#(i've always liked ryuketsu shippers for -not- starting that kind of stuff...)

[marshmallowgoop]

You think that Senketsu ever gets lulled to sleep by the sound of Ryuko's slowing heart beat if she falls asleep while wearing him?

The first time, it’s anaccident.

He’s scared. He doesn’t mean to.

The feeling comes what seemstoo late. It comes after the battle, after reddened cheeks and hasty, labored breaths,after an escape that should have left her a crumpled heap on the ground.

She only barely manages toreach the station just as the last train rings its bells and signals itsdeparture. Everyone backs away at the sight of her—of him, of them—eyes gluedto the weapon she keeps at her side and his body pressed against hers, facesfilled with a jumble of emotions and feelings that he doesn’t understand and can’t understand.

But she acts for him. Sheshouts, she yells, she holds up a blade she can scarcely keep steady, andbefore long the train is hers. None can say a word as she rides, as she goes somewherehe doesn’t know and he is sure she doesn’t know herself, her hand—his hand,their hand, he doesn’t know that, either—gripping the cool steel stanchion tight,as though her life depends on it.

She still fights to breathe. Everybreath is a desperate gasp, and she’s hot and burning beneath him, skin on fire,pushing him away with every whimpered wheeze, and yet he holds her close tohim, anyway. He holds her as she holds the cold metal, he holds her as shestrains to hold herself upright, he holds her and all her blood she’s spilledacross him and all her sweat that now covers his entirety. He holds her stenchof war, he holds her pain, he holds this girl—Ryuko, he thinks, as though he hasn’t been repeating and repeatingthe name in his head—like she is all he has.

Perhaps it is because she is all he has.

The train stops as the settingsun drenches them in a bright-orange glow that he’s never known. She can no longerstand, and he feels her fall, hard, her body collapsing to the ground in aplace where the air is thick and heavy and hot and the smell of garbageprevails. He breathes in the reek of rotting food tumbling from tipped-overbins, of rats scurrying around dark corners, of human waste and mold. He feelsthe sun pressing down on him in a way it shouldn’t this time of year—not thathe knows what time of year it is—and it suffocates him, leaving him as starvingfor breath as she had been only moments before.

The people come quickly, a smallgroup of boys. They hear the fall of his girl—no, of Ryuko—and they throw downtheir playing cards, coming over to gawk, to stare. They’re young—nothing morethan mere children, schoolbags still slung over their backs, youthful frecklesdotting their faces, too-big, hand-me-down clothes falling over their shouldersand held up at their waists with dangling belts—but their words bring him tohold her trembling body even closer to him, his own body tensing, his breath leavinghim completely.

The boys look to one another, andlook to him, and look to her with eyes that don’t see her as human. They licktheir lips, they inch ever closer, they laugh, they won’t stop laughing.

“Get away,” he wants to say. “Don’tyou touch her. Don’t you lay a finger onher.”

But his voice is gone. Wordsare gone. He can only growl, he can only hold, can only embrace, rage and angerand fear building inside, filling him, suffocating him.

He still can’t breathe.

But he has to protect her. Nothing else matters besides protecting her.

It is then, though, at that precisemoment, as the boys come closer and despair overtakes him, that Senketsu first feels it.

The sensation is soothing,somehow. It’s relaxing, a gentle rhythm that seems to seep into his very souland wash all his tension away, replacing the feelings with calm, with peace. Theworld’s vibrancy—the musty scents, the richness of the burnt orange of the sun—allfade away, as though shrouded in fog.

Senketsu gasps. Ryuko’s own breathinghas calmed. Her once-pounding heart rate has slowed to a crawl. She’s fastasleep, she’s left him, she’s gone to rest—and something is demanding that hego with her.

Something is pulling Senketsuaway.

The world continues to growmore distant, muddled, as the sensation threatens to overtake him completely. Hecan’t drift away, he knows, he has to be here, he can’t leave, but the boys’words sound less and less like language, and the boys’ shapes look less andless like humans, and he’s hardly conscious, as another boy comes before them,arms outstretched, as though his small form can serve as a barricade.

“Bug off, creeps!” the boysays, Senketsu thinks, and the group groans and slinks away, leaving only thethree of them there, right where Ryuko had fallen from the train.

Senketsu cannot say he truststhe new boy. The child will only hurt Ryuko, will only bring her harm, willonly do her ill, but the feeling dulls everything. This sensation is too nice,too wonderful, and Senketsu can hardly recall, in the days to come, his bodycollapsing around Ryuko as the boy takes her by the wrist, as he drags her to handsthat could bandage and heal in a way that Senketsu himself never could.

Sleep, Senketsu remembers a voicesaying, time and time again.

Rest.

The second time, Senketsufeels it in a time of calm.

