Work Text:
Straight, he stood in the elevator alone, looking up as the few numbers flashed and died down. It was 5-to-10 am. The professor did tell him to come to his lab around this time, so that they may chat about his recent discoveries on Mega Evolutions. Part of him had expected, or rather hoped, that Professor Sycamore was waiting on the ground floor to greet him, but he knew what was definitely more probable.
The small bell dinged at the top floor and the doors opened. With a sigh, Lysandre stepped out and made his way around the wall isolating the professor’s workspace from the rest of the room. Why he had the wall and no door was something nobody really understood. Whether he wanted privacy or not...
Lysandre looked at the desk at the other end and, what a surprise, there was a sleeping Sycamore, upper half sprawled on it.
‘Professor Sycamore...how many times have people told you that sleeping like that will just make you stiff,’ he thought as he shook his head, ‘I should wake him...’
Lysandre slowly approached the other, leaning over slightly and reaching for his shoulder. But he stopped his hand a mere inch from it, looking down at the desk and his friend. His view first trailed at the shoulders, noticing with a twinge of disgust ample amounts of wrinkles and a messed up collar. Then it went from the neck to the head, laying to the side, rested on one of the good professor’s forearms, the other dangling at his side with a pencil barely grasped in his fingertips. His face was barely hidden by said forearm, the mouth opened only a little, enough for air to pass in and out but not in an obnoxious way.
Lysandre’s body froze right then and there, his eyes scrutinizing the part of Sycamore’s face that could be seen. From what he could see, his skin was quite pale as it is (seeing as he spent a lot of his time in the labs and whatnot), and with that mess the raven coloured hair, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to call him a pseudo-ghost. And yet, there was something serene in the way his soft breathing made his back arch ever so slightly more and less, the slow but constant movement that differentiated sleep and death.
‘I could...couldn’t I?’ his mind pleaded as his eyes narrowed at the thought, ‘Just a simple...he wouldn’t even know...I’d hope, at least.’
He straightened himself, took a deep but quiet breath, went to the side of the desk where his face was pointing, and lowered himself into a partial crouch, his head only slightly higher now than Sycamore’s. His hand, shaking slightly in anticipation, felt a little colder than usual. Somehow, the idea of actually bringing his hand close enough to make contact was an infinite amount of times easier than to actually...do it.
This nervousness wasn’t something his royal blood could stand though. The hot blooded man was getting annoyed with himself, so much that he clenched that hand in a fist, then untensed. He looked at his hand, willing it to be as firm as his own appearance under normal circumstances. And so it stopped shaking.
He looked back at his friend’s face, not a sign of stirring on him. And so, he brought his hand closer and...
‘Warm...’ he remarked, ‘surprisingly...warm.’
He brushed his fingers lightly on the other’s cheek, taking care not to put too much force in the touch as to wake him, but enough to actually feel the texture of the skin. It was warm, and surprisingly soft. Lysandre traced the contours of the other’s face, going from the sideburns down to the jaw, the slight prickling of his beard a comforting contrast to his skin, almost as if it was a statement of his manhood.
The thought made the broad shouldered observer smirk slightly. Did he really see Augustine Sycamore to be so frail? Normally he just saw him as a regularly built man. Yet here, in his sleep, he seemed so helpless. In this bliss of his own unconsciousness, Lysandre could have easily gripped his neck and snapped it, the way he kept fit and all. Like plucking a single rose from the stem.
His hand moved, with more subtlety, more gentleness. As if examining a marble sculpture, his fingers slid across the jaw of his sleeping friend, to the exposed chin. Defined yet still so...fragile? Fascinating.
He moved his thumb over the chin, very careful not to wake him. And that thumb moved ever so slightly, making its way right before the lips. His fingers could feel the warm breath of the sleeping Augustine. The rhythmic waves of hot breath, soft and soothing, yes, the distinguisher between rest and end. If his thumb could inch just a little closer, just to feel those--
There, Professor Sycamore stirred. Lysandre, caught off guard, removed his hand instantly and with such force, he almost fell backwards on his own bum. He did not however, which was a good thing. A very good thing.
