Pairing: Sands/El
Rating: PG
Fandom: OUaTiM
Summary: El tries to comfort Sands during a fever-induced fit.

Disclaimer: They're not mine.
A/N: Can be read as a companion sort of piece to my fic "Eyes for the Birds" but it doesn't really matter if you've read it or not. Warning: my weirdness knows no bounds.

He’s clutching at El, tearing at him, trying to rip away the flesh that clings to his sinewy muscles and the diamond-hard bones of his arms, but El can’t stop him, and, in a way, he doesn’t want to. The pain keeps him awake, reminds him of, not life, but what death lacks. Outside of the narrow window, far from the world of Sands’ fever dreams and nightly, clinging attacks, the moon is rising, luminescent and splendid in its grandeur.

It makes El sick.

After following Sands for so long, he yearns for the quiet of the dark because, even in such black solitude, there is always the ever-present, burning, raging, killing fire of Sands to sting his eyes into tears of pain. With the moon’s addition, and even that of the sun, he can’t stand it, and he wonders sometimes if so much brightness will eventually blind him, leaving him alone in the darkness that Sands already sees before his eyes in every waking and sleeping moment.

The sheets feel coarse against El’s skin, rough like corn husks and sandpaper. Compared to the burning hot fever softness of Sands’ skin, the texture of the poor sheets is almost painful in its weak quality. He wants to throw them off, cast them aside until they fall like parachutes onto the floor with its light dusting of dirt and filth. Maybe the off-yellow sheets would even cover the traces of filth that run across the floor in miniature, criss-cross patterns.

The clutching stab of Sands’ fingernails yanks El away from his idle revery, shoving him roughly back into the present with a careless push. Striving to focus his mind, he reaches out, firmly catching a hold of Sands’ grasping hands and gently pulling them away from his face. He forces them down onto the pillow, holding them over Sands’ head in a strange mockery of captivity.

“Calm,” he whispers slowly, trying to force the word’s meaning to sink into Sands’ fevered-addled mind.

Sands whimpers, almost wailing in his fatigued, injured misery. Tugging futilely at his imprisoned arms, he gasps, air catching in his lungs. For a few seconds, silence blankets the blind man. Then, a hushed sob escapes him, painfully held-back and quiet.

“Sands,” El whispers sadly, shaking his head.

He looks down at the other man, trying to understand what the fever-illness has done to the sardonically-strong CIA agent.

“Sometimes, I wonder if it’s not the fever that does this to you, but madness,” El says aloud, helplessly staring at the writhing, struggling man.