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The first fall of snow they have at the Miload Manor creeps up on them overnight, falling in tiny specks that give way to thick clumps that blanket the ground in white. It isn’t anything like Puck’s magical snowfall — the change in temperature is gradual, coming as the seasons always do.
It is the first fall of snow Beatrice hasn’t had her library to tuck away in. And while she has, perhaps, missed the familiar quiet rows of books on occasion, she has no need for it now.
It would be rather cruel, to hide away in a library while her contractor suffers from illness, even if he did bring it upon himself.
“So mean, Beako.” Subaru’s voice hitches on one of those wheezing, frightening breaths, where it seems his voice has gotten stuck in his chest. “And so dramatic, too. It’s just a little cold.”
Beatrice gives him an elegant hmph. A little cold would not lay him up in bed, smothered in blankets while he hacks away all through the night. And she isn’t mean at all, since she’s stayed with him all the while, hasn’t she? It’s not as if as if she didn’t warn him not to stay out so late, either.
Subaru has simply been entirely too focused on training lately. And while it is fun to watch him leap and jump across the course he built with Garfiel, it is much less enjoyable when he returns late in the evening, his hands bitten and bleeding from the cold as he shivers sheepishly.
Really. He ought to know better. She’s found herself quite the dense contractor.
“You should be resting, I suppose,” Beatrice scolds, watching as he twists his fingers, still speckled in half-healed scabs and blisters, around and around the lengths of thread. “What are you bothering yourself with now?”
“Art, Beako,” he declares. “Or a woven bracelet, if you wanna be accurate.”
“A bracelet,” she repeats.
How trivial. And for her contractor to focus so diligently on it, when he ought to be resting.
She should be grateful for it, she supposes. Subaru’s made himself quite the bothersome patient, trying to scramble out of bed and insist he’s perfectly fine at every opportunity. Emilia’s been helpful, staying all morning and talking to him. But it was Ram’s haughty delivery of thread and her command to “make himself busy” that finally got him to sit still.
Beatrice should take note. It irks her, that someone might know something about her contractor better than she does.
Subaru sniffs thickly, taking another shuddery inhale. He braces himself, letting his breath back out carefully, as if trying to appease whatever illness rattles in his lungs.
“Some people call them friendship bracelets,” he continues, after his shoulders go lax in relief. She watches as he twists the colored strands together — it reminds her of when he braids Emilia’s hair, or her own. “I never got any, of course, but they looked fun to trade.”
Beatrice frowns. “What do you mean, ‘of course’?”
“Hm?” Subaru looks up at her. “Oh. I didn’t really, uh, have many friends back at home.”
“Or any,” he murmurs under breath, as if she can’t hear him.
“They were more of a girl’s thing anyways, I guess,” he continues. She watches the sad little twist to his mouth. “But I always thought they were fun to make.”
Beatrice looks back down, watching as he braids the bright colors together. His fingers move quickly, even battered as they are, as if they’ve been trained to do so.
“That’s a silly way to think,” she finally says. “If you enjoy it, you ought to enjoy it, I suppose.”
The smallest thrill of smugness runs through her as Subaru smiles.
“You should, shouldn’t you?” he pauses, laying a hand on her hair. “That’s a good way to think. You’re so smart, Beako.”
“Of course Betty is smart,” she sniffs. “Her intelligence is unrivaled, in fact.”
She tries to pretend she isn’t more concerned with the heat she can feel burning through his skin, now that he’s touching her.
Subaru lets out a huffing little breath. He catches it before it can turn to laughter, grimacing as his shoulders shudder. His hand presses against his chest.
“Subaru?”
He shakes his head. “Didn’t wanna cough,” he whispers hoarsely. He swallows, and his voice grows steadier, if a tad rasping. “Can’t go spreading sickness all over the bracelet.”
Beatrice decides not to mention that Subaru would very likely be spreading sickness over everything in the room already, if his illness was of that nature. The cold that lingers in his lungs isn’t the kind that would easily claim Garfiel, and certainly not Emilia.
It might claim Otto. Beatrice should be sooner to chase him away, next time he visits.
“Betty must admit,” she finally says, looking down as he comes to the end of his chain of colors. “I don’t see how that is supposed to be a bracelet.”
“It’ll look like a proper bracelet in a second,” Subaru says. “You can thread it through the loop here, you see?”
Beatrice watches as he twists the woven colors into a circlet, tying them off at the end.
“I see.” She runs a finger over the dyed threads. “It’s pretty, I suppose. Will you wear it?”
“Oh no,” Subaru shakes his head. “It’s too pretty for me to wear! It would look out of place on me.”
He seems a little sad at that. A bit longing, maybe. Beatrice looks to him, then to the bracelet.
Her contractor likes pretty things. He must, or he wouldn’t put so much effort into making them. He likes jewelry, too, and the pretty paints and powders you use on your face. She’s seen him holding the colored gems near his hair sometimes, before discarding them. She’s caught him with makeup on occasion — it’s difficult, but he’s never hidden from her when she does. Sometimes he’ll do her makeup, his hands gentle as he rambles on and on about what colors make her eyes pop.
