Notice: This is the expurgated, uber-abridged version of Chapter 6. I'm too lazy to edit the entire chapter to make it R. So I went and shaved off two-thirds of the chapter. For the details on how to view the full version of this chapter, scroll to the bottom of this page. Gomen nasai...
Delirium
by spare
Chapter 6: A Thousand Tiny Deaths
Chris couldn't sleep. He tossed. He turned. He tried sleeping on his right side. When that didn't work, he tried sleeping on his left. When that didn't work, he tried sleeping upside-down. Then flat on his stomach. Then, because he couldn't breathe in that position, on his back. That didn't work, either. His eyes wouldn't stay shut for long. He looked over to where Pon-chan lay on the other side of the bed, snuggled comfortably on the downy pillow, sound asleep. Chris envied her.
"Big bro's sleeping somewhere in here, too," the boy thought silently to himself. He ought to. Leon had looked really tired when Jill and the Count brought him into the shop, his face all red and his eyes all droopy. They told him his brother had a fever. Well, duh! As if Chris couldn't see that. He'd had his own share of fevers. Why, he had his worst just last year. Or was that a year and a half? Red, itchy spots had sprouted all over his body. His parents said he'd come down with "chicken pox", which Chris found weird, since he hadn't gone anywhere near any chickens before he got sick.
He had missed one week of school because of that, and that meant he'd had to do twice as much homework when he got well enough to go back. Chris scrunched his nose in remembrance. Fevers were bad. He wondered whether Leon would do twice as much homework (or what passed for that in his line of work) once he gets well.
"And he will," Chris added, staring at the ceiling. He never doubted for a second that his brother would become fine again. Leon would be OK because Count D said so. The Count was always right about these things. The only question was how soon. He hoped it would be sooner.
Chris sat up, stretching his legs as he did so, and looked around the room. There weren't any lights on, but that was OK, because his eyes had pretty much adjusted to the dark. He could make out the curtains covering the far wall of the room, and the bedroom door, lined with the light from the hallway beyond, just across it. It was quiet, but not too quiet. You could always hear people talking, even singing, somewhere in the Count's shop, if you tried hard enough. It figured. There were so many people in here, after all. He never seemed to run out of new faces to see. And there were so many rooms to explore!
Explore. That's what he got to do. He could visit Philippe, or Shuko and her sisters. Hopefully they were still awake. It was too early to sleep, anyway. Carefully, so he wouldn't wake Pon-chan up, Chris got out of bed, bare feet landing on the carpet with a small thump. He rounded the edge of the bed, and nearly tripped over a sheet.
Oh. Yeah. Almost forgot about that. Sometime in the night, his feet had pushed the blankets all the way to the foot of the bed. T-chan, who usually slept there, would have been mad.
He picked up the blankets and put them back on the bed, frowning at the empty spot where the red-haired boy was supposed to be. T-chan would have been mad, except that T-chan wasn't there tonight. Chris thought he might have sneaked out again. T-chan always did, whenever he thought he could get away with it.
Chris had once asked him where he went on those nights. "Somewhere babies like you shouldn't be yapping about," the older boy had replied, smirking. "Go fill in coloring books with Pon-chan." Pon-chan had glared at T-chan then, and sniffed, nose stuck in the air. Chris had wanted to glare, too. He wasn't a baby; he was almost eight years old! But then the Count had finished preparing the tea and asked him to help with the cake he'd set out, so Chris didn't have the chance to do so.
It was also later (after two slices of cake and hide-and-seek and Leon visiting and T-chan tripping him accidentally on purpose as he made his way back to the stairs leading out of the shop) that Chris realized T-chan hadn't really answered his question.
An idea popped up inside the younger Orcot's head. He would find out where T-chan had gone off to, tonight! He inwardly beamed. All by himself, too. That would prove to the older boy that he wasn't a baby. With that thought firmly in mind, Chris closed the distance between his feet and the door. His hands found the latch, turning it gently.
The door swung open. Chris stepped out.
"Couldn't sleep, too, huh?"
Chris jumped. "T-chan!"
"Hey, kid," T-chan drawled from where he sat leaning against a wall, knees drawn, one clawed hand upraised in greeting.
"What are you doing out here?" Chris asked, feeling both disappointed and relieved to find the toutetsu in the hallway. This was where T-chan went every night?
"Passing the time," the older boy replied with a shrug. "Nobody feels like sleeping tonight, it seems," he muttered, folding his arms behind his head. "'cept for Pon-chan, and your brother, of course. I think I saw Q-chan fly past just a while ago, too. The little furball seemed to be all riled up about something."
