Soft thin lips pressed against a pair of tiny hands cradled in a pair of larger ones, their fingers curled around the boys', holding them still as the tingle of a spell wove itself lovingly into each kiss. The boy gasped but made no move to escape, merely collapsing freely backward as the memories of the past few moments quietly shrouded themselves from his conscious mind. Hair thin trails of blood rose to the surface of his skin, reaching out little tendrils to kiss at their ends and form a pair of matching pentagrams.
The blood was gone by the time Lady Sumeragi found him; it had evaporated away, tiny wisps of a promise that would only be whispered in dreams until the day came for it to be called upon.
.
Hoarse, high-pitched chirps scratched at Subaru's ears as if the cicadas were gathered on his pillow and tangled in his hair, their tiny legs clinging to sweat-soaked strands of black. He shook his head, burying his face into the warm wrinkles of fabric, letting the down give way for his nose and reach up around it to snuggle against his cheeks. The pocket of hot, restricted air it formed wasn't helping sleep come any faster either though so he flipped back over onto his back and pushed his hair away from his forehead, ignoring how long and unkempt his bangs had gotten in the past few months. The air in the room wasn't much different though, a heavy humid weight languishing over him, the open window ignoring his silent plea for the tiniest breeze as the cicadas played on. He threw his arms to the sides, splayed out over the bed as if any moment he were going to begin waving his limbs in a futile effort to make a mattress angel. He tilted his head to the side slightly and tried to imagine the white sheets into being a blanket of snow, cool against his skin.
He knew better than to hope though. Imagining things didn't make them any more real, no matter how hard you believed in it…
He screwed his eyes shut against the sudden vision of a friendly smile and was for once grateful for the heat because it lazily banished the cool crisp feeling of a climate-controlled clinic.
But strains of music tickled the edge of his thoughts. The cicadas were singing a more upbeat tune and in the distance he could hear their voices becoming lower pitched but more distinctly feminine. Hokuto's badly sung karaoke had never bothered him before, no matter how many notes she missed. Now he squirmed against the bed as if it were holding him against the music box of memories his mind had reopened. He slid his hands under the pillow on either side of his head and pressed the edges up against his ears in an attempt to drown it out. He ground his teeth together, gritted in a grimace as though he were in actual physical pain. Ah, but that was an idea. He unlocked his jaw to catch his lower lip between his teeth and bit down sharply. Much to his relief the thick, metallic taste that slid back into his mouth drowned out the singing as his brain recognized the override signal of pain. He felt a drop of blood escape and slide a wet trail down his chin and he reached out from under the pillow to wipe it away. In doing so, the edge of his soft leather gloves caught slightly and pulled up, leaving the bottom of his hand just above his wrist exposed to brush against the cotton pillowcase.
He moved the other to adjust it automatically then stopped himself, holding the hand up above his face as though he were seeing it for the first time, letting the moonlight paint a stark contrast between its silver beams curving over the top of his fingers and the inky shadows clinging to their undersides and his palm. It also highlighted the rumpled edge, still bunched up just below the start of his thumb and he wondered at the bit of skin peeking out beneath.
He could see the faint lines that crossed his palm, coming to their faded end just above his wrist as though fearing to creep beyond the safety of concealment beneath the soft worn leather and he was struck with the unusual desire to see the rest, to see the way that the lines curved in their well-worn paths like riverbeds across his hand.
Of course he had taken the gloves off before; one couldn't very well shower with them on. But those were generally brief and that was the only time in eight years. But then, there had been a reason for it.
The gloves were meant to protect, to shield the slender pentagram-shaped scars carved so delicately into the backs of his hands from prying eyes and dark intentions. That of course had failed, he realized with bitterness. Even though he had worn them faithfully for seven years, the Sakurazukamori was not one to be deterred by a pair of gloves, no matter how strong the spell woven into them by Lady Sumeragi.
There was no point to them now, he realized. No justification he could give for why he still wore them other than force of habit. They offered no protection, no reassurance, they were just bits of cloth wound around his fingers and over his palms.
He slid his left hand out from under the pillow and reached up to tug at one fingertip, fascinated by the way just millimeters more skin were exposed. The muggy air even felt cool against it by comparison to the leather. He tugged at another fingertip and shivered at the feeling of something slipping away. His hand halfway out of the glove, he took a half-step out of the past. He couldn't have said that it felt good per se, but there was a kind of freedom in letting go. Not in the sense of forgetting what had happened, but in the sense of realizing that there was nothing here to save him now.
