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He awoke with a gasp, eyes wide in the pitch black of the room. His throat clogged up and another sharp intake of breath pulled his body to the side in violent coughs. He couldn’t care less about the noise at that moment, and chose to ignore the reddened water staining the carpet beside his bed.
A throbbing came from his hips and ribs, a heavy weight settling on him, within him , so determined to break him, he thought. He didn’t think anything was broken.
He turned on his back again, and pinched the bridge of his nose, attempting to steady his breathing and push back the throb above his eyes but found it to be his worst idea yet as a wave of nausea crawled its way up inside him to his throat and he stood on weak legs, eyes glazed over, blind and still searching for something that wouldn’t come.
His feet failed him for a moment, and he very much nearly collapsed onto his nightstand had the door to the bathroom not been so near as to allow him a holding site. He steadied himself against the doorframe for a few seconds and promptly threw up in the sink.
In his drowsy sickly state, he hadn’t heard the ruffling of sheets, nor the heavy steps of a bigger man, nor his name called twice before he had reached the bathroom. “Naru,” came a third. The door was open, there was nobody there. “Naru, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” A figure approached the door when he’d turned on the faucet, let the water wash away the remnants of the minimal food he’d had as he washed his face. He paid no mind to the red tint on the sink.
“You don’t look fine.” Naru whipped his head too quick, caught the sight of Houshou by the door when a sudden dizziness made him sway on the spot. He gripped the sink till his knuckles turned white and moved a hand to shoo the other man away.
Salt burned in the back of his eyes though he blinked it away. His vision blurred and he scrambled to wash his face again, covering the feverish skin with a towel. Supposedly soft as it is, he felt it scratch his skin raw; still, he pressed it closer, urged it to sculpt his face back to normal, cold and blank.
A part of him wanted to fail, wanted him to give in to the throbbing and the cold and break, cry, ugly and loud, ignore the twist of his heart, the weight on his soul, and let himself shatter. A part of him felt constricted within himself, ready to burst, cold, freezing, and his skin was too hot, burning, and the contrast took his breath away, his throat closed around nothing, gasped with the need to breathe but he couldn’t draw in a single gulp of air-
The hands too suddenly on his shoulders scalded his skin for the one second of contact, he gave an unwilling cry, covered his mouth as he scurried away, holding himself up on the toilet. He had his other hand up and Houshou stood frozen still. “I’m fine,” he said again, steadied himself as best he could, against the wall behind him. He tried his best to convince himself the water dripping down the tiles was just that - water.
These people were playing with him.
He worked his face blank and spoke as firmly as he could manage. But with all his might, he couldn’t meet the other man’s eyes. “You should go back to bed.” He chanced a glance up. Big mistake. “It’s way too early, you need to sleep.”
He turned his head away, and both pretended he didn’t flinch when Houshou took a step closer. He moved back towards the sink, turned on the faucet. “Should I call Lin?” He heard, didn’t trust his voice, and his vision swam with the slightest move, so he raised his hand and for a moment, the other man didn’t move.
Tears persisted behind his eyelids and he dared not look up, at the mirror in front of him. Instead, he stared at the water running, and pretended it clear as it should be.
His breathing was heavy still, trying to compensate for the shock of its loss moments earlier, at the collision and the break, the falling and the dive, knocking the air out of his lungs once and again. In his haste to draw in breath again, he didn’t notice Houshou leaving the bathroom, didn’t hear the fast heavy steps when John left for Lin. Blood clogged his ears, green tinted his sight and he gasped, nearly fell over when he noted his reflection not to be of him. He couldn’t think of it further.
His throat ached, he noted. Raspy and harsh at the back, he still tasted misplaced salt on his tongue, and when he drew in a breath he felt water fill his lungs, coughed it up into the sink.
His legs were failing him again, and there was a whistle in his hearing, though, for some reason, he couldn’t decide if he truly cared.
Naru only took notice of the hands holding him up when his legs gave out completely and his knees didn’t meet the floor as was to be expected. He tried to breathe in again, regretted it immediately. There was no water around him, he could fix this, he could control it, he had to make it stop, he was drowning in air and coughing up water onto Houshou’s shirt although the other man didn’t seem to care.
It took him too long to find air again, to have it travel to his lungs, and the inhale was desperate and loud as he clung to the monk holding him tight, scared to do more, to do too much and not enough.
Naru’s mind detached itself from the world for a few very important seconds, unwillingly, and the reality happening around him was blurred, the sounds muffled and when he came to, he had warm hands wiping his tears away, and someone saying something he couldn’t comprehend. His face found fabric once more, not a few seconds later, and those same hands held him till the heavy stomp of three men could be heard in the hallways.
The faucet was still on, he recalled, heard the water still running through and tried to think of something - something else.
A sudden impact to his torso drew him into a curl, punched the breath out of him and his ribs stabbed at his lungs, his stomach churned and there was blood again, in front of him. Though he knew all to be a memory of something too far, it had never happened to him, it wasn’t happening to him now, the green around the edges of his sight grew stronger and the most vulnerable part of his mind, for a moment too long, when all rationality and logic had left him - he honestly thought he might die.
A different pair of hands got to him, of a different kind of warm, and he couldn’t register his eyes closing before he was brought to sleep.