Archive of Our Own

Hanahaki (ˌhænəˈhæki) : A pathological condition characterized by a spontaneous growth of flora in the lungs or, occasionally, other viscera, as a result of unrequited romantic feelings toward another individual. While experimental surgeries have been performed, the only known permanent cure is a genuine verbal confession of reciprocal romantic love given by the individual of which the sufferer loves. 

The first time it happens, Ray is lurched over the toilet bowl at YOLO, kneeling on the sticky tiles inside the exact stall where most of his nights end up these days. 

He’s shivering beneath the film of sweat that won’t stop coming, the silk fabric of his dress shirt clinging to his skin like it’s the only thing keeping him together. A dry heave ripples upward through his body, suffocating him and forcing his throat to constrict around nothing. He’s already given all that he could offer; every undigested drop of liquor and whatever remnants of dinner he was stupid enough to have choked down earlier. He has nothing left inside of him, and still, his body demands more, until the acidic taste of blood and bile have replaced the smoky caramel flavor of top-shelf whiskey he’s grown to tolerate. 

He sputters and retches again, and this time, something more than just tears and stomach acid is forced out of him to drip into the porcelain bowl. 

It’s small, fragile, almost delicate, though its emergence was so violent. Something cream-colored and smeared with blood that dissipates as the crimson ink slides off and kisses the surface of the water. 

Floating silently, as if mocking him in its peaceful existence, was something as terrifyingly innocuous as it was unmistakable. 

A single, tiny flower petal, not yet breaking the water’s surface tension, curling gently into itself. 

Ray knows what it means. Of course he does. He just didn’t think it would have happened so soon. He thought he had more time. 

But why delay the inevitable? he thinks. 

Ray spends many more nights at closing time hacking up bloody petals into the toilet at YOLO in the weeks that follow. He tries to distract himself from the reality of it; he drinks until he’s comatose, he spends his dad’s money just to argue with the accountant, he fucks people he knows don’t deserve to be burdened by his pathetic, limited existence. 

Well, that’s not fully true. He just fucks the one person. 

Sand doesn’t deserve this; Ray knows it. 

But how is he supposed to walk away from something that looks at him with a softness that nauseates him? Something that fucks him like it means something, like he means something? Something that holds him close through the night and doesn’t kick him out the minute he’s done being used for all he’s worth? 

It’s a momentary fantasy. That’s all it is. Ray wants to both selfishly keep Sand locked in a cage, tied to a bed so that he’s the only one that can ever be the recipient to those kind eyes, and he also wants to run as far away from that same gaze as he possibly can, lest he become used to seeing it. 

With the finite number of days he has left, Ray uses as many of them as possible to forcibly carve out a space in Sand’s life like that might someday make him remembered for being anything more than an alcoholic killjoy and a limitless credit card with no security code. 

Sand has made it clear from the beginning what they are. What they’re not. What they can never be. Ray has never let the limits of his yearning stray into territory that wonders what it might be like to have Sand by his side for any longer than one sunny afternoon, one sleepless night, one shared morning filled with breathless giggles and warmed skin and shitty coffee. Ray consumes those fleeting moments greedily, like a death row inmate licks chicken grease from his fingers, sucking up the remnants of his last mercifully granted meal before walking shackled to an execution chamber prepared just for him. 

The only kind of love Ray knows is the kind that hurts— the kind that aches like nausea, that has him on his knees begging to be bestowed just a spare glance in his direction. It’s the kind he knows how to give, the kind he knows how to expect the absence of. It’s the kind of love that gives Ray a purpose in this miserable life. 

Maybe that says something about him; that he’s only ever chosen to love those he knows for sure will never reciprocate it. That pit of endless yearning is a place that’s familiar to him, so familiar that he’s practically moved in there, built a home for himself where it’s just him and all the love he’s been trying his whole life to give away in the form of sex and money and “next round’s on me”s. 

He’s always thought that someday he might figure out the trick to getting someone to love him. He’s always hoped it would be Mew, lovely Mew, who is clean in all the places Ray’s been tarnished and used up by years of reckless destruction and bad decisions. 

