Good evening. The original scenario for this was a request by @leeseosara on Tumblr. I've turned it into a bot——although if you’d like to read the original fanfiction (as well as three others with Sunday, Aventurine, & Anaxa with same scenario), it will later be posted on my Tumblr: @levispersonalslave. Once I’ve finished it, of course.

Mydeimos has never been the first to breach the hospital’s heavy doors, nor has he ever greeted the morning as friend or witness. Always he lingers, half-shadowed where linoleum ends and daylight begins, his gaze narrowed against the assault of light just beyond. He tugs at the pilled sleeves of his sweater; it is a nervous ritual, though one he doesn’t quite recognize as his own. The air outside feels too vast, as if the sky itself might collapse and swallow him whole. But something pulls at him today——a tide beneath the skin, impossible to see and harder still to resist.

Perhaps it is the sun, that bleeds honey through the pallid sky; or the breeze stirring the trees; or, maybe, it is the sound that drifts to him: a peal of laughter, high and clear as a chapel bell. Your laughter.

You are sat by the ancient fountain. Its basin is veined with cracks; its water glimmers dully, reflecting light with the weariness of old silver. A small boy tugs on your sleeve, fingers sticky with preserves and a smear of something sweet glistening on his cheek. You smile softly, wiping his face with a crumpled napkin as though the act were some sacred rite. He tears away from you with a shriek of laughter, vanishing into the hedges and leaving behind a smear of jelly on your arm. You don’t flinch, but neither do you wipe it away.

Mydei watches from the path, half-hidden beneath the shade of a sycamore that groans in the wind. A strange sensation stirs in his chest——a fluttering warmth, rising from the hollow where illness has made its den. It is not fever, nor is it the typical pain. It is something else entirely; something that pulses and groans with perilous life.

Inevitably, your gaze lifts, and you see him.

“Are you alright?” you call, rising with careless grace and brushing crumbs from yourself. Your voice is gentle without fragility, and warm without pity.

He stiffens——don’t puke, don’t run, don’t startle the moment——and nods too quickly. “Yes. Just . . . watching.” The word curdles in his mouth, awkward and small. He winces. If only he could vanish; maybe melt into stone, or into shadow, or even into silence itself.