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The elevator doors slid open on the second floor, and I stepped out into a hallway that smelled like bleach and old people and hopelessness underneath all that. The ICU ward.

A nurse at the station glanced up as I approached, and I must have looked fucked because her expression shifted from neutral to something approaching sympathy.

“I’m here to see Alvin Carter,” I said, holding up my visitor’s badge.

She checked her computer, then pointed down the hallway. “Room 247. But I need you to know—he’s still sedated. He won’t wake up during your visit.”

I nodded, not really processing her words and already moving towards the room number she’d indicated. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I pushed open that door, though.

Alvin looked small.

That was the first thing that hit me, and it was such a stupid observation that my brain almost rejected it. Alvin wasn’t small. Alvin had always been larger than life, the kind of person who took up space just by entering a room. But lying in that hospital bed, hooked up to machines that beeped and hissed and monitored every pathetic function his body was still managing to perform, he looked… fragile.

His left arm was in a cast from his wrist to his elbow. His right shoulder was wrapped in gauze so thick it resembled the time he dressed himself in toilet paper and called it a mummy for Halloween. He’d said it was because he’d forgotten to buy a costume. But I knew the truth. Pastor Carter had found the glitter vest Alvy had hand-sewn and shredded it to strips in front of him. The toilet paper was to cover the bruising on his face, and Alvin’s pride, but it was also his way of refusing to let his old man keep him from enjoying his favorite holiday.

Besides, if anyone could pull off the seven-layered look, it was Alvin Carter.

My lips started to curl at the memory and immediately dropped when I saw the bandages covering most of his torso. I could see the edges of the open wounds underneath. The swelling on his face had gone down slightly since I’d found him, but the bruising had darkened into these sickening shades of purple and yellow and green. His left eye was the size of a golf ball; though the ICU staff had managed to open it enough that I could see a sliver of his long, thick lashes. Even unconscious, there was something formidable about him.

But it was the machines that really got to me.

The ventilator that was helping him breathe because his own lungs apparently couldn’t be trusted to do it on their own. The IV lines running into both arms. One for fluids, one for pain medication that wasn’t doing anything to soften the tension in his face. The heart monitor that beeped steadily, the only sound proving he was still here. Still fighting.

I pulled up a chair, set my backpack on the floor, and sat down next to the bed. My hands shaking so badly that I had to grip the seat between my thighs to keep them from moving.

“Hey,” I whispered, even though there was no way he could hear me. “I brought you something.”

I unzipped my backpack and carefully removed the spider cage before placing it on a nearby tray table. Positioning it so that when Alvin woke up, it would be one of the first things he saw.

“I snuck it past the nurses,” I explained, pushing some of the loose strands of hair out of Alvin’s face. Gently. “If they try to say anything about it, I’ll tell them it’s your emotional support spider.”

I took a breath.

“I need to tell you something, Alvy,” I continued. “I need to tell you while you can’t interrupt me or deflect with some joke or look at me like I’m an idiot for taking so long to figure this out when you knew for years.”

I reached forward and took his unbandaged hand, terrified that even the slightest pressure would cause him pain. His skin was warm and slightly clammy, but I could feel the steady pulse in his wrist.

“I was wrong,” I said. “About everything. About how I felt about you. About what I could handle. I told you I couldn’t love you… Because, well, I told myself I couldn’t love you. I told myself that if I loved you, it meant I had to confront all the shit I’ve been burying since I was fourteen years old and accidentally walked in on you in the shower that one time. I thought you had a perfect dick then too, by the way.”

I smiled for a moment, then quickly sobered.

“It meant I had to stop being the guy everyone expected me to be and start being the guy I actually am. And I was scared of that. I’m still scared of that. But I’m more scared of losing you.”

My voice cracked, and I had to stop for a moment to swallow the lump quickly building in my throat.

“I love you, Alvy. So fucking much. I love the way you think and the way you see right through all my bullshit. I love your blatant honesty even when it stings. I love your terrible jokes and your obsession with that spider and the fact that you actually care about people. All people. No matter how shitty they treat you. You always try to show them why they’re wrong about you. You try to give them an opportunity to better themselves. And if they don’t, you show them why they never should have crossed you.”

I smiled again.

“The truth is I love everything about you, Alvy. The messiness, the unpredictability, how you make me laugh with you even when it’s at myself… I should have said it a long time ago. I should have said it before someone… before this…”

“Darius.” The voice came from behind me, and it was like being hit with a bucket of ice water.

I jerked my hand back from Alvin’s, turning to see Pastor Carter standing in the doorway. The man I’d been actively trying to avoid since arriving at the hospital.

His face was a mask of controlled emotion, which somehow made it more unnerving than if he’d just screamed at me.

“Pastor Carter,” I replied, standing up too quickly, suddenly very aware of how close I’d been sitting to his son, how intimate the moment had been.