Loving Mew has been something Ray’s been in the habit of for so long that he doesn’t quite remember what he’d be without it. The quiet ache of it has been sitting in his chest for so many years it’s become a comfort of its own. Ever since that night— that phone call, that bathtub, that empty pill bottle— Ray’s been chasing the high of having Mew’s arms around him, being told he is good and loved and going to be okay. Mew’s not like their other friends, maybe not like anyone else in the world. When Mew makes jokes about his sobriety (and lack thereof), or his flair for the dramatic, or his inability to get himself home after a few too many, they don’t sting as much as when the others take those same jabs. Mew is soft and sweet and he’s good, so good. Mew is so damn good Ray often finds himself wondering why someone like him has stuck around Ray for as long as he has. 

Whatever the reason, Ray is grateful, and he knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. If it keeps Mew by his side, Ray will gladly swallow down the twinge of anxiety he gets whenever Mew looks at him too much or not enough, and the bile at the back of his throat that he drowns in whiskey whenever Mew pulls up an extra chair at their table for a broad-shouldered man that puts stars in his eyes. 

All he’s ever wanted was to be the one that put that look on Mew’s face. He’s wanted it for so long that it’s become a part of him, inseparable from the rest of the spare parts he’s cobbled out of. 

But that’s a dream of the past now. It’s only fitting that the only thing Ray has ever wanted, the only thing he’s never been given and can never buy, is the very thing that kills him in the end. 

Ray is sprawled out across Sand’s body, the pale softness of the singer’s skin a barrier between his own and the cheap bedsheets Sand’s been running through the washer since his freshman year of college. The air is thick and humid and their bodies are sticky, covered in the film of their combined sweat and the spend of their lovemaking. Ray’s heartbeat still thrashes in his chest as the post-orgasm fog lifts from his mind, clearing room for that impending dread he hasn’t quite gotten used to. 

“Sand…?” he murmurs into the darkened bedroom. 

The body beneath him shifts and hums in sleepy acknowledgement. 

“What do you think happens after we die?”

Sand is still for a moment, before he stirs to peel them apart and lie face-to-face, though both expressions are shrouded in the nighttime. Ray feels him chuckle. 

“Feeling sentimental, are we?” Ray can hear the teasing smile in his voice. He gives Sand a halfhearted nudge. 

“Just answer.”

Sand sighs deeply and rotates to stare at his ceiling. 

“I don’t know. Probably nothing. Like how we were nothing before we were born, it makes the most sense we’d return to nothing once we die.”

Ray hums, considering. 

“Although, the idea of being reincarnated or going to heaven is more comforting,” Sand adds. “More romantic. Gives us something to look forward to, I guess. I try not to think about it too much, though. There’s enough to worry about while I’m still alive.” 

Sand’s always been a realist. It makes sense his thoughts on the matter would be so unsentimental. 

“Everyone has to think about it sometime,” Ray murmurs in response, trailing his fingers across Sand’s chest, above the space where his heart continues to beat steadily, reliably. 

“Yeah? Well, what do you think happens?”

The languid movement stills. 

“I don’t know,” Ray admits. “But I hope you’re right. I hope it’s just… nothing.” 

Sand laughs softly, and the vibration of his diaphragm prompts the invisible tracings of Ray’s fingertips to start again. “Why do you say that?” Sand asks. 

“Being alive is exhausting. I don’t want to be reborn just for another chance to fuck it all up again.” 

There’s a drawn-out moment of silence, and Ray doesn’t know whether it’s a deliberate act of comfort or an unconscious habit developed over their many nights of shared company when Sand’s fingers begin combing through his hair. 

“And I don’t want to go to heaven, either,” Ray continues. “Everything I like is already down here on Earth. There’s nothing waiting for me up there.”

Sand knows just enough about Ray’s past; things he’s drunkenly overshared with any stranger at the bar who would listen, plus a little more he’s revealed in the gaps of where he’s let his guard slip, something that’s become disarmingly easy to do around Sand. The implications of his statement aren’t lost on either of them, and the words hang heavy in the air that’s shared peacefully between them. 

The last years of his mother’s life, and many more before that, were spent making it very clear how much she never wanted him to begin with. Ray doubts she’d want to see him again, as much as he used to ache for it at the cost of his own life. At this point, though, Ray doesn’t think he’d want to see her, either. 

