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The hospital room was both too quiet and too loud.
The silence felt suffocation. It wraps around him tightly, filling his throat, invading every sense. He's drowning in it, drowning in the thick stillness of the entire room.
But it wasn't silent. In fact, the room was unbelievably loud. Around him, monitors beep rhythmically. Outside his door, people run around, talking loud. Alarms ring, piercing through his brain. He can hear the door creak as they're swung open and closed, could hear beds and wheelchairs squeaking down the hall. The TV in the corner played a show he had long since stopped paying attention to.
His hands grip onto the thin sheets that cover his lower body. He tightens his grip, watching as the white fabric bunches between his pale fingers. Chipped red nail polish sharply contrasts the paleness of the blankets and skin, and he pulls his fingers close, digging his thumbnail under part of the nailpolish, scratching more of it off.
The IV in the crook of his elbow aches. Just like everything else in his body, it doesn't hurt, the pain tucked under layers of painkillers. Yet, the IV still itches, and his hand twitches to itch it. Yet he knows it would make things worse if he gave into the urges, so he kept his hands to his sides, bunched in the blanket.
He can taste the blood. Can taste the iron in his mouth, and taste the bile from many times of throwing up. His stomach burns for a second, a reminder of the stitches still healing under layers of bandages. If he closes his eyes, he's there again, bloody and struggling to stay awake, tears tracing paths down his cheeks.
He can see the others running away. He can see his teammates run the moment he's down, seeing them rush back to the tower and leave him alone to die, leaving him alone with a villain he could no longer fight.
He raises his eyes back to the TV, trying to distract himself. With the lights of the room close to the TV, his eyes burn. He blinks a few times, closing his eyes tight. Pushing a shaky breath out, he opens his eyes once more, trying again. The show isn't one he recognises, honestly looking like a children's show. With the bright colours and puppets, it looks like Jimmy had picked a TV network for kids when he had turned on the TV earlier. However, his body feels too exhausted to reach for the remote, so the channel doesn't change. His eyes unfocus, the bright colours of the show blurring into nonsense.
Somewhere in that nonsense, the red looks familiar, shining the same as the eyes of the villain who had saved him.
The door slides open, and he looks down. His vision is greeted with the soft multicolours of familiar wings. His eyes slide away from the wings, onto the face of the man that had just come in.
"Hey." Grian says. His voice is quiet, a perfect middle of the quiet and the loud of the hospital.
He moves further in, pushing the door closed. Moving further into the room, his hand finds the chair pushed to the side of the room, and he pulls it closer, sitting close to the side of Jimmy's bed.
"Hey." Jimmy finally responds. His voice is soft, a bit rough. He hasn't spoken much in the last few days, it strains with the effort of getting a single word out. He finishes his sentence with a smile, trying to make up for the words he cannot get out.
Grian's eyes search his face, searching for any pain. The black of his irises are filled with a concern, one Jimmy had seen too much since he had been here. "How are you doing?" His voice does not rise from the volume of before. Still soft, still quiet. Still better than all the other noises.
"Tired." Jimmy admits. All the tension in his muscles is zapped away with his brother so close, and he sinks into the firm pillows behind him, pushing them into a bunch. "It's constantly loud."
The fact that this was just the hero tower infirmary scares Jimmy in a way. This wing of the tower isn't even that crowded, how bad is an actual hospital? How loud would it be?
His wings find their way to his hands. He runs his fingers through the golden feathers, picking at the soft fluff. His wings had a few bald patches, every day spent in the hospital was another day he slowly picked away at them, pulling feathers to try and relieve the stress weighting on his shoulder.
Hands grab onto his. Fingers lace together with his, gripping onto his trembling fists and pulling them far away from his wings. Jimmy tilts his head to meet Grian's eyes, blue eyes staring through greasy blonde curls.
Grian shakes his head softly at him. "Don't pick at your wings Tim. They're looking rough" One of his hands releases Jimmy's in order to reach forward, gently smoothing over his feathers. After a few seconds, he motions for Jimmy to turn around, and turn his back to face him.
Jimmy hesitates, but turns around, facing his wings towards his brother. The stitches on his stomach ache as he turns, and his broken leg protests, pain spiking through the fog of relief. He does his best not to show it hurts, but Grian seems to stare through his soul, gently rubbing circles into his shoulder to reassure him.
Grian takes one of his wings in gentle hands. His talons grip onto the soft feathers, gently repositioning them. Experienced hands clean up the wings he had been neglecting for so long. The itch in his wings is soothed finally, and Jimmy catches his eyes closing, body shutting down from the comfort. He forces them back open, tilting his head up to look at the TV still playing in the corner.
He feels like he's doing a good job keeping himself away. But then he finds himself being shaken awake, eyes reopening from blinking to see the television channel switched. He pulls his chin off his chest, letting himself be rearranged to lay his head back on the pillow. The thin blanket is wrapped around him again, wrapped around his shoulders.
Jimmy watches through half lidded eyes as Grian lifts his leg back onto the pillows that had been set up to prop it. He whimpers just a little bit, the pain spiking as his leg is moved. Just as fast as the pain spikes, the fog takes it back under, drifting over him.
His head feels like its been stuffed with cotton balls. Somewhere outside of the fog, he can see Grian sit back down next to the bed, and can feel talons gently tracing shapes onto his skin, not quite scratching, just gently tracing.
He registers one of the shapes being a triangle just in time for his eyes to shut again, letting himself be dragged into the fog once more.