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Perhaps the days spent training until he couldn't anymore, restless nights spent tossing and turning, and planning and practising with every minute he could spare, were catching up to him.
The 'perhaps' turned to certainty, as Ethan shifted on his trembling legs, ready to collapse at the slightest gust of wind.
The announcer was…well, announcing him the winner, and thunderous applause shook the stadium. But, Ethan couldn't focus on any of that. His eyes remained locked on the increasingly hazy blob of color Silver was becoming.
It had been a week, felt like a month and ached like a year since he had been in the boy's presence, and every second of it made him feel incomplete. The thrum of his heart was lopsided, with no metronome to keep it steady and even. This battle had been the most alive he's felt since he arrived in Pasio, beating even his first flight on Lugia after earning his Sygna Suit.
Silver was getting closer, or Ethan's vision was diluting faster than he thought. Even has a blob, he was really pretty. Ethan still couldn't quite grasp the reality of their relationship. Couldn't believe how he was lucky enough to call him his boyfriend.
"You really are…" Ethan muttered, mostly to himself, but Silver was close enough to hear (or was he still on the other side of the stage?). He was out before he hit the ground, knees buckling beneath his lethargic bones.
"Ethan!" Silver hissed, as he wrapped his arms around his waist and stumbled on his own feet to adjust for the added weight of the boy's ragdoll form. He was lucky that running was more skill than hobby, that the arena was short, that he was fast enough to make it before Ethan hit his head on the ground.
He was sure he looked like a madman to the viewers, when he broke into a sprint to catch the other, but Silver was so hopped up on adrenaline that he truly couldn't care.
The redhead lowered Ethan down and took a seat kneeling beside him, as he waited for the medical professionals to bustle in with their sticks and tubes, or whatever stuff they used for sleep deprived teens like Ethan definitely was.
The commentators were keeping the mood light, 'witty' (read: tacky) jokes died in waves of short-lived laughter and much unneeded recaps of a battle that just happened. Ethan would find it funny, but Silver curled his lip and made the smartest decision he's had in months. He pressed his lips shut and ignored it. He didn't want to sour his mood right now, not when he was grinning down at the boy he loved with a smile he couldn't suppress, even if Ethan wasn't conscious to see it.
Silver shot a glance at the flurry of movement beside him, spotting Lugia, who had shuffled its large body and stretched its wings out like a shield from the outside world. Ho-Oh, with ruffled feathers littered with the sacred ash that Silver had been holding until this battle, swept to cover the other half with its gorgeous, rainbow wings.
When Silver looked back at Ethan–because it had been such a long week that he could look at him for hours–, his eyes softened further. He couldn't even bring himself to feel frustrated at how weak the other made him feel, because his brain felt like it had been dipped in glue and rolled around in a pile of feathers.
"An exercise nut like you ran out of steam." He mused, brushing the hair from Ethan's face gently. Lavender eyes darted from Ethan's visibly exhausted face–with pale lips, deep bags beneath his eyes and stress lines etched into the corners of his eyes–to one of two deities beside him, and he was acutely aware of how many eyes surrounded the arena, trying to catch a glimpse between outstretched wings.
It had been a few months since that fateful night on the cliffs that overlooked Pasio, and the pair hadn't exactly tried to keep their relationship secret, but they hadn't tried to make it known either.
Naturally, Silver wasn't one for PDA, only accepting intertwined hands when crowds had scattered and left few familiar eyes to see such affection. Nothing else between the pair had changed, and Silver slept (somewhat) soundly at night knowing that their dynamic wouldn't become the public's next hot topic. Perhaps this battle would stir the pot, but he couldn't care for that right now.
"What kind of exercises has he been doing, Lugia?"
The bird tipped its head forward, and a small pressure poked at the side of his mind until it found an entrance. Like an envelope slipped beneath a door, the memory was offered and so he opened it, only to be greeted with the sight of Ethan, dressed in his cap and all, standing directly beneath a freezing waterfall.
"Hmph!" Silver's lip curled with amusement, as his gaze darted back to the boy. "Now I can't even complain to him about losing."