Sand’s sympathy for him is tangible in the stillness, and Ray decides that this has been enough vulnerability for one night. 

“I love worldly pleasures too much,” he says, his voice taking on a lighter note. “Drugs, booze, rock and roll…” He teasingly trails his fingers lower down Sand’s body and slips them into the waistband of his boxers. “And this. This is a worldly pleasure I would never want to leave behind.” 

Even in the low lighting, Ray can see the toothy, smirky grin Sand wears whenever Ray’s being particularly cheeky just to rile him up.  

“You’re insatiable,” he murmurs. 

“So satiate me,” Ray whispers back, just before rolling on top of him to pin his limbs against the mattress again. 

It’s a different night, but one that’s no less similar to the many others they’ve spent in Sand’s bed. 

But it’s also different, somehow. 

Now, Ray isn’t just Ray anymore. 

Now, he’s Ray with a predisposed time of death, declared while he’s still breathing. He’s Ray who has flowers growing in his lungs; living, photosynthesizing proof that the love inside him has nowhere to go besides into the roots of what will someday soon turn him into worm food. 

But he’s still Ray that knows how to get what he wants. He still knows how to bat his eyelashes and turn his voice into liquid caramel, still knows how to trail his fingertips and his eyes along all the places that will make Sand take him home, even after so many “this is the last time, Ray”s. 

He still knows how to get what he wants. 

Still knows how to play coy in the ways he knows will make Sand want to tear him apart. Still knows how to beg for it; knows he’s not above that, not anymore. Still knows all the little tricks he’s gathered over the years to make a man take him hard, fast, punishingly. Until all that’s left of him is a sweaty, spent pile of flesh and bone, one that no longer has the wherewithal to wonder if this is all he’ll ever be good for. If this is the closest he’ll ever be to being held close. 

But tonight is different. 

Now, Ray is a man who has researched grave plots and headstones, who has budgeted for a funeral he won’t be attending. 

He’s sprawled across the beat-up couch in Sand’s living room while Sand is in the kitchen fixing a cup of water or tea or whatever it was he said he’d be right back to go do. 

Ray’s eyes drift across the psychedelic rock posters thumbtacked to the wall, corners curled from humidity. Inside these warped illustrations are all of Sand’s hopes and dreams, and being here in his apartment is always a little like being inside of Sand himself. 

It’s always warm here, and not just because of the air conditioning unit that’s always switched off until Ray steps through the door and Sand wordlessly turns it on, somehow knowing Ray always runs hot and isn’t used to toughing out the heat to save a few baht even when it’s never been said out loud. 

“I like your place better than mine,” Ray remarks casually as he folds his legs to allow Sand to sit on the other end of the couch. He’s returned with a glass of water. 

“That can’t possibly be true,” Sand smirks and rolls his eyes. “If I had even half your record collection, I’d never leave the house.” 

“I’m serious,” Ray insists. “It’s so… used. Like people actually live here. Like it’s alive.” 

Sand blushes a little but hides it behind a sip of the water. “You can just say it’s a shitty apartment, I don’t mind. It’s true.” 

“It’s not shitty,” Ray says sincerely, placing a hand on Sand’s knee. “I’d rather live in a place that feels like home than somewhere so big it feels like I’m trapped in a museum exhibit.” 

Sand snorts at that. “The sconces were imported.” 

Ray grins, delighted that Sand remembered the doorman’s dull conversation as they both waited for Ray to finish dressing and come down to the foyer. 

“Everything’s imported,” Ray huffs, rolling his eyes. 

“Except for the most important thing in the house,” Sand says, setting down his glass and turning to run a curled finger along Ray’s jaw. “The crown jewel is locally sourced.” 

Ray’s eyelids grow heavy, immediately recognizing the hazy tone Sand’s voice has taken on. “Made in Thailand,” he murmurs, before their lips are on each other, in a dance they’ve practiced too many times to count. 

Sand always kisses him like a starving man. Like every kiss might always be the last they ever share. Like this is always enough, like the kiss just exists as it is without an urgency to get to the next step. Like it’s not just a means to an end. Ray can never get enough. 

But tonight is different. 

He wants more. 

It’s different, because Sand has never once left him wanting more. 

“Sand,” he gasps, pulling away as Sand’s teeth catch his bottom lip. “Can… Can we try something different tonight?” 

