Your World
Title: Your World
’Verse/characters: LD high school AU
Prompt: 092: Christmas/Winter Holiday
Word Count:
Rating: 510
Notes: takes place a couple weeks after who came to bring back your dignity, baby?
"I'm cold," Ijirashii says.
Lavender peers at him over the tops of his glasses. "Yes," he agrees slowly. "I suppose you are." He sets the paper bag beside Ijirashii on the icy sidewalk, and takes off his coat to drape it over Ijirashii. Ijirashii doesn't move. "How long have you been out here?"
Ijirashii is silent. The snow piles up around him and in his hair and on the shoulders of his thin shirt. The sun went down half an hour ago and the world is very grey, and very sad. The streets are nearly empty, half a mile from the apartment, twenty miles from where Lavender has just spent the better part of his day negotiating a bribe to avoid his own imprisonment. Business as usual.
Lavender removes his scarf as well and wraps it around Ijirashii's neck, bundling it across his face. He does not consider it a good sign that Ijirashii doesn't protest. He sits beside him, shivering already, but Ijirashii doesn't seem cold at all. He is as white and as still as the undisturbed snow gathering rapidly.
"Ijirashii," Lavender begins, "have you been here since I left this morning?" No, he thinks, Ijirashii would be blue, or he wouldn't be here. Somebody would've jostled him, noticed him. He's newly seventeen and he is small. Somebody would've called the police. When Ijirashii still doesn't respond, he tries again. "Have you eaten today? I'm making pre-Christmas dinner tonight." He wants Ijirashii to snidely ask, What's pre-Christmas dinner? Is there a Christmas breakfast, a Christmas lunch, and a Christmas dinner to go afterwards? Are you just looking for excuses to cook vast amounts of food to cover up the equally vast amounts of alcohol you plan to drink?
Ijirashii shifts his eyes a fraction of an inch towards Lavender. "I thought I was going to go there. Back. To there." His voice, muffled beneath the scarf, develops the tiniest tremble in it. That and his breath visible in front of him are almost all that makes him seem alive. "I thought she would want me. It's a holiday. She'd want me."
The longer Lavender goes without responding to that, the colder they both get. But his teeth are chattering by the time he says, "No. I'm not letting you go," and means, You don't have to go, and it takes the intended harshness out of his voice. "You're not going anywhere but home, with me," he goes on anyway.
Ijirashii looks at him and thaws, and begins to shiver violently. "But doesn't she want me?"
Lavender's chest hurts. "It doesn't matter if she does or not because she can't have you," he says, and that much he does mean. He stands and takes Ijirashii's ungloved and purple fingers in his hands. "We're going home now, Ijirashii. It's going to be warm and we're going to have dinner and I'm going to get angry at you for eating the last five candy canes off my otherwise perfect tree. Let's go home now."
It is Christmas before Ijirashii stops crying.
’Verse/characters: LD high school AU
Prompt: 092: Christmas/Winter Holiday
Word Count:
Rating: 510
Notes: takes place a couple weeks after who came to bring back your dignity, baby?
"I'm cold," Ijirashii says.
Lavender peers at him over the tops of his glasses. "Yes," he agrees slowly. "I suppose you are." He sets the paper bag beside Ijirashii on the icy sidewalk, and takes off his coat to drape it over Ijirashii. Ijirashii doesn't move. "How long have you been out here?"
Ijirashii is silent. The snow piles up around him and in his hair and on the shoulders of his thin shirt. The sun went down half an hour ago and the world is very grey, and very sad. The streets are nearly empty, half a mile from the apartment, twenty miles from where Lavender has just spent the better part of his day negotiating a bribe to avoid his own imprisonment. Business as usual.
Lavender removes his scarf as well and wraps it around Ijirashii's neck, bundling it across his face. He does not consider it a good sign that Ijirashii doesn't protest. He sits beside him, shivering already, but Ijirashii doesn't seem cold at all. He is as white and as still as the undisturbed snow gathering rapidly.
"Ijirashii," Lavender begins, "have you been here since I left this morning?" No, he thinks, Ijirashii would be blue, or he wouldn't be here. Somebody would've jostled him, noticed him. He's newly seventeen and he is small. Somebody would've called the police. When Ijirashii still doesn't respond, he tries again. "Have you eaten today? I'm making pre-Christmas dinner tonight." He wants Ijirashii to snidely ask, What's pre-Christmas dinner? Is there a Christmas breakfast, a Christmas lunch, and a Christmas dinner to go afterwards? Are you just looking for excuses to cook vast amounts of food to cover up the equally vast amounts of alcohol you plan to drink?
Ijirashii shifts his eyes a fraction of an inch towards Lavender. "I thought I was going to go there. Back. To there." His voice, muffled beneath the scarf, develops the tiniest tremble in it. That and his breath visible in front of him are almost all that makes him seem alive. "I thought she would want me. It's a holiday. She'd want me."
The longer Lavender goes without responding to that, the colder they both get. But his teeth are chattering by the time he says, "No. I'm not letting you go," and means, You don't have to go, and it takes the intended harshness out of his voice. "You're not going anywhere but home, with me," he goes on anyway.
Ijirashii looks at him and thaws, and begins to shiver violently. "But doesn't she want me?"
Lavender's chest hurts. "It doesn't matter if she does or not because she can't have you," he says, and that much he does mean. He stands and takes Ijirashii's ungloved and purple fingers in his hands. "We're going home now, Ijirashii. It's going to be warm and we're going to have dinner and I'm going to get angry at you for eating the last five candy canes off my otherwise perfect tree. Let's go home now."
It is Christmas before Ijirashii stops crying.