The arena doors opened, and Silver could see a group of medics approaching. They weren't moving at a breakneck pace, which irritated the redhead. So, with some adjustments of how he was sitting, Silver slipped his hands beneath the boy's neck and the crooks of his knees, hoisting him up into a hold that others would childishly label as the "bridal style".
Nothing about this was bridal, it wasn't even that romantic, because dear Arceus was carrying someone difficult. Even despite Ethan's weight being… lighter than it should be–had he been skipping meals purposefully, or was it a byproduct of his extensive training?–his limbs still flailed awkwardly, tipping and shifting his center of gravity.
Luckily, the paramedics met him halfway, and Silver was both reluctant and grateful to lower him onto their gurney.
"You really are something, too, Ethan." Silver smiled to himself as he hooked a pinkie finger around one of Ethan's own. "It's thanks to you that my dream can live on."
Ethan was vaguely aware that he was awake, but he was so tired that he wasn't even sure if that was the case. His eyelids felt heavier than… something heavy, and his lips seemed to have fused together in his sleep. Even beneath the skin, his eyeballs were sluggish to roll around. It felt like he had been dipped in tar, rolled up in an Ariados's web and dropped into the bottom of the ocean.
Something was beeping, probably an alarm. Did he oversleep? Probably. He should get up, or slam a weary hand over the clock in a desperate attempt to snooze it so he could keep being late.
His hands didn't respond to his attempts at movement, or maybe they did and he just couldn't tell as he clung to lucidity. There was something on his hand too. It itched, but scratching it was out of the equation. The best Ethan could do with such a limited range of options was let out a low whine that grew in pitch as it went. It died off by the five second mark, and he would've finished it off with a pitiful cough if his muscles weren't dull from lack of use.
Movement sounded nearby, like someone leaping off a creaky chair and walking towards him. He already knew who it was by his smell–was that weird?–and his footsteps, and the way he sighed like he always did.
Ethan tried to remember what happened that would've left him in such a state, but all he could think about was how good Silver looked in his Arc Suit.
"You really are the stupidest person I know." Silver said dully, as he leaned down and pressed a kiss to Ethan's forehead.
"You flatter me." Was what Ethan was trying to say, but he couldn't part his lips in time, so all that came out was a series of fluctuating pitches.
He tried to sit up, too, but firm yet gentle hands pushed him back down. Once again held back by his fatigue, Ethan could only bring himself to open his eyes.
The beeping made sense when Ethan was greeted with white walls and clinical light. The medical bay of the stadium, a room he was intrinsically familiar with, as a scrape or gash was expected after every battle or two. The curtains around his bed were drawn, and an IV-drip was connected to his hand (that was still itchy, and now that he knew he couldn't scratch without disturbing it it made it even itchier). He was still in the clothes he battled in, albeit missing his hoodie and cap. His attention wasn't on his missing clothes, though, as warm brown eyes darted to the boy sitting at his bedside.
Silver looked dishevelled, like he hadn't slept in days. Knowing how stubborn he was, he almost definitely slept on that chair for however long he'd been asleep for.
"If you ever do that again, I'll knock you out myself." He hissed, curling both hands around the railing of the bed. Though his lips were pursed, tone sharp and brows furrowed, Silver was looking at him with all the love he could fit on his narrowed eyes. Ethan quirked a lip at him, and Silver couldn't help but smile back.
It was a tense one, wobbling on unsure footing because he'd never really smiled like that before. Smirks and gloating grins were his forte, and it seemed like he didn't know how to unfurrow his brows. It made it even cuter, and frustrated Ethan because he couldn't really move to act on the bubbling in his heart.
He was able to pry his lips open, smacking them a few times to break the weird film strands that glued his mouth shut. It was then Ethan was made aware that he hadn't brushed his teeth in days, coating his mouth in a gross taste.
"This sucks." He groaned, voice gravelly from disuse. Silver nodded in agreement as he pulled the chair closer to his bed. He rested his hands by Ethan's side, visibly unsure of what to do with them.
"Did I really pass out right after the battle?"
His memory was still hazy, blotting faces, names, words and honestly anything that wasn't Silver into drops of vague colors.
"I'm surprised you made it that far, and won."
"I–" Ethan would've lurched forward, but the blanket was so heavy all he could do was shift where he laid and widen his eyes. "I won?"
