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Touya recounts a stack around three times; partly because he’s still not used to it, and partly because the bills are mostly small. Talk about perversion. Why won’t you just give him a bag of gold then, to make the situation even more ridiculous? He recounts it fourth time, and the rotten asshole in front of him starts cracking his fingers nervously. Nothing changes.
“Where are the other thirty thousand?”
The rotten asshole in front of him adjusts his belt and asks: “What thirty thousand?” No brains, no skill of bullshitting properly. Kinda sad.
“There are thirty thousands missing. We had an agreement ”.
“But how do I make my ends meet then, and, you know, you didn’t actually wo—”
He shuts up, scared. That’s right , Touya thinks, you should watch your filthy mouth carefully when you speak . His eyes burn for some reason, as if he’s about to cry. He doesn’t want to cry, he wants to take his thirty thousand and go into the abando that they consider their shelter. It’s cold, spacious and not safe in the slightest, but it doesn’t matter; they can try warming and protecting it. And a lot of space is actually fine, they have somewhere to run in case.
“These are really my last, have some conscience”, his fingertips tingle a little; he clenches his jaw until it starts hurting.
“Firstly, brave of you to assume that I have a conscience”, the rotten asshole in front of him looks like he’s going to scream. “Secondly, I don’t give a single fuck”.
His cheeks burn, as if he’s ashamed. But Touya is not ashamed. Fortunately, he’s wearing only a singlet today.
The rotten asshole eventually screams. Touya notes, displeased, that his thirty thousand burn up, too.
And that he should take money first.
///
Everything’s blurred because of the flame pacing before his eyes. Touya doesn’t need to see it to understand, to imagine in full detail like the blue fire dances on his skin first, then runs on his muscles after a few seconds, spreading through his blood. And later there is no meat left in his arms, there are only white thin bones, and you can see the darkness around him through the gap between ulna and radius bones.
Touya feels his lungs burning, his throat burning. Touya doesn’t know how to stop that , but even when he can’t see anymore because his eyes burned up, even when he can’t scream anymore because he has no vocal cords left, even when he can’t stand anymore because bare bones can’t carry the weight of his burning limbs, he doesn’t die. He can’t even pass out, and it’s not fair, he can’t close off from this pain in any possible way. His heart seems burning for ages, but it still doesn’t shatter, just infinitely hurting, hurting, hurting, hurting, hurting and not stopping functioning, even though it has no blood to run, and no vessels.
And then it stops burning.
Unfortunately, he still doesn’t die. He just feels the cold water drop on his face, and, when it stops, he opens his eyes.
Blonde unkempt hair, bushy eyebrows. Touya can’t make out his expression, but Hawks’ voice sounds worried when he says: “We needa go to the hospital”.
Touya chuckles, his throat hurts for some reason, and his voice comes out hoarse: “And how do you imagine it?”
Hawks stands up, and Touya falls on the asphalt with his shoulder blades when Hawks’ feather lets go of his hood. The rain starts dropping on him again, and only then Touya notices that his hands and face burn not like the last two days, but stronger, in a new way. He lifts his hands to his face, but his eyes refuse to turn blurred pink spots into a high-quality image.
“You have the same blisters covering half of your face”, wow , Touya thinks, these are blisters . “And I don’t know how to help. You know what to do with it? You better know, because I— I really have no clue what the fuck it is”.
His dark-red sneakers paddle on the wet asphalt back and forth, he appears in the field of view and then disappears again.
“Drop it. It will pass by itself”.
“What are you, blind? Look at them, how can this pass by itself?”
That sounds funny, actually.
Touya’s not getting up. Frankly saying, they are lucky it’s overcast today. He’s lucky that Hawks is kind, so that when he found out that Touya can be chased by cops he started guarding his sleep. Hawks asks: “If I put a dressing on it, will it help? You know underground docs close by? Or not close. I will get them in seconds, we still have money left, enough for treating.
“Can you calm down? That’s not deadly”.
