| The Little Things Give You Away [Ginta, Hiro] | [Oct. 20th, 2009|10:05 am] |
[Takes place the evening of April 5, the same day as Welcome to My Morning, three days after Just Enough Rope]
By sundown Ginta was awake and really wished he wasn't. He'd woken in his own bed shortly after noon, gotten an update from the nurses -- Kakashi was fine, sleeping, but no longer in a coma -- and crashed back out again. Ryouma was still in there with Kakashi. Keeping an eye on him. Keeping the door closed. And as much as Ginta'd told himself a hundred times in the last few days alone, that he was letting it go...
He couldn't let it go.
Couldn't let go of the way Kakashi had clung to him that morning. Or the way he'd been caught painfully in the middle when Ryouma had returned to the room. Kakashi had wanted proof Ginta was alive--he'd gotten that. And then Kakashi'd wanted proof he himself was alive, and the only one he wanted that proof from was Ryouma.
Grandmother hadn't been by and wasn't expected until tomorrow. Ginta's mother was absent as well, busy with her own life. Now that Ginta was out of danger there was no further need to sit by his bedside. And he was, he told himself, just as glad she was staying away. It was harder to endure an hour of his mother's sighs and glances at her watch and weak attempts at conversation, than it was to sit in silence, reading the film magazine she'd left behind, and try not to notice the closed door across the hall.
That's what he told himself.
His leg ached and itched, and no amount of jostling it in its cradle of pillows would ease it. He tried chakra, which set off alarms, brought a scolding nurse running, and just made the itch worse. He tried scratching it with a drinking straw eased under the bandages, and managed to tear off a scab. Bleeding, more scolding, but sharp pain had replaced the maddening itch, at least for a little while.
The sheets were uncomfortable, too. Wrinkled and sticky with too much body heat, and not nearly as soft as his own bed. His hair felt matted and dirty, his face in desperate need of a shave. Why they couldn't provide him with a razor was beyond him, since they'd certainly been able to muster up a toothbrush and a comb. Grandmother had promised she'd bring him one in the morning, but morning was long hours off.
Dinner had come -- a tray with covered dishes concealing a flavorless omelet and overcooked rice, a cup of miso soup that was far more salt than fermented soy, and a stale sweet bean bun jauntily stamped with a red sakura blossom in honor of the season.
A season Ginta was missing. The cherries were at their peak, or would be soon, and he didn't even have a view through his window. He ate three spoonfuls of the soup, a couple of bites of the egg, and nibbled at the pathetic pastry, before he pushed it aside with a sigh.
The door was still closed, across the hall.
Feeling hungry, dirty, achy, and decidedly sorry for himself, he picked up the magazine and tried to muster some kind of interest in the love lives of the stars of Wave Country's latest epic movie. |
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