."
"I can't do that."
Expression of a loved one's death. Of a balloon lost to the cotton candy clouds shining from so far above. Of candy stolen from a confused infant.
"Oh. Yes, well. I had forgotten that you probably have to get back to your job … " The sweater shook his head absently as he stared at the bay through the large picture window. "Family, I understand. What was your daughter's name?"
"I don't have a daughter," came the quiet response.
"Right." A melancholy, indulgant smile. "Well, I'm sure your cats miss you very much right now."
Those inviting chocolate eyes looked at him longingly, begging him to understand. He cleared his throat, looking away, and said softly, "I, uh, should be getting back before Yamato worries … He sometimes, uh, overreacts."
The words echoed across the plains of his mind, and his train of thought wrecked. His mouth twitched; the expression on the sweater's face wrenched pitifully.
"Yamato." A familiar name, a comfortable name. Like a pebble from the ocean, it had been turned over a thousand and two times by his mind before he said, "I see."