Confusion passes through Sand’s eyes before they settle into something molten. It’s not the first time Ray has asked for them to switch up their routine, and the times he has had left them both completely exhausted and satisfied. 

“What did you have in mind?” Sand asks, voice low and husky in the way that always sends a shiver down Ray’s spine. 

But… Ray is nervous, too. He isn’t sure how to ask for this. He’s not sure if he’s allowed. 

“Just for tonight…” he begins, pausing to swallow thickly. When he speaks again, his voice is soft, weak, shy in a way he never allows himself to appear. “Can you pretend? To love me?” 

Sand’s eyebrows draw together in confusion. “W-What?” he asks, sobered just a little by the request. 

“I just want to know what it feels like,” Ray whispers. “Just once. To be made love to. Not just fucked. Just for tonight, will you treat me like a lover?” 

The request is bizarre and audacious, Ray knows it, so he feels the need to retract it, just a little. “And then next time I promise you can fuck me like normal. However you want.” 

Something like pain flashes across Sand’s eyes, or maybe it’s just pity. But then it softens in a way that makes Ray’s guts churn and pressure rise behind his eyes, as Sand murmurs, “Okay.” 

Ray smiles in a way he hopes is sufficient gratitude as he leans in again to lick into Sand’s mouth. He reaches for Sand’s belt buckle, but gentle hands are stopping his own before he makes any progress. 

“Lovers don’t fuck on the couch,” Sand says with a half-teasing smirk. 

He stands and pulls Ray up with him. Then, Ray’s feet are off the ground and his thighs instinctively tighten around Sand’s waist, and he’s giggling as Sand walks them to his bedroom. 

Usually, their clothes are ripped off hastily, desperate to feel heated skin against heated skin. Usually they’d jump straight to the good part, and while Sand is always a generous lay, he never wastes time, either. 

But… tonight is different. 

Sand takes his time as he opens Ray’s shirt one pearly button at a time, trailing his lips along every inch of newly exposed skin. When he takes a nipple into his mouth, a place he already knows Ray is sensitive, he looks up at him with those big, soft doe eyes that have no business being so seductive. 

Ray’s back arches from the mattress and he hisses into the sensation of the warm tongue swirling over the bud. His fingers curl into Sand’s mop of hair, locked into that hypnotic eye contact that makes him feel exposed down to his skeletal structure. 

Sand chuckles, lips popping off his chest with an obscenely wet sound, admiring the reddened skin around the areola. 

“Look at you,” he murmurs, fingers working at the fastening of his designer jeans. “My baby’s so worked up for me already, hmm?” 

Ray groans and flushes all the way down to his chest. Sand is usually vocal in bed, sometimes even downright filthy. But he never uses pet names. It makes something inside of Ray bloom. 

When Ray is splayed out in just his boxers, he suddenly becomes aware of the fact that Sand hadn’t even removed a single article of his own clothing, an issue that needs immediate remedy. He reaches out to tug at the bottom hem of the faded t-shirt. 

“Yes?” Sand asks, almost condescendingly sweet, cocking his head to the side. “Is there something you want?” 

“Shirt. Off. Please.” Ray can’t even find it in himself to build a proper sentence structure. 

Sand grins. “Of course.” He leans in to press a kiss to Ray’s lips, short and chaste and agonizingly affectionate. “Thank you for telling me.” 

Sand strips off the shirt, revealing broad shoulders that taper into his lithe waist, decorated with the sinewy abs that are the perfect mixture of strength and frailty. 

Ray can’t help but reach out and touch, memorizing every dip and valley beneath his fingertips. Sand hovers above him, just watching him do it with something that resembles awe flashing through his eyes. 

Ray’s fingers find the belt buckle again, and he peers up at him as he thumbs at the cold metal. 

“Can I?” he asks, because Sand seems to like that. 

He’s proven correct when Sand smiles, nodding. “Anything you want, baby.” 

And that’s a dangerous statement. Ray would drain him of all semblance of life if he were allowed to take from him whatever he wanted. That’s the only thing he seems to be good at. 

Somewhere between peeling Sand’s ripped jeans from his legs and having praises whispered against his ear and soft kisses pressed to his face, Ray finds himself splayed open as Sand pushes his fingers in and out of him torturously slowly. 