Ryuko slumbers so peacefullythat he doesn’t even hesitate to join her, the drone of Mr. Mikisugi’s lecturevanishing into nothing, that wondrous sensation filling him to the brim.

The third time, Senketsu recognizesit when Ryuko holds her body close to his, her arms wrapped around his tiny form,her hands clutching him and all his exhaustion as though it is her own, herback pressed up against cold, cool porcelain.

All around them is the reek oftoilet water, of nauseating, flower-scented disinfectants, of blood in a placeit shouldn’t be, of a war that shouldn’t belong. He ought to feel sick, Senketsuknows, he ought to feel tense, on edge, but her grip is so warm, her scent isso calming, and her hold on him doesn’t loosen even as the sensation becomesstronger, even as that man carries them in a way that Senketsu knows he never could, even as she drifts far away and leaves him in a drowsy haze of bothwonder and fear.

Sleep, a voice says, as theman’s steps slip into the soothing feeling growing inside, as the strangernever once tries to hurt her again.

Unwittingly, Senketsu does so.

The fourth time is a blur.

He aches. Everything aches. She’salready wandered away from him, her breathing slowed, her body stained red andblack and purple, covered in fresh sores and welts that bleed, that sting, thathurt, that he can’t rub salve over, that he can’t help.

That he’d given her.

She aches. She’s silentagainst him, but every last bit of her aches, and he knows it, he feels it. Herpain is his own, as it has been since the day she first uttered his name fromlips that now will not speak.

He can’t stop staring, even asthe world fades, even as that sweet sound hugs him as she had, once, her backagainst a cold, cool porcelain wall. Her face is red still, inflamed from theirbattle, and if he could forget it, if he could act as though he weren’t what heis, he might think she looks peaceful right now, at ease, as though she hasn’t acare in the world.

But he can’t forget. He wantsto carry her in arms he doesn’t have. He wants to hold her like Kinagase had. Hewants to bandage her face and her wounds like ojisan had. He wants to be anything but what he is.

She whispers his name, from afaraway place, as people come their way, surely to free her of him, to take him away. Her voice is quiet, strained, vulnerable.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and thefeeling overcomes him once more.

The fifth time, the feelinghas grown stronger.

He is broken. He is lost. Hefeels torn in a million different directions, but she holds him together. Sheclutches him as though he is all that matters in the world, she holds him soclose he can smell the hard citrus of the kitchen soap and the sweat thatbecomes his, and it is wonderful, intoxicating.

He can almost forget that heis incomplete.

But the sound is the mostsoothing of all. It is a sound he has come to love more than most anything, andit calls for him now, it resonates with his entire being, it caresses him andholds him and somehow, he knows that she will be safe.

Sleep, a voice says, as italways does in moments like this, though he realizes it is not a voice at all. 

The world fades away as arms that are not his carry them away.

The sixth time, she notices.

She holds him close to her andhe holds her close to him, collapsing to alien sheets that are soft and finebut not what she is used to, not home, not family. She does not say anything ofit, but he understands.

Her breathing has calmed. Herheart is slowing, going to sleep, finally, after hours of racing and thudding and aching.

No, he can’t blame her, he thinks, of course he can’t, not after everything they had learned, but he has never felt more satisfied to feel the sensation overtaking him, the world taking on a dim glaze.

He yawns against her, just after she does, bringing her eyes to his.

“Are you tired, Senketsu?” sheasks. There is surprise in her voice. She has not yet realized.

“Yes,” he says. Her sound pulls at him. It is mesmerizing, incredible. He struggles to speak. “I am tired because you are.”

She runs a hand along his neckerchief, her fingers seeming to dance to the rhythm inside. 

“You can tell?” she asks.

“I can,” he says.

“And it makes you sleepy?”

“It does.”

Of course it does. She’s driftingfarther and farther away from him, and the world is already starting to fade. Hervoice seems distant, fuzzy, as though she is speaking to him underwater, andher heart won’t stop.

“You listenin’ again, huh?” she asks. “You like the sound that much?”

She’s drowsy. Her words are tired and sloppy, coming out longand drawn out. Her tone is sweeter than sugar, and she’s smiling at him,lightly, crinkles at her eyes.

Would she ever speak like thisto him, when her heartbeat is not the sound of the most beautiful lullaby?

“I do,” he tells her, asthough such simple words could convey what the sound means to him. “I adore it,Ryuko.”

He feels her relax even more against him. Sheshuts her eyes. She is so close to slipping away.

“S’nothing special,” shemumbles. She is not talking to him so much as to herself. “Nothing but aheartbeat. Nothing…”

She leaves him. Her heartbeatfalls into one of its most wondrous sounds, slow and steady and peacefuland soothing, and he wishes to say that it is not just a heartbeat to him. Thereis nothing nothing about it.

And though she will not hearhis words, he speaks anyway, as the world fades to nothing.