“You were screaming in your sleep and stopped burning only after five minutes under the rain, fucking tell me about it, and now you have blisters on half of your body, and we can’t even go the hospital. Wonderful! And that’s not deadly, because infections are a myth, and people never were burned alive!”
“You better calm down, seriously, If you want, you can try putting bandages”.
Hawks twitches something, and Touya hears a sound of fabric tearing apart. Perhaps, Touya burned the blanket. Not very nice of him, he needs to steal a new one for them, or buy it, as the card will fall. The dressing doesn’t help a lot, it seems like one of the blisters pops off under the pressure and it gets worse. They have no idea what to do with his face, and Hawks starts panicking and getting on his nerves again.
Together with other kids, he makes for him really luxurious accommodations for their situation. They cover Touya with thousands of blankets, give him a lot of water ( there is , Touya thinks, someone other than me who makes money? ), but he still gets infected. He throws up a lot, his hands hurt even more and don’t even look like they’re about to heal, because he tries to warm himself with his own fire. He can’t sleep properly, so the next fortnight passes equally painful, useless and pointless.
“I guess I just suck at dying”, he says to the red spot next to him once, assuming that it’s Hawks.
Hawks answers: “It pleases. Want some water?”
Really, he says very funny things sometimes.
\\\
It’s like something breaks in his body. His immune system, not that good even before, waves farewell, says: “I’m tired of your shit”, and falls off together with any ability to regenerate, just like his earlobes after he fumbled with them too much.
Just like Hawks a few years ago. He just disappeared, and, basically, it wasn’t strange at first. Hawks disappeared for months quite often; some good people took him in. He would come back about the time they stopped being good, so someday he would be gone for three days and another time it would be three months. And, even being absent at night, he would still help in the day from time to time. Touya would also occasionally go with someone; he just ran away not when they demanded something back, but when the conditions were just as bad as living in the street. The basic set: a bathroom, a soba two times in a week and ointments for burns. Add rope, handcuffs, bites, God forbid heels and et cetera, and then you have to let him listen to MCR at any volume at any time.
But once Hawks disappeared, and no one met him in the streets anymore. And if Touya sucks at dying, then Hawks is good at not dying, so even if Touya did give a damn, he wouldn’t be worried. It’s that rare case when the person is such an agile snake that they will get comfy everywhere. A fucking bird of passage, seeking for convenience.
They don’t sell him painkillers without prescription even when he offers double payment.
“Don’t your burns hurt?”
Don’t show that you’re scared is one of the main rules of the streets, and that’s the only reason why Touya doesn’t flinch. Although, no matter how closely he looks at the shadow in the front, he still can’t make out anything; a guy comes out in the light, but it doesn’t get any better. There’s something glittering in his hands.
“Eleven, and it’s yours”.
“What’s that?”
“Can’t you see?”
Touya finds this question funny every time.
“No”.
He goes closer, ready to burn his head off in case; even if his body gets worse, he will cope with it, it’s not like it’s the first time. The guy raises his hand. Powder inside of a small package is as white as snow. He suddenly remembers that some bad person told him: “Never put ice or snow on your burns”. It’s amusing, actually.
Touya counts thirty three grand; his movements are calibrated, automated; and he hands it out. The guy is essentially a genius, it sucks that he hasn't met him earlier.
“Where can I find you later?”
“No idea”.
His coordination is very poor because of the pain and damaged tissues, and it takes a while for Touya to pour a line. A funny thought comes in his mind: if Hawks were here.
If Hawks were here, Touya wouldn’t feel so good .
///
When he comes to his senses, everything’s getting a lot worse; his skin begins to fester, he just wants to get into the fridge and he feels sick from the permanent smell of rottenness. Touya doesn’t have the tiniest idea what exactly he’s done to complicate everything. The painful shock still doesn’t pass, the alley around him divides into three large spots: yellow, brown and black.
It pleases.
He has, Touya thinks, a little bit too naive view of things.
He hesitates just a little before pouring another line.