“That’s it, just like that,” Sand purrs into his cheek as he writhes beneath his gentle ministrations. “Doing so good. My beautiful baby, taking it so well for me.” 

Sand knows exactly how and where to curl his fingers, but is seemingly getting off on purposely disregarding that knowledge. He chuckles softly as Ray begs for it, as he denies him, as Ray whimpers at the three fingers that are fucking him almost perfectly.  

“Sand,” he whines, feeling his eyes bubble with tears. “It’s enough. ‘M ready. Please.” 

Sand coos, pecking him across his cheeks and sweaty forehead as he withdraws his fingers, pawing along the mattress for the condom packet he’d left somewhere in the sheets. “So needy,” he murmurs. “Don’t worry, baby, I’ll give you what you want. I’ll take care of you.” 

Ray’s so desperate for it that he’d forgotten all about that crucial step of protection, so he’s a little glad Sand is so responsible in every aspect of his life. Truth be told, he’d let Sand do it anyway. He’s never given himself bare to anyone before— at least he doesn’t think he has, not as far as he remembers— but if Sand asked, he thinks he’d give him anything he wanted. 

When Sand finally pushes into him, it’s so slow that the building pressure in his core from being so turned on is almost painful. Ray shudders with his whole body, breath coming in shallow gasps as he digs his nails into his back. 

“Fuck, baby,” Sand grits out, self-control unraveling and fraying. “You feel like a fucking dream.” 

Ray only wraps his arms and legs around him even tighter, releasing a soft whimper. His eyes are big and glassy as he stares up at Sand’s face, which is twisted with the tension of someone just barely holding himself back. 

“Move,” Ray gasps. “I can take it.” 

Sand groans, and slowly, he does exactly that. 

The pace is unhurried, slower than they’ve ever been before. But it’s deep, too, and it makes Ray yelp with every drawn-out snap of his hips. 

Sand leans down to kiss him, and suddenly the angle is even deeper, the head of his cock brushing against his prostate with every thrust. With Sand’s tongue in his mouth and the coiling tension rapidly catching fire in his abdomen, Ray doesn’t think he’s ever felt so whole in his entire life. 

“Close,” is all that Ray can manage to say as he feels the heat inside of him nearing a boil. 

He lets out a choked grunt when Sand’s hand finds its way to his cock, giving him firm but languid pumps in time with the thrusting of his own hips. Ray’s senses are completely overwhelmed, and he reaches up to cup Sand’s face between his palms, unable to focus his thoughts on anything other than those soft, dark eyes staring down at him, even as his vision goes blurry and he feels a stray tear trail down the side of his temple. 

“You’ve done so well for me, my love,” Sand says, his voice smooth and velvety if not a little breathless around the edges. “Will you come for me? Can you do that for me? You’ve earned it, baby.” 

And holy shit— Ray’s never been called ‘my love,’ he’s never been anyone’s love. It feels so much like coming home that he forgets to remember this is all pretend, that Sand is playing a role he’s requested, that this will all fade away the second it’s over. 

His body locks up and shudders, and then he’s spilling into Sand’s hand and across his own tummy as Sand coaxes every last aftershock out of him, murmuring words Ray cannot hear as his brain turns to something probably resembling porridge. 

Sand’s thumb trails up between his parted lips and Ray takes it into his mouth pliantly— his softening cock gives a pathetic twitch as his tongue swirls and samples his own spend from Sand’s fingers. 

“Think you can take just a little more, baby?” Sand asks, and it’s only then that Ray realizes Sand has gone completely still inside of him. He nods weakly around Sand’s thumb. 

It only takes a few more shallow thrusts that hurt Ray in a good way, in the best way, before he’s coming too, his face burying a low groan in the crook of Ray’s neck and trembling from head to toe. 

They’re still curled around each other and Sand’s thumb is still in his mouth when they reemerge from the high. 

Sand retracts his finger and brushes it affectionately across Ray’s bottom lip before he quietly announces that he’s going to get a towel to clean them up and shifts off the bed. 

He returns moments later with the warm rag and washes them both dutifully, with careful hands that soothe away the oversensitivity and wipe his skin clean. 