She wishes he wouldn’t hide it away. Subaru looks his best when he’s excited about something, even with the funny expressions he makes.
“Here.” Subaru places the bracelet in her hands, closing her fingers around it. “A present, for you. Think of it as an apology for not playing in the snow with you today, okay?”
Beatrice looks down at the rainbow of colors in her hand, the braids of thread soft against her palm. Her fingers curl tighter around it.
“Betty doesn't care for playing in the snow,” she says. “Staying here is perfectly enjoyable. Romping around in the cold is for children.”
Subaru does laugh, this time. It sounds almost normal for a moment. Then the laughter catches in his chest and turns to a hoarse cough, and Beatrice is left to hover frantically over him until the wracking coughs subside.
“Been sick before,” he assures her, his voice rasping and his eyes running. “I’m fine. Remember the snow festival, with Puck? I just don’t hold up good in the cold.”
Beatrice frowns, her hands fidgeting.
She remembers the snow festival, of course. It was nice — it would have been much more so, had she truly let herself enjoy it.
Subaru had been sniffling then too, hadn’t he? She can’t quite remember. She’d been so determined to push him away, back then, that she’d told herself his face was little more than a persistent irritation.
If she had paid attention, maybe he wouldn’t be so fragile in the cold. If she had looked a little closer, maybe she’d know why he flinches when the weather grows chilly, why the touch of snow leaves a haunted look in his eyes.
If she hadn’t been so stubborn, so obstinate, so—
“We don’t have to play in the snow at all, I suppose,” she finally says. “Snow days were no different than any other day, in the library. I don’t have any particular interest in them.”
Subaru hums, a little sad. He looks away, out the window.
“I should’ve gotten you out sooner,” he murmurs. “You had to be so patient with me, didn’t you? You’re an angel, Beako.”
“Save that name for your silly girl, I suppose.”
“Emilia, you mean.”
“Your silly Emilia, I suppose.”
“We’ll get there.” Subaru yawns. Beatrice hears the rattle in his chest as he does, the way his breath whistles in his lungs.
“Enough pretending,” she demands. “It’s time for sleep.”
“Aw, but I was going to make a bracelet for Emilia,” Subaru mourns, but he’s already leaning back against the pillows, his eyes heavy.
“You can make her one when you wake up, in fact.”
“Mmh. I want Beako cuddles in compensation, then.”
Beatrice startles back, her face going warm. She looks determinedly away, refusing to meet his eyes.
“Betty could comply with such a small request, I suppose.”
“That’s why Beako’s the best,” Subaru tells her drowsily, as she tucks herself into the blankets beside him. It’s quite hot now that she’s near him, the fever turning his normal warmth into an uncomfortable heat.
It’s always odd to her, how humans decide to fall ill from the cold by turning hot. But it makes sense, she supposes. And she’d rather have a warm, restless Subaru than a cold, unmoving one.
“Snow day,” he murmurs, just barely awake. “T’morrow. Promise.”
Beatrice sighs. “Go to sleep, I suppose.”
It takes only moments for Subaru’s breathing to even out in sleep, his expression more peaceful in slumber than it ever is, these days. There’s a scratchy edge to his breathing still, a quiet rattle as his chest rises and falls.
But it isn’t quite as frightening as earlier, she supposes.
Tucking her legs up, Beatrice curls closer to him, taking the hand he’s left clasped in her own and pulling it to her. She pauses, her fingers running over one of the blisters that’s torn open.
Beatrice doesn’t think much for beauty. She herself is perfectly formed by mother, and perfectly cute as could be.
Even if mother, perhaps, didn’t quite have it all right, Beatrice is at least sure of that.
But she knows enough of beauty to understand it. And she knows that, objectively, Subaru’s hands are not beautiful.
They’re slender, yes, almost delicate. But the ugly blisters and raw, bleeding sores don’t do him any favors. And then there are the burn scars that carve out his palms, mottling his skin in different shades.
Beatrice knows what those looked like once, red and angry and bleeding.
In that moment, she thinks, they were the most beautiful thing she’s seen.
So loving the poor hands now, in their sorry state, is an easy task.
Carefully as she can, Beatrice ties her bracelet around his wrist. The colors are vivid against his pale, feverish skin, drawing attention from scars that cross beneath it.
He did say it was a present for her. That means she can do with it as she wishes, does it not?
She decides it does.
Besides. Bracelets will make it harder to scratch.
“Betty thinks it looks very pretty on you, in fact,” she whispers, tucking her head against his arm.
Perhaps Beatrice doesn’t know much about beauty. She knows that beautiful things ought to make you smile, though. And she thinks, more than any of the pretty things he makes her, Subaru himself makes her smile.
If he can’t find the snow beautiful anymore, she can tell him that, at least.