"Q-chan?"
"Yeah." T-chan thought for a moment. "Come to think of it, he sorta freaked out right after you found those yellow grains on the bed. What do you think that means?" He cast him a sideways glance, and added, "Not that a little squirt like you could figure it out, anyway."
"I could, too!" Chris declared indignantly. "It means--" He stopped. "Wait. The Count kinda looked upset that time, too." No. Not upset. Scared was more like it. Chris had not really noticed, before.
T-chan frowned. "Something ain't right here," he said, but he didn't elaborate further. He was quiet for a few moments, looking like he was making up his mind up something. Then he turned toward Chris. "Wanna check up on your brother again?"
"Well..." Chris began. He did want to go see Leon again, even though that probably won't make him any better. "But--"
"Don't tell me you won't go 'cause the Count said we should be asleep," T-chan cut him off, sneering as if it was the most babyish thing in the world to do. "We'll just take a sec. The Count will understand," he added.
"O... OK, I guess."
x x x
They were almost at the door to where the Count had tucked Leon in a few minutes later. They would have gotten there earlier, too, except that they passed by a kid with big, yellow eyes who said hello and never seemed to stop talking. He said his name was Oulan, which meant rain, and while nothing could compare to the tropical forests he'd left behind when Count D took him in, the petshop was a fine enough place. Oulan had wanted to say more, but T-chan had made up some excuse and then they had finally left, walking faster than usual.
"Damned bird," T-chan had muttered when they were far enough away. Chris had thought the comment funny, then, but didn't say anything. Everyone sometimes said (and did) weird things inside the shop. He had gotten used to it.
T-chan walked ahead of him, a scowl on his face. If Chris didn't know any better, he would think that T-chan was as freaked out about that 'something' as Q-chan and the Count were. But it was only a bunch of seeds. Wasn't it?
"Here we are," the older boy announced, stopping before Leon's room. The door was closed, but that was to be expected. Chris stepped closer, and then noted something that wasn't.
There were strange, muffled sounds coming from the room. T-chan seemed to notice it, too, because his frown grew even deeper. Someone was talking inside. Chris couldn't get what the person was saying, though -- it all came out too fast, and like whoever it was was out of breath. Another person said something in reply. Wait/Leon/ said something in reply. Chris would recognize his older brother's voice anywhere, even though it /did/ sound dry and wheezy. And the person they'd heard earlier was Count D.
Raising both eyebrows, Chris pressed his ear to the door. He still couldn't get what they were saying, but at least they weren't fighting. It didn't sound like that, at least. "Leon and Count D are talking inside," he whispered. Suddenly it felt like a good idea to whisper. He didn't want to disturb them.
"Duh," T-chan replied, rolling his eyes.
Then they heard it. A squeaking sound, the kind Chris' bed made whenever he jumped on it or rolled around too hard. But this sound was louder, and longer, like somebody was bouncing repeatedly on the bed. Chris guessed it was Leon. He couldn't picture the Count doing anything like that. What was funny was the Count wasn't scolding his brother for doing that, though. In fact, Leon was saying something, and the Count had started to sing, except that his voice wasn't that good -- it was broken, as if he wasn't breathing properly.
Weird.
T-chan's eyes were wide, his mouth opening and closing for a few seconds without saying anything. "We should... go," the older boy declared finally, turning to him. Chris couldn't help but notice the way the T-chan's face seemed to turn all white and pasty for a few seconds, only to become a shade of red almost, but not quite, matching his hair color.
Weird, Chris thought, blinking. All this was weird. "But... what are they doing in there?"
"N-Nothing..." the toutetsu replied. But then his face began to really match the color of his hair, so Chris knew 'nothing' meant something.
"You don't know, either, do you?"
"I do, too!" T-chan growled. "It's just..." the older boy groped for words. "We should leave them alone." He grabbed Chris by the scruff of his shirt, and tugged.
Very weird. The sounds continued before them, coming from inside the room. "B-but--" he began to protest.
"Come on," T-chan ordered, and dragged them as far from the door as he could, as if he thought it might blast open any second.
And that was that.
But, Chris noted, while T-chan carried him bodily through the hallway and off to the bed where only Pon-chan slept at the moment, the door remained closed.
x x x
Note2: The full version of this chapter can be read at mediaminer (same author name, similar title, same genre; I can't post the URL directly here, sorry). I've also posted it at the PSoH fanfic e-group.
It's NC-17 or M-plus, meaning if you're below 18 years old, you can't view it.