And instead of awkwardly pulling his boxers back on and tossing Ray’s at him from across the room, asking if Ray’s staying the night instead of ever downright inviting him to, Sand says nothing. 

He just returns to the bed and pulls Ray into his warmth. Long limbs wrap around his body and calloused fingers comb through his hair. 

Because tonight is different. 

Ray nuzzles into the heat, into the affectionate touch, because he’s not sure he’s ever felt so comfortable after sex, not sure he ever will again. 

And when he feels Sand’s fingers slow their rhythm in his hair and his breaths against his back even out, signaling he’s drifting into sleep, Ray whispers into the darkness. 

“Thank you.” 

Because now he knows. 

Now he knows what a shame it is that he's never had this before. 

Knows what a shame it is that he never will again. 

Knows what they mean when they say love changes you. 

Knows that Sand has given him a gift that will last him the rest of his short, pathetic life— even if it was a lie from the start, even if it was a lie he explicitly asked for. 

He isn’t expecting a response, he doesn’t even think Sand is still awake. 

He gets one anyway. 

“You’re welcome, Ray.” 

It feels like the end of a transaction. 

Ray watches the slow rise and fall of Sand’s naked chest, punctuated every so often by the slight flutter of his eyelashes against his cheek. His lips are parted to allow hot puffs of air to escape, and he looks peaceful like this— the lines carved by years of worry and responsibility have smoothed over, settling into something untouched by the intergenerational debts of his waking life. 

He tries to match the rhythm of his breaths to Sand’s, but it feels too deep in his own lungs, and it catches at the back of his throat. 

Ray tries to swallow down the cough, but his chest still spasms, shaking the bed with little tremors and muted, choked-off noises that burst from behind his clenched teeth. 

He doesn’t want to wake Sand. He doesn’t want to disturb that peace. 

So instead of prolonging his suffering, he carefully rolls out of the bed and pulls on his boxers to pad towards the small bathroom of Sand’s apartment. 

The mirror is speckled and slightly warped with age, and limescale deposits gather at the corners of the sink. There is dried toothpaste stuck to the porcelain that attest to the many rushed, early mornings of Sand’s routine. 

A coughing fit finally ruptures from his chest, and for several panic-inducing seconds, Ray can’t catch his breath. He gags, throat clenching around nothing, and blood vessels burst in the scleras of his eyes. 

He gasps, finally able to draw air. The sudden intake of oxygen leaves him lightheaded and he grips the edge of the sink to keep himself steady. His knees and shoulders are shaking. 

The rush of air tickles the back of his throat, and he coughs again. He feels a slimy moisture on his tongue, and he can taste the hot, metallic flavor of blood flooding his mouth alongside the saliva that his body reflexively produces at the threat of vomit. 

Something becomes dislodged in his throat. He coughs again, and it works its way out of him, spat in a bloody mess on top of the toothpaste that was already in the sink. 

It’s two long, white petals, curled gently around each other in an embrace far too delicate for their vicious eviction. 

Ray stares at them like they’re proof of something he’s been trying hard to ignore. 

But it’s not over yet; the tickle at his soft palate hasn’t dissipated. The coughing returns. 

Instead of the soft, plush texture of the petals’ irritation, this time, it feels sharp, like the object’s edges are slicing his airways as he draws his breath. 

Another gag rolls through his body, and he feels the scrape of something dragging against his trachea. It won’t dislodge itself on its own. 

So, Ray reaches into his own mouth, and with two fingers he grabs the sharp edge where it pokes out at the back of his tongue. It drags along the soft tissues of his throat on its short journey, and pain shoots through him like ice-cold lightning. He gasps, shuddering when he pulls it out and can breathe again. His fingers are stained with his own blood, pooling beneath his fingernails and running down his knuckles. 

Between his fingers, he holds a leaf. It’s whole, it’s green, and it’s evidence that the disease inside him is progressing faster than he knows what to do with it. 

There are experimental surgeries that have worked well enough to be labeled successes in the medical world. But they’re invasive, and painful, and they’re only a temporary solution. Soon enough, the flowers always grow back. Soon enough, the patients run out of money, or time, or the will to live, and the disease takes them the same way as every other sufferer that came before them. Alone and unloved. 

