Adrian’s voice was quiet, almost detached. “After the wedding, Dean… Like always. He was just… being my friend. Picking up the pieces you left behind.” He paused, his jaw tightening as he gathered his thoughts. “I wrote that stupid song after that. Composed it for months. It was the only thing that helped me—helped me make sense of anything. And then one night, I sang it in some bar. Just a nothing place. But Tom and Dean filmed it. They said it was a good song. And… I later learned that Dean had put it online.”
Adrian’s words caught in his throat, his voice uncertain as he finally met Logan’s eyes. “You heard it, didn’t you?”
Logan nodded, his fingers curling gently against Adrian’s knees, his touch a fragile lifeline. He needed that contact, however small—a reminder that this was real, that Adrian was here, solid and breathing.
“I knew it.” Adrian’s voice was low, heavy with something that felt too close to regret. His gaze dropped to where Logan’s hand rested, the simple point of connection between them. “I never wanted you to hear that song. I didn’t want you to know… to hear me at my lowest, at rock bottom. God, I felt so fucking pathetic when I found out it was on Facebook and you’d probably seen it. I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, that it was nothing. But it wasn’t ‘nothing.’ It was everything.”
Logan opened his mouth, a response on the edge of his lips, but Adrian’s words rushed forward, uncontainable now. They tumbled out with a sharpness, a raw edge, as if he had to spill them out before his courage dissolved.
“At the time the video went up, I was just trying to survive, my life was such a mess,” Adrian said, his voice distant, as if he were talking to someone miles away. “I had enrolled in university, thought maybe I could start over. But it didn’t fit. I didn’t fit. I didn’t even finish the first year. It was like trying to wear someone else’s skin. So I quit. The day after the video went online, right after the diagnosis, I deleted my account.”
Logan’s breath hitched, the word striking him like a physical blow. Adrian barely noticed, his eyes distant as he continued, his tone hollow. “Dean and I were already roommates by then. We were renting the house you saw. Tom lived with us too for a while, but he moved out when he got a girlfriend. And then—Leukemia.”
He said the word like it was nothing, a fact as casual as the weather. Logan wanted to scream at the indifference, to shake Adrian, to force himto stop minimizing what was happening. Adrian finally looked at Logan again, his eyes heavy with a sadness that seemed infinite.
“My mom died from this,” Adrian murmured, almost to himself. “So when the first symptoms came… the fatigue, the weakness, when I couldn’t work out, couldn’t surf anymore… I suspected. Then my skin got pale, and I told myself it was just the lack of sun. But then the bruises appeared, out of nowhere. The bleeding. The bone pain.” He shook his head, voice faltering. “I knew. I had seen it all before, on her. I knew even before the diagnosis. I didn’t need a doctor to tell me.”
Logan gulped, his fingers pressing into Adrian’s skin as he whispered, “Treatments?”
Adrian shook his head, his gaze fixed on the floor.
“They didn’t work?” Logan’s voice cracked, each word stumbling over the thick lump in his throat.
Adrian let out a harsh breath, a sardonic laugh slipping through his lips like a shadow in the night, reverberating around the room. “No. I have turned them down,” he murmured, the weight of his decision hanging in the air like a storm cloud ready to burst.
Logan’s eyes widened, confusion and panic flashing across his face. “What do you mean youturned them down? You can’t just—what are you doing, Adrian? Waiting to die?”
Adrian’s face darkened, his body tensing as he stared at Logan with a fury that bordered on grief. “I don’thaveto do anything,” he snapped, his voice rising. “Especially not because you say so. You don’t get to come back into my life after all this time and tell me what Ihaveto do.”
“Ad!” Logan burst out, his voice desperate. “It’s bigger than what happened between us! This is yourlife! You can’t just… You can’t just wait to die without even trying!”
Logan reached out, his hand trembling as he tried to take Adrian’s, his knees still on the floor, the cold tile biting through his jeans. He was holding on to the last frayed threads of hope, praying there was still something left to salvage.
But Adrian recoiled, his body jerking back as if Logan’s touch had seared his skin. He stood abruptly, the movement forceful enough to push Logan away. Adrian’s chest heaved, his breath coming in ragged pulls as he backed away, the storm inside him breaking, winds fierce and unforgiving.
Logan scrambled to his feet, his own breath catching, the room suddenly too small, too tight. He could feel it—the end rushing toward them like a wave, the kind that crushed everything beneath it. And all he could do was brace himself, hoping somehow they could find air before the water closed over them both.
“I don’t need your pity, Logan,” Adrian snarled, his voice cracking. “And I don’t need you to save me. Not now. Not ever.”
Logan languished in the stillness of that quiet room, his hand suspended mid-air, reaching towards a man whose gaze refused to meet his. Adrian’s shoulders were a bow strung too tight, trembling with the weight of silence, his body fraying at the seams, so weak, so impossibly weary that a single word from Logan might splinter him, might shatter the moment into shards sharp enough to draw blood.
“Adrian…” Logan’s voice, hushed and raw, barely crossed the space between them.
Silence gathered, blooming, growing thick and dangerous, whispering secrets of looming peril.
Adrian drew a breath that seemed to cost him everything. When he spoke, the words cut clean, stripped of ornament. “So… I think we’re done here, Logan. You can go back to your fancy life, and even get your beautiful wife back.”
The words tore through him, each one a grain of salt pressed into an open wound, but still, Logan resolved would not be shaken. A shiver chased through his bones, then stilled, pinned down by something deeper than fear. His voice, when it rose, was ragged and sure all at once, tethered to the pulse hammering in his throat. “Ad, I’m not going anywhere. I don’t care what you say or do. I’m staying.”
Adrian’s lips formed a hollow smile shaped by sorrow. It quivered at the edges, never quite reaching his tear-filled eyes.
“I don’t want you to stay,” he lied, his words tearing through the void between them, fragments masquerading as speech, born from the deepest shadows of Adrian’s soul, where air was but a memory and sunlight forever out of reach. For an instant, he wanted to drag Logan there with him, to see if he would still reach out, even inside that darkness.
Logan froze, his lungs burned with ragged air, then shook his head, a raw frustration breaking through. “It’s too bad. You need to get treatments! You can’t just… wait here to die and do nothing. Youcan’t! You need to take care of yourself.” And somehow, though he could never have planned it, those words slipped past Adrian’s armor, lighting something quiet and stubborn inside him, something that still remembered sunlight.
“You—” Adrian started, but Logan cut him off, his voice rising in desperation.
“Adrian! Please! Six months isn’t long. We need to get you—”
