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‘Isn’t it weird how much liquid can a single body contain?’ Shiro wonders. The green tiles in front of him are still glistening, covered in a mixture of blood and water that makes them appear black in the light that is much too strong for Shiro’s bloodshot eyes.
He isn’t crying. What’s the use? He swipes the rug across the tiles, smearing everything and seemingly not wiping anything off. He feels a bile rising in his throat, growing in size and in vile taste until he can’t take it anymore. The rug he is trying to rinse slips from his fingers - the sink and the tap have red smudges all over them and they dance in front of his eyes, a mockery, he feels, of everything he thought he could do.
He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the sink and stumbles back, catching himself on the toilet. He feels so tired and he feels old. There are frown lines etched into his forehead and he sees his eyes are dull, despite the glisten that grows just as he feels the eyelids burning hotter and hotter.
When has he gotten so pale? When did he rub his eyes raw red? There is already a scruff across his cheeks and his neck and he feels gross. He shaved this morning, didn’t he? He must have, but he doesn’t remember.
He gets up and tries to step up back to the sink, but almost slips on the stain in the center of the bathroom that refuses to go away. He looks down at his white socks and they are now covered in blood too. A shudder runs up from his feet to the top of his head - wet socks on his feet. A drop splatters on the stain and he frowns at it, confused. Only then does he feel the tears that are rolling down his cheeks, dropping from his chin and adding salt to the mix underneath him.
The bile moves up his throat and rests again his tongue and he whips around. He feels only disgust and rolls in misery as he closes his eyes to the sight of the white, porcelain inside of the toilet.
Keith isn’t looking at him. Shiro glances the way he is looking every few seconds, but the view outside the window doesn’t change at all. The scarce, ragged clouds that look like dirty, freshly shorn wool thrown into the air are passing by on the sky. There isn’t even any treetops reaching the level they are at, just the almost empty blue that looks strangely small in the frame of the window. Hasn’t the sky used to be great? Hasn’t it used to be big and wide and vast? Where does the rest of it go when it gets cut into small pieces so that it would fit in the windowframes?
Shiro looks away. His gaze slides from the white windowframe to the light grey of the walls and back to the white of the sheets on Keith’s bed. He doesn’t choke up when he sees Keith’s white hands. He doesn’t choke up when he sees that half of this white are clean bandages. He only chokes up when the traitorous mind slides him the photographic memories of those bandages soaked red, almost dripping.
“Look at me, please look at me,” he says. He isn’t calm but it doesn’t show, does it? He doesn’t remember what Keith’s eyes looked like. He hasn’t really seen them since- since then.
Keith is turned away from him, light reflecting on his cheekbone and the slightly parted lips. The white light and the white skin and the white sheets. The black ink of hair painted across the pillow. Shiro can’t read what is written in that ink. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, maybe there is nothing to read.
There is a hollow pit where his stomach used to be. His pulse is a drumbeat in both his ears. He feels almost shy as he slides his fingers underneath Keith’s palm. It’s warm and that’s the most he could demand.
“Visiting hours are over,” comes from the door. Shiro looks at the nurse.
“But I’m his-”
“Rules are rules,” she says. “I didn’t make them,” she adds quietly. There is sympathy in those eyes but Shiro can’t bear to feel grateful. What for?
“Will he ever look at me again?” slips past his lips as the doors close. He closes his eyes briefly. He shouldn’t have let it out.
“I don’t know. Would you consider him a lost cause?”
His blood boils. She smiles and pats him on the shoulder.
“Then come again. And again. And again. And then take him home.”
He looks after her as she moves down the corridor, the elegant bundle of her brown hair bouncing above the uniform. When he looks back inside the room at the bed and the figure on it and the window in the background, the glass separating him from the inside, he feels dirty, like he is spying on someone trying to live their own life. He turns away.
He lies on the too big bed, his clothes still on his back and his shoes still on his feet. He stares at the entrance to the bathroom he managed to clean up. Breath after breath after breath.
He sees himself, like on a record, as he walks in and puts away his bag and his keys. He sees as he slips off his shoes and calls out a name. He sees as he pats across the downy rug and- stop.
Shiro looks at the creamy carpet. It bears no stains. He must have carried Keith so fast no drop managed to fall down.
The record resumes. He pats across the downy rug and sees the bathroom doors cracked open. He doesn’t think much as he pulls it. There is the green of the tiles (who chose this ugly green?), the first trace of red and something white and something black and-
The record screeches to a stop. It’s almost boring.
“Keith?” he said back then. He blinked, torn between taking a step back to get the phone and stepping forward to pull out the bandages. He doesn’t remember what he has done first.
Boring, isn’t it?
It’s starting to feel boring to him after the third night he woke up with a scream lingering on his lips.
Shiro rolls on his back. How many times has he seen this ceiling? What was the last time he ate? Surely there is an answer somewhere out there. At least to those questions - a bitter thought.
He slides his hand across the dark blue of the bedding and it’s empty. No hills and no elevations that could feel warm and alive under his fingertips, no muscle that could could constrict under the touch and no plush flesh. As he lays on the bedding he feels like he is sinking into the falling night, but there are no stars and there is no moon in this falling dusk. He gets up and turns on the light in the kitchen. It’s so small and so hollow. He opens the cabinet and he opens the fridge; he can’t eat.
There are two toothbrushes in the bathroom. He brought Keith a new one to the hospital. There are two towels, one on the floor and one on the heater. He brought Keith a new, fresh one.
There are two chairs at the table. Two bowls and two cups and two pairs of keys.
The laundry basket is almost full.
It can’t stay like that. This isn’t what he wants to come back to.
The night has fallen long ago, but neither of them got up to turn on the lights. They sit, unmoving, on the couch, in front of images sliding across the screen and disappearing. It’s so dark where the light from the screen doesn’t reach and the shadows are deep and moving and comforting in familiarity. Shiro hasn’t heard a word of anything that was uttered by the speakers nor has he heard a sound.
He feels something warm touch the smallest finger on his palm and he looks. Keith’s pale hand moves and a finger hooks with his. There is a thin bandage above the wrist, a gentle serpent of cloth.
He thinks that there was something he was supposed to forgive for, something to ask about, something to apologize for. But he doesn’t remember anymore.
The couch under them is dark brown and the cushions at their sides are cream.
He grips Keith’s palm, so very tight.