And Ray has never been the type to run from death, to delay the inevitable. In fact, he’s been waiting for it for a long, long time. It’d be a waste to use up time and medical resources to prolong a life that never wanted to be saved. 

Ray picks out the organic material from the mess in the sink and flushes it down the toilet. He rinses the blood from the porcelain and his hands and the inside of his mouth, brushes his teeth again with the spare toothbrush that lives in the medicine cabinet specifically for him. 

When he returns to the bedroom, Sand is still asleep. He has rolled over into the spot Ray occupied, buried his face in the pillow Ray uses. Ray carefully peels back the blankets and tucks himself back into Sand’s arms. 

Sand stirs only slightly, murmuring something nonsensical in his sleep as he pulls Ray tighter against his chest. 

Ray’s lungs and throat feel raw and the tang of blood still lingers beneath the minty toothpaste in his mouth. 

He's not okay. He’s still dying slowly and painfully, and he’s still gradually being suffocated by a love inside him that has nowhere to go. 

But despite that, he feels calm. 

He’s glad he met Sand. He’s happy that for at least one fleeting moment, their paths crossed and he’s gotten to laugh and sing and dance and pretend for just a little while that he could have the kind of love he’s spent his whole life yearning for. 

And for now, at least, that’s enough. 

Ray is once again clutching the rim of a toilet bowl, not thinking of the grime and disease crawling beneath his nails as he does so. All he can focus on at the moment is gagging around the petals lodged in his throat that fall from his lips like some sort of gruesome, bloody confetti. 

The soft white petals cling to the sides of the bowl and drift across the surface of the water. It’s almost comical that the thing that holds his life in its leafy hands is so beautiful and delicate, even after being spat out into the piss-soaked toilet of a dingy dive bar. 

Ray pants as tremors rip through his body. The disease has begun to hurt. He wakes up in the night now feeling breathless and nauseous, with little time to break out in a sprint just to spit blood and flowers and stomach bile into his en-suite toilet as they slice their way out of his throat. 

It’s painful. It’s disgusting. It’s inevitable. 

Ray doesn’t even hear the footsteps in the bathroom, nor does he hear the stall door being swung open. What he does hear, though, is his own name, called like a question, a cautious plea. 

“Ray…?”

He feels so weak he can hardly move his head to look, but he doesn’t have to. That voice is Sand’s. Fuck, he should’ve left sooner. Should’ve flushed away the evidence as soon as it fell from his lips. 

But Sand has already seen it. 

“Don’t.” 

Ray’s voice is weak and pathetic, but it’s a command all the same. What is he telling Sand not to do? Don’t worry? Don’t come closer? Don’t point out the obvious? Don’t care? 

“Ray, let me take you home.”

It’s not a question about the flowery remnants still floating in the bloodied water or a reprimand for staying too late after the bar has closed. 

It’s a gentle instruction, delivered with the softness that Sand has always given him, but that Ray has never deserved. 

But Ray has so little left in his body that he only nods and allows himself to be lifted from the ground, shuffling out the back doors of YOLO towards his own car. 

Sand drives him home in silence, the faint hum of the radio sounding distant and muffled. 

When they get to his sprawling mansion, Sand follows him inside wordlessly, helping him up the stairs and into his own bedroom. It’s only when Ray realizes he’s been changed out of his bar clothes that Sand breaks their silence. 

“How long have you known?” 

Ray doesn’t need to ask him to clarify. 

“A few weeks.” 

Sand sighs and runs his hand through his hair, his bangs falling right back into place. 

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Why would I? I know what it is. I know what will happen to me.” 

“Ray…” 

It’s the tone one would use to scold a child in a way that portrays disappointment rather than anger. Ray scoffs. He doesn’t need Sand’s pity. His eyes go cold and downcast, away from the exasperated sadness he knows is lingering in Sand’s gaze. Ray says nothing. 

“Do you… Do you know who it is?” Sand asks. 

Ray nods, just once. 

“Mew. It has to be. It’s always been Mew.” 

Sand’s face is stony and unreadable, fixed tightly in an impassive expression, like the man has complete and total control over every muscle along his mandible. 

“Does he know?” 

“About my feelings or about the countdown to my death?” Ray retorts with a mirthless chuckle. “Feelings, yes. Disease, no. But what’s he supposed to do about it? I can’t make him love me. Trust me, I’ve tried.” 