Silver nodded, but he couldn't swallow down the flash of bitterness that struck for a moment. "It was a close battle." He added, and Ethan knew he was trying to salvage his pride.
"You should've won. You were on fire." The boy croaked, reaching a heavy hand out to Silver. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with the hand, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't miss his touch. It's been a long week.
Silver shook his head, though he did take Ethan's hand with his own, gently cupping it between smooth palms and running his thumb against his knuckles.
"You deserved that win. We did all we could, but you and Lugia earned it." The redhead sighed frustratedly. Not towards Ethan though, towards himself in that self-loathing way that Ethan hated so much.
"I'm serious, dude. You've grown so strong, gotten so far. If anyone deserves that win, it's you."
"You trained under waterfalls for that battle, this shouldn't be a discussion."
Ethan faltered, grimacing awkwardly at that. "Ah… You heard about that." He wasn't even sure why he did that, it barely helped him. If anything, it was just a wake-up tactic to keep him going for another day.
"You're so stupid." Silver muttered as he brought Ethan's hand to his face, pressing a kiss to his knuckles gently. Ethan's face went beet red, and any rebuke to his comment was lost in a flustered giggle.
"I can't believe you passed out." The redhead continued, mumbling into the hand still held up to his face. "You didn't get to hear me complain about losing."
The raven-haired boy smiled sheepishly. "Sorry. I got carried away with my training…"
Silver exhaled deeply, and Ethan was made aware of how tired he looked. Though Silver always looked like he was running on four hours of sleep, right now he looked an hour away from passing out in a manner like Ethan did.
"C'mere." The boy hummed as he shuffled to the side sluggishly, hoping to create a space wide enough for Silver to fit comfortably. The boy looked at him with an expression he could only read as 'there's barely enough room on the bed for you', but Ethan pouted back at him.
"I could've died–" "You weren't even close" "–and it's been so long." "It's been a week."
"It felt like years." Ethan said with the cadence of someone quoting a movie, but Silver didn't know what he was talking about, or where to start on figuring it out. Despite that, despite his unamused expression and the desire to flick his forehead, Silver realised how utterly smitten he was.
He'd had a few moments of clarity in the same vein before, but they were quickly squished down by the fact that he'd never act on them. Now that he could, dear Arceus was it jarring.
Puffing his cheeks out with a look of defeat, Silver slowly stood up and scooted into the narrow gap Ethan had managed to make. The boy waited for him to get settled patiently, then wrapped one arm around his back and the other around his front (with little regard for the tube attached to his hand, which made another strand of Silver's hair turn grey) and draped himself across his chest.
Silver let out a startled squeak, but didn't fight as the boy made himself comfortable with his new pillow.
"This bed is shit." Silver mumbed, mostly to himself. Ethan, who had rested his head on Silver's chest and looked just about ready to fall back asleep for a year, giggled drearily. This wasn't a laughing matter, because Silver had felt several springs press into his back with a vengeance. He wasn't sure what he'd even done to the mattress in the first place, but he knew that whatever it was was absolutely deserved.
"Try sleepin' on it for…" The boy trailed off, sleepily looking up at Silver. "...three?" "One and a half." "–one and a half days."
Silver didn't mention that he slept on the creaky hospital recliner that night, though he wanted to. Ethan wasn't awake enough to really bother trying to converse, so Silver just rested his head atop of his rival–ultimate rival, he thought back to Ethan's words with a smile–and adjusted his hold on the boy.
When Kris stuck her head through the curtains to confirm her friend was still alive (Lyra almost passed out when Ethan went down after the battle, and Kris had to drag her to the medical wing to prove he'd just overexerted himself and wasn't halfway to meeting the very God who blessed him) and was greeted by the sight of Silver holding Ethan as they both slept, looking more peaceful than she'd ever seen either of them look before, she pulled back and turned to Lyra with a wide grin.
Okay– She did stop to grab her Poryphone and snap a photo, but right after that she pulled back.
"He's gonna wish he'd died when I show him this." She whispered, because she did have respect for the sleeping pair. Lyra peered over her shoulder with poorly disguised interest, and couldn't help but giggle at the photo she'd taken.
"That's if Silver doesn't kill us first."