He ripped the glove the rest of the way off and gasped quietly, perhaps surprised by his own daring. He held his breath for a few seconds as though he expected Seishirou to suddenly reappear, called by the thin white lines carved into the back of his hand. Instead, there was only an anticlimactic moment of silence as if even the cicadas had momentarily held their breath, awaiting a sudden event before resuming their song, apparently losing enthusiasm when nothing happened.
Subaru took a few shallow breaths as he held his hand aloft, staring at it as though he had never seen it before in his life. He wondered if it was just his imagination or if the lines that wandered across his palm had gotten deeper in the past several years. How could he not recognize part of his own body like this? Then again, he had not recognized the face in the mirror for weeks. Granted it was partly because he had cut his hair and located colored contact lenses when he finally broke down under grief and guilt that tugged at him every time he looked into the glass and saw Hokuto looking back at him. Another part of it though was the expression, the lost, wandering look that he could not seem to escape. Lines wandered over his hand now in an aimlessly cruel mockery of his own sad state. Even his skin didn't know where it was going.
He closed his eyes and let his hand drop carelessly onto the bed beside him, then shuddered slightly at the strange feeling of soft cotton against his wrist. He tentatively stretched out his fingertips and turned his hand palm-down, entranced by how cool the sheets felt compared to the gloves. Fascinated, he moved his arm, slowly running his hand over the sheets beside him. There was such an achingly tactile pleasure to feeling the wrinkles in the fabric without the barrier of leather.
He clenched his hand, feeling the cloth bunch in deliciously randomized folds that tickled his fingers. It was strange to think that he had been deprived of this for so many years, and stranger to think that he had completely forgotten how it felt. He reached across himself to tug off the other glove, much more unceremoniously now that the hurdle or fear and anticipation had first been crossed. He cast the pair aside, hearing the soft patter as they hit the floor beside his bed. Both hands were free now of their skin-tight prisons and for a long moment Subaru didn't know what else to do.
He pulled himself up and sat Indian-style for a moment, splaying his hands palm-down against the mattress in front of him. It was so strange how they were perfect mirrors of one another. One would assume that a pair of hands were the same from one to the next, when really they were the exact inverse.
Yet they were so useful, hands. Humans were known among all of Earth's creatures for having remarkable dexterity and strangely fine motor skills and all of this was enhanced by the fact that they were mirrors. Thinking on it now as his stared at the long pale fingers practically glowing against the sheets, Subaru realized that hands would be harder to use if they were actually the same.
We need opposites. He thought simply. And something clicked into place in his mind.
We need things to be the inverse of one another….
He looked up out the window at the moon and it struck him suddenly that for all the songs about the moon's beauty, it would not look nearly so white and glorious if not for the black of the sky around it. He held up one hand and imagined what the sky must feel like, so silky black and smooth.
At long last he lowered his hand slowly and slid out of bed to walk to the bathroom. He was distracted on the way as he felt something cool and slick underfoot and realized that he had stepped on the photograph he had abandoned there of himself, Seishirou, and Hokuto. More importantly, he noted that one of the gloves had landed on the corner of the glossy paper and the irony did not escape him.
He picked up the photograph and felt a jolt as he discovered how soft and smooth the glossy paper was beneath his fingertips.
Glossy and smooth. He thought to himself and reflected that there was no more appropriate way to describe the photograph and everything that it represented, looking back on that year. An unexpected breeze suddenly picked up outside and wormed its way through the open window, blowing across the room and jerking the photograph out of Subaru's hands. He felt the way the edges of the slick paper slid so easily away and watched it float a few feet away, just out of reach as he let his hands fall helplessly into his lap. Then he began to laugh. After all this time, he had finally learned how to feel just to have the one thing he wanted to touch snatched away. He could not imagine anything more perfect.
He pulled himself to his feet and relocated the gloves, pulling them back on, one meticulous finger at a time.
.
.
Author's Note: Okay the comment about Subaru getting colored contact lenses if anyone was wondering about that is because it always bothered me that his eyes were bright green in Tokyo Babylon and changed to gray in X. -_- So I came up with this whole explanation in my head about how he got lenses and cut his hair sot that he would look less like Hokuto… sorry if that seemed random.