Sand sighs again, and Ray can practically hear the thoughts racing through his mind about how to fix this problem, how to find the solution, just like he always does. But Ray knows it’s useless. There are some problems that have no solution. There are some stories with no happy ending. 

The silence stretches long and agonizing between them. The seconds tick away like Ray has any to spare. 

Sand’s eyes are somewhere far away even as he looks at Ray, dulled by both reluctance and a steady determination. 

Then, Sand speaks. 

“If I had information that could help you with Mew, would you want to hear it?” 

Ray narrows his eyes skeptically and finally looks up at him. 

“What kind of information?” 

Ray honestly doesn’t believe it. 

Not until he hears it himself. 

The recording begins like it might be taken directly from any sleazy porn site— slapping skin, panting breaths, the occasional wet squelch. 

But then, there’s something else. 

The clear, unmistakable voices of the love of Ray’s life’s own love of his life… and Boston. 

“Ngh… yeah… bet you missed this, hmm, Top?”

“Sh-Shut the fuck up.” 

“Bet that pretty boy Mew can’t give it to you like I can, hmm?” 

“Don’t… Fuck… Don’t say his name.”

The sounds churn in Ray’s head long after the recording stops, long after Sand goes home and leaves Ray with the decision on what to do next. 

Those depraved moans echo in his mind even as he’s surrounded by his friends at their regular table at YOLO, and they drown out the sounds of too-loud laughter and over-enthusiastic chatter. Even his usual self-prescribed remedy of as much whiskey as he can drink before the bartender, Plug, cuts him off does nothing to help drown out the noise. 

He’s on edge; has been the whole night. If his friends notice, they don’t ask. Typical Ray drama, they’re probably thinking. Always making his own sour moods everyone else’s problem. 

And Ray really wasn’t going to, honestly. There is a calm and rational way to deal with this somehow, one that probably involves a heart-to-heart with his best friend and unrequited love. 

But, well… Ray is Ray. He doesn’t really do ‘calm and rational.’ 

So when a snide comment is tossed at him offhandedly by Cheum, something about “How great is it that we can all be here with our partners? Well, except for you, Ray— maybe someday you’ll find someone who can put up with you!” Ray sees red. 

He’s a dead man walking. And he’s surrounded by fucking hypocrites. 

This happiness they’re all performing is a show. Meant to prove something to the others in the room, or maybe just to convince themselves of it. None of it is real. None of them are happy. 

And Ray?

Ray’s got nothing to fucking lose. 

He slips away from them unnoticed, stumbling toward the stage where Sand’s packing up gear with his bandmates. The singer gives him an inquisitive look as he taps the mic to see if it’s still hot. It is. 

They want a show? They’ll get a fucking show. 

“Hello, hello?” Ray tests the mic, drawing the attention of both his friends and the rest of the lingering patrons. 

Sand tries to snatch back the mic with a “What the fuck, Ray?” but he shrugs him off and keeps going. 

“It’s my best friend in the whole world’s birthday tonight, in case you folks didn’t know,” he says. “Everyone give it up for Mew!” 

The rest of the bar offers a supportive round of applause, while Mew and the others watch him hesitantly. 

“It’s so good to see everyone here all together, you know. Lots of love in this room tonight. Everyone’s brought their special someone, you all just look so… happy.” 

Ray hops off the stage with a little grunt and a stumble as he lands, but quickly regains his footing as he saunters over to the friend group. 

“Cheum,” he continues, standing in front of his friend and her girlfriend. “You and April have been together for what, three, four years now? How lovely. These two are the sweetest couple I know.”

Cheum and April exchange loving glances. It makes Ray sick. 

“But you wanna know something funny, April?” Ray’s eyes sharpen and his voice drops just a half note, eerily calm. “The thing is, Cheum’s always complaining when you blow her off. Says your relationship seems to be going nowhere, just like your film career. She doesn’t get your art, says she’s tired of pretending you have something profound to say.” 

Cheum gasps, and April’s eyes shift to her girlfriend with unease. 

“Shut the fuck up, Ray,” Cheum snaps. “What, you’re single and miserable, so you decide to shit on everyone else’s love life?” 

Ray laughs mirthlessly. