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Taigen wakes up in pain. It is not excruciating, but it blossoms over his limbs slowly, surely, like ink sliding across paper. It starts with his face, then his torso, his ribs, his legs, his arms, his fingertips.
His fingertips—
It comes back to him suddenly. An onslaught of memories makes his eyes snap open and his lips part in a gasp. His throat tightens. His voice dies before he can speak. Unmoving, silent, and confused, Taigen searches the room for an explanation — his nails , he remembers, and his fingers twitch on the ground.
"Don't move," comes a voice to his right. "You're safe but don't move yet."
Taigen looks in its direction. Even moving his neck brings a dull ache to his spine and terrible images to his mind — he can break, he reckons, with the barest of gestures.
Where are we? he means to ask. All that comes out is a groan of pain.
"Don't talk either," Mizu warns.
There is pain — there is what he sees. Mizu is leaning towards him, kneeling on the floor next to him, and then, in a blink, a palm rests on his neck. Warm, calloused. Taigen cannot breathe.
"Your fever has gone down," he says clinically. "If you stay still, I'll get you water."
It is not the promise of drink that acquiesces Taigen, he knows that. The words, the command — that is more than enough, it allows him to relax once again, allows him to sag on the floor and rest .
Mizu looks like— Taigen is not entirely sure what he looks like.
He looks like something Taigen wants to look at.
Slowly, as if to not provoke a beast, Mizu stands up. He walks within Taigen's watch, toward a clay pot in the corner of the house they find themselves in — and Taigen wonders, for a second, where are they, where are they, where are they — but the panic dies as quickly as it rises. Mizu told him he is safe.
Mizu brings him a glass of water, and it is then Taigen realizes how thirsty he is. A rough feeling in his throat as it closes up, and his tongue feels raspy in his mouth; such a delicate sensation to notice under all the pain. Kneeling beside him once more, Mizu slides his fingers under the back of his head.
"Tell me if it hurts."
And it hurts; the barest of motions, just the gentle push of Mizu's hand to support his head up. Taigen feels it to his feet, like a jolt, like lightning, yet he doesn't say anything. It hurts, it hurts, but something in his chest hurts way more — the kindness, he reckons, the care. Mizu brings the glass to his lips, slowly and steadily, and Taigen can barely drink: his heart has hammered its way up his throat. Suddenly, Taigen is embarrassed of his weakened state, embarrassed of the water spilling down his chin. Embarrassed of the pain he feels in front of a man who seems to not feel the same for him.
"Don't move," Mizu says, and brings Taigen's head back to the floor.