The Comparisons of Breathing
By Kay
Disclaimer: Don't own, babycakes.
Author's Notes: Second part of the drabble-- Jalil's POV. It's longer, even more OOC, and I enjoy it far too much. Whoo, suffering!
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When Jalil opens his eyes, the first thing he wants to say is, 'Jesus christ, find the number of the bus that hit me.'
It's not that simple, of course. Nothing ever is, he decided a long time ago, back when black was black and white was white, and he didn't know the feeling of blood oozing in his mouth and the soreness of an empty stomach for weeks. Things were always endlessly complicated, mere jumps and twists in reality to make it a little better than routine. Though he'd rather have routine, to tell the truth. He always would pick routine over blood and sores and pain.
Of course, Jalil knows it's not his choice. Nothing's ever that simple.
So when he does open his eyes-- and it's to complete darkness, the kind that means he could wave his fingers in front of his face, should he lower himself to doing so, and still not see them-- the pain hits hard.
'Ow. Oh. Fuck.'
He lays there for a moment, struggling to keep the rasp of his breathing in control, clutching at bedcovers until the sudden barrage of nausea passes. It's always the worst when he first wakes up. He expects it to be like before; there had been times, he remembered, where he could immediately sit up in bed after waking from slumber, as careless and unconcerned as he was with any other gesture in life.
Of course, Jalil knows things are not so simple, and those times have long passed.
So now he wakes up, wincing, gasping for air with lungs that have long abandoned reason and logic, and is surprised that he can't sit up.
There is another set of breathing in the room, however, and for a moment Jalil closes his eyes quickly and listens to the healthy exhales. They're deep. Bordering on sighs. Easy to see why he couldn't mistake them for his own thin, sharp gasps.
'It's Christopher,' his mind prompts, sending a wave of vague relief. 'Only Christopher.'
"You okay?" the blonde murmurs, hesitant. He's not sure if Jalil's awake, the dark-eyed boy in bed realizes. He almost smiles.
"Y-yeah."
"Oh. Cool."
'How simple he seems to make it,' Jalil thinks almost bitterly, 'when it's not simple at all.'
They do not say much. They never have, of course, especially in the most recent months. There are no words in all of Jalil's esteemed vocabulary that could match his feelings on what's happening, and he's quickly lost the voice to even remark upon that, so perhaps it's best they don't say much. Yes, Jalil decides often, it's always for the best. They never were good with each other, much less words with each other.
Maybe that's why he enjoys waking up to Christopher's presence, rather than April's cloying worry or David's stoic grief. There is nothing to say with the blonde. Everyone else… well, they know how to speak. Too well. Too much.
Jalil thinks, often with only a tiny bit of scorn, that all he really wants to be is alone. The scorn is due to the irony of the statement. He'll be alone soon enough, right?
His chest hurts. He gulps air harshly down his throat, forcing the oxygen to pump through his weakened lungs and body. It feels like the action will shatter his esophagus. Feels like there's not much left to shatter. He's almost all bones, more so than he had ever been, and the lines of his appendages are smooth and fragile. Though he'd hardly admit it, Jalil is almost frightened to move too much.
He has a horrible fear of breaking in front of someone.
Stranger still, he fears it worse than the inevitable…
"Do you ever think about dying?"
Shocked silence.
It will take years of thinking and pondering before Jalil arrives at a good reason for why he asked the question he did-- years he doesn't have, as much as he hates to admit it, so there will be an endless abyss of unknowing in that area of his life. As it is, he thinks that maybe it should have been that way from the start.
He can hear Christopher shift in the dark stillness of the room-- sitting to the right of the bed, he notes absently, in the same position as always. Usually David paces around the room while he sleeps; it's an irritating thing to wake up and not know who is tromping around the floors, and even worse, have the irrational first-impulse that he has misplaced his friend and cannot find him again. April, on the other hand, moves in too close-- she ends up kneeling beside him, praying (to his great annoyance and anger) or stroking his hair. Once, it may have comforted him, but Jalil finds himself only awkwardly looking at the other wall when this happens. The silence speaks well enough. She has stopped for over a week now.
Christopher just sits. Exactly where he should. And stays.
If he wanted to, Jalil knows he could reach out and touch his knee.
"You should shut up," the blonde finally says, very gruff. "Keep up your strength."
It is very easy to ignore him. "I'm being serious," he continues, feeling a scratchy sensation well up in his throat. For a moment, Jalil pauses to swallow hard and cough a bit, the feeling of disgust quickly overwhelming his momentary discomfort. There is nothing worse to the scientist than phlegm and blood. He has grown to loathe the taste. He can sense rather than hear that Christopher is slightly upset at the deep, ugly sounds he's making, but he has long grown accustomed to the fact that he is, to a healthy person, very disturbing.
