Fic I: A Code Blue Christmas
Title: Past and Presents
Fandom: xxxHOLiC
Series: Code Blue
Wordcount: 301
A/N: Takes place before the series starts. Several months before.
He wakes in the middle of the night and for a moment doesn’t know where he is. He can almost feel the heat of a home permeating his too-cold body, hear the faint music and chatter that had once lulled him to sleep each night; he can almost smell the sweet, sharp scent of pine from the room over. But there are no lights casting a soft glow over his surroundings, and in his mouth he can still taste the doctor’s bitter brew.
Watanuki has not thought of Christmas for a long time, perhaps too long, and now that he does think it he finds remembering where he is now almost too painful to do. He tries not to think too much of the people who once spent this holiday with him and instead tries to remember the sensations. They come, but with reluctance, and the cost is the stark comparison of dark, lingering ache, bitterness and the knowledge that he is, and looks to be for the remainder of increasingly shortening life, alone.
He does not stay still, mainly because he is cold and the ragged blankets he was given are all but worthless for heating purposes. He stands instead and takes the few necessary steps to look out the window and toward the doctor’s mansion. There are lights shining on the other side, lighting up the garden and wall nearby and thus visible to onlookers in the dark. It is probably not anything to do with Christmas.
Watanuki sighs, and wishes he were less concerned with a religious holiday he never had really understood. But he does remember if faintly what it felt like to celebrate with people he cared for, and this remembering makes the present as bitter as the childhood fear of a stocking full of coal.
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Next Part
Fandom: xxxHOLiC
Series: Code Blue
Wordcount: 301
A/N: Takes place before the series starts. Several months before.
He wakes in the middle of the night and for a moment doesn’t know where he is. He can almost feel the heat of a home permeating his too-cold body, hear the faint music and chatter that had once lulled him to sleep each night; he can almost smell the sweet, sharp scent of pine from the room over. But there are no lights casting a soft glow over his surroundings, and in his mouth he can still taste the doctor’s bitter brew.
Watanuki has not thought of Christmas for a long time, perhaps too long, and now that he does think it he finds remembering where he is now almost too painful to do. He tries not to think too much of the people who once spent this holiday with him and instead tries to remember the sensations. They come, but with reluctance, and the cost is the stark comparison of dark, lingering ache, bitterness and the knowledge that he is, and looks to be for the remainder of increasingly shortening life, alone.
He does not stay still, mainly because he is cold and the ragged blankets he was given are all but worthless for heating purposes. He stands instead and takes the few necessary steps to look out the window and toward the doctor’s mansion. There are lights shining on the other side, lighting up the garden and wall nearby and thus visible to onlookers in the dark. It is probably not anything to do with Christmas.
Watanuki sighs, and wishes he were less concerned with a religious holiday he never had really understood. But he does remember if faintly what it felt like to celebrate with people he cared for, and this remembering makes the present as bitter as the childhood fear of a stocking full of coal.
--
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