He thought of home, but not his apartment in Tel Aviv, not the life he used to live.
He thought of Logan’s apartment.
Of their home. A place he was eager to return to every single time.
He thought of warm blankets and soft lighting. Of lying on the couch with Logan’s arm around him, head against his chest, listening to the heartbeat that had become more comforting than any medication. He thought of pretending to eat the soup Logan got after a failed attempt tocook a home-made one that somehow turned solid, just so he wouldn’t worry. Of late-night walks where Logan held him up without ever making him feel small. Of the beach trip. They never made it out of the car that day. Adrian had tried—God, he had tried. But the moment the cold air hit his lungs, the nausea surged, pulling him under before he could even unbuckle his seatbelt. He’d curled into himself on the passenger side, shaking, humiliated, too tired to even cry.
And still—before the sickness claimed him—he had seen the ocean. Just for a second. That endless stretch of blue. He had closed his eyes, breathed in the salt, and let himself pretend. Pretend that he was still someone. Still the man Logan had fallen in love with. Not a body unraveling molecule by molecule, not this fragile ghost of a life. That he was a man who deserved Logan Vaughn’s love.
He hadn’t cried in weeks. Not because he wasn’t hurting, but because the weight inside him had become too heavy to move. Too heavy for tears. So instead, his fingers curled into the stiff sheets, white-knuckled, clinging to something that wouldn’t give.
A long time ago, before Logan was back in his life, Adrian accepted his death. Or at least he thought.
But…
He didn’t want to die. But worse than that, he didn’t want to fade.
He was fading.
The walls of this room had grown smaller by the day. The window might as well have been a painting for how static and unreachable it had become. Time folded in on itself, and the outside world became a myth. Life happened elsewhere now, in places with noise and wind and laughter.But here, inside this sterile, fluorescent cage, Adrian felt like nothing. Like less than nothing.
The Adrian he used to be—the one who surfed before sunrise, who chased light, who could laugh without effort or catch his breath without thinking—that version of himself was gone. Drowned somewhere in the weeks of chemo and fever and IV drips. And whatever remained... didn’t feel like a person. Just a patient. Just an echo.
And the silence didn’t help.
It gave space for the voices that lived in the corners of his mind. The ones that whispered Logan deserved better. That no matter how tightly Logan held his hand or how often he saidI love you, it was only a matter of time. Time before he realized the truth:
That this—this hospital bed, this frail shell, this life built on survival—wasn’t what he signed up for.
Adrian tried not to believe it. He told himself love was stronger than this. But some days, when the pain curled up in his spine and wouldn’t let go, when Logan hadn’t called in days and the silence stretched too long, he couldn’t stop it from creeping in.
This was not the man Logan had fallen in love with.
The man Logan fell for had salt in his hair and a reckless grin that dared the world to contain him. He was sun-drenched, loud, shamelessly alive. He climbed cliffs barefoot, chased waves like they owed him something, jumped into rivers without checking the depth. In airports, strangers’ laughter followed him like a song. Under inky stars, he slept wild and kissed as if the end of the universe was only the beginning.
Back then, Adrian had been made of motion, of sweat and sea spray and adrenaline. He was strong. He was magnetic. Men noticed him, wantedhim. They watched him surf, asked for his number, and leaned in too close at beach bars. He hadn’t needed anyone, but with Logan, hewanted, and that made all the difference. Logan had fallen in love with him in that golden hour of his life, when the world was wide and the body was obedient.
But now…
Now he was small. Tethered. Fading.
His body had thinned to something almost foreign, fragile, translucent, shaped more by sickness than by will. He lived in a bed that wasn’t his, surrounded by plastic tubes and machine murmurs. His skin carried the scent of hospital, sterile, sour, permanent. His muscles, once taut with purpose, had softened into surrender. There were days he no longer knew the face in the glass, and worse, days when the not-knowing didn’t matter. He was drowning in a single, merciless refrain, a kind of auditory torment dressed up as care. The hospital composed its own song: the hiss of oxygen, the drip of chemicals, the unyielding metronome of machines. Footsteps passed, voices rose and fell, the staff moving in and out like a surrogate family he had never chosen. It was a music that hollowed him, a chorus that made silence the only mercy he craved.
He hadn’t heard from Logan yesterday. Just a day, just a call, but it hit like an absence carved out of bone.
He didn’t blame him. Not really.
Because this version, this aching, trembling shadow, was not who Logan had fallen for. Logan had fallen for the wild in him, the fight, the fire. And now all of that was ash.
Adrian couldn’t help but wonder: what did Logan see when he looked at him now? Was it love? Or mercy? Was it memory that kept him coming back or guilt? Pity?
The silence pressed harder against his ribs.
Because once, they had conquered countries. Now, he couldn’t even leave the room. Once, they ran barefoot through unknown cities, swam in cool lakes, made love on the beach and under the stars. Now, he could barely stand without help.
And he hated it. Hated that his own body was betraying the love they had built. Hated that somewhere deep inside, a cruel voice whispered that maybe Logan deserved more than this husk he had become.
Because Logan had loved a man who could carry him out of a riptide.