It doesn't make his pride sting any less, of course. But things are never so simple.
"Turn on the light," he says, before remembering there are no lights, per se. He flushes in the dark; glad for the shadows now, hiding the embarrassed red tint to his mahogany skin. It's hard to see when he blushes, but the darker shades make it obvious enough to warrant mortification. Jalil hates blushing.
Luckily, Christopher either doesn't notice his slip of tongue, or doesn't care. The oil lamp on the bedside table flickers on, throwing flame on the walls. The pale fingers of his friend linger on the contraption for a moment, blue eyes blinking, and Jalil notices distantly that the pupils almost swallow the oceanic color entirely.
It is, he realizes uncertainly, a little frightening.
He hides under his covers as though he were five. But he has better excuses now. And he doesn't want Christopher to see the wasted planes of his face. Nor does he question that sentiment, for it leads to darker paths and uglier places in his mind.
"Is that better?" the blonde asks.
Jalil swallows-- 'No, but it has to be, don't you see, Christopher?'-- and rolls over in the bed. He fancies himself a little brave when he shoves the covers away from his face and resumes the dreaded question of earlier. "I was being serious. Do you ever… think about it?"
'Do you ever wonder what will happen to me?'
For a moment, there is silence, heavy and dead in the atmosphere between them. Jalil blinks down at the edge of the bed, where those long and pale fingers begin to slowly rip away at the lining. That's alright, he figures hesitantly, because he's sheered away at the lace often enough, neurotic and anxious and in pain in the wastelands of the night. Christopher is making marks in a quilt long ruined by his own fingernails.
"Christopher?"
The blonde starts. Stares. Blinks with those blue eyes, unreadable, and when, Jalil wonders worriedly, did his friend ever become so opaque? But he speaks eventually, slow and surely, and even he can tell that it's the truth. "I don't think about a lot of things. I'm assuming you give it a lot of thought?"
Jalil slumps in his bed, the searing pain in his chest giving away to speculation of his mind. He almost closes his eyes. The temptation of light is too great, however, and instead he makes a passable attempt at an answer. "I'm going to die. Of course I have, you moron."
"So optimistic."
"Fuck you," he murmurs tiredly. There's a dull thudding in his chest that has everything to do with his health, and not the reaction to the other boy in the room. At least, Jalil hopes not. It's too early-- or, indeed, far to late-- to be gathering sentimental attachments to people. And so horribly tragic, he considers wryly, that it's such a scandalous choice. If he had tried to make one. Which he didn't.
Jalil squeezes his eyes shut tightly.
"Do you want me to get someone for you?" He can hear Christopher move forward a bit, leaning to get a better look at his face, and grimaces. He's unsure of what to make of this sudden moment of vulnerability-- so often, he has hidden any emotional outbursts, dealing with his illness on his own, unwilling to let the considerations plague him--
"No. Sit," he forces out, gritting his teeth. The thudding in his heart pushes up through his ears, pounding and rushing, drowning any idea of thought away from his head and into a sudden sea of pain. He knows it's because he was thinking too much, trying to do too much, but it was so hard to resist the idea of light and Christopher and talking, talking like there was nothing wrong--
And all he'd ever wanted to do with his life was plan things out, make order, make sense, do things the right way-- and was that so bad? Jalil knew things were not so simple, so easy, so breathtakingly perfect, but hadn't it been enough to try? Because now he was stuck in a bed with a world slowly dimming, and all the people he knew were going to end up crying, and they all knew what would happen soon, and no one was going to tell him straight out, 'It's over, Jalil, stop playing the game, just let go…'
And Christopher, sitting by his side, silent, vigilant, ever-Christopher. They could have been friends, Jalil thinks almost cruelly, if life had ever given a flying fuck about what happened to its children. There's something burning in his chest again-- he hates these attacks, hates them more than anything, so much that it burns any hate he had for Christopher away, and all he can think is, 'Oh god, I've wasted so much, what do I…'
As always, the feelings are too much when they are coupled with the biting pain, and Jalil feels the edges of darkness hazing forth upon him. He clings to the realm of the waking; there is light there, and Christopher, and they should talk. There was something… something very important to… to tell…
He knows he's crying. But nothing is ever that simple. That easy.
Before he slips into sleep, he hears Christopher breathing, and laughs despairingly in his head, 'If you think about dying, if you think about me, do you know that I love how you breath? You make it sound so easy. Everything… so simple. Just to…'
When Jalil closes his eyes, the last thing he thinks is, 'I'd hate you if I had the time left for it.'
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There's a lot of mimicing in this fic, if you can find it...
*yawns* Well, I'm going to bed. Sweet dreams, yo.
