[ Her eyes melt with relief when he opens his own and moves as if to acknowledge her. His hand comes to her wrist— his touch is no different than marble tile in winter. Then and there, the relief gives to crashing surge of worry and panic.
His breaths are barely above rasps, as if inhaling alone is like swallowing knives. Yet scarcely moving, he appears as if he is in pain. His eyes are unfocused, bleary, and for once without the intensity of his focus upon the future. Now instead it is survival. A single hand-held touch is not enough to bring him from the type of sleep that threatens to claim him. His fingers nearly slipping from her wrist...
The bed dips with her weight, a breeze shifts when the sheets are raised and lowered, and then a new warmth resides beside him, pressed wholly alongside his body. She turns him onto his side to face her, one arm upon his back for support, pulling her to him, and the other rising up to the back of his head and running through his short, fringed hair. Briefly catching his expression— and if his eyes are open, he will only see hers wrought with worry on return as she takes in his pallor— she dips his head down to her shoulder as if she could cradle him against her collarbone and neck.
It’s an embrace— a tight one but not so much as to impede his breathing, desperate, holding him to her as if more contact would help overall to speed his recovery. And warm, so very warm, from the heat she naturally gives off from her body. Yet he remains like thin, cracked ice against her still, rigid and limp all at once. She listens to the sound of his crippled breaths, wary of the weak and staggered way his chest rises and falls against hers in the acuity of this affliction.
Shutting her eyes, she says nothing as her hand strokes tenderly up and down the dip of his spine through the fabric of his tunic, up and down, up and down, as if moving to a slow and soothing lullaby. ]
no subject
His breaths are barely above rasps, as if inhaling alone is like swallowing knives. Yet scarcely moving, he appears as if he is in pain. His eyes are unfocused, bleary, and for once without the intensity of his focus upon the future. Now instead it is survival. A single hand-held touch is not enough to bring him from the type of sleep that threatens to claim him. His fingers nearly slipping from her wrist...
The bed dips with her weight, a breeze shifts when the sheets are raised and lowered, and then a new warmth resides beside him, pressed wholly alongside his body. She turns him onto his side to face her, one arm upon his back for support, pulling her to him, and the other rising up to the back of his head and running through his short, fringed hair. Briefly catching his expression— and if his eyes are open, he will only see hers wrought with worry on return as she takes in his pallor— she dips his head down to her shoulder as if she could cradle him against her collarbone and neck.
It’s an embrace— a tight one but not so much as to impede his breathing, desperate, holding him to her as if more contact would help overall to speed his recovery. And warm, so very warm, from the heat she naturally gives off from her body. Yet he remains like thin, cracked ice against her still, rigid and limp all at once. She listens to the sound of his crippled breaths, wary of the weak and staggered way his chest rises and falls against hers in the acuity of this affliction.
Shutting her eyes, she says nothing as her hand strokes tenderly up and down the dip of his spine through the fabric of his tunic, up and down, up and down, as if moving to a slow and soothing lullaby. ]