For a few seconds, the professor fidgeted slightly, only to raise his dangling hand onto the desk. Then he fell back into total sleep, his face still as clearly exposed as before. It was VERY very good that Lysandre hadn’t fumbled backwards when he could have; the professor could have woken up.
Sycamore could have woken up.
Augustine could have woken up.
Lysandre approached him once more. His hand, still with firmness, lowered itself near the cheek once again. The bones there were pronounced enough to be felt, yet he wasn’t so thin as to have nothing but skin and bones on his face. They still felt soft in their own way.
“Strange, but...” he muttered, his own expression softened with his contemplations, “but beautiful...”
And yet, his eyes noticed something. Something that gave a little edge back to his expression, his nose crinkling in twinges of sadness. From the cheek, his fingers went up, contouring Augustine’s eye, feeling the few wrinkles that seemed newly formed.
‘I don’t remember...’ his thoughts sparked, ‘...I never noticed...’
His index and middle fingers felt the small lines on the side of Augustine’s eye. The crows feet, they weren’t too prominent, nor were they very noticeable, but they would be. Delicate, he really was delicate. Most humans were, all humans were.
Here, he saw also noticed something else, something blatantly obvious: shadows under his friend’s eyes. Weariness. Not that he wasn’t familiar with the idea of allnighters, but it seemed a shame to have someone like him sacrificing like this. Throwing away something truly beautiful...
In his mind, Lysandre began to see more. Slowly, the wrinkles on the side of Augustine’s eyes grew and deepened. His cheeks sunk in and the flesh receded, his hair losing all of it’s colour and sheen, the heavy, vivid ebony draining away to reveal nothing but white. His hands and arms and legs and body, hunched and skeletal, too weak to hold itself up straight. And Augustine’s eyes. They would open, sinking into his skull droop more and more, the twinkling that was once so prominent in the intelligent, respectable man nearly faded. A candle flickering on its final strand of wick and wax.
He could feel his hand getting cold again, this time from the internal terror he was trying to suppress. The fate of this man, of this beautiful, delicate human being, to fade away into nothing but skin, nothing but bones, ashes, dust...
His eyes widened more than they should have. He realized this, and immediately took a deep breath to calm himself. Right now, he could still see the beauty before him, immortalize it in his mind. Before it was all gone.
At that thought, Lysandre brought his face a little closer, inching slowly, a little closer to Augustine’s. To take in every single detail that he could. Maybe attach the light scent of coffee and sweat to it all, simply to retain in his mind’s eye what was so...ephemeral.
And, in a few moments, the Professor started to stir once more. But this time, Lysandre simply rose from his position, not particularly satisfied, but knowing that all good things must come to an end.
And so, he shook Professor’s Sycamore’s shoulder to bring the both of them back to reality.
“Mon ami,” he began, “Il est 10h30.”
The Professor awoke slowly, stretching his arms everywhere and yawning so loudly that it could wake the dead...
“Good morning,” Lysandre greeted stiffly, “Rough night?”
“N-non,” the professor replied with a chuckle in his voice, “Well...not as hectic as usual. Sorry I couldn’t--”
“C’est correct,” curt but still sincere, “You have another shirt here?”
“Ah, oui!” the professor exclaimed, “I’ll go change, and then we could go for some...brunch?”
Lysandre couldn’t help but soften his stern frown a little. He was almost smiling, “Alright.”
At that, Augustine’s face lit up, “Génial! I’ll go change right now, and then we’ll go.”
Before Lysandre could ask where they’d be off to, his friend trotted off, gleaming with excitement. The observer simply stood there, looking in the direction of the specimen he had so meticulously examined under the microscope that was his own eyes. A small smile, sad but sincere, etched itself on his own face, with one small thought in mind.
‘If only I could preserve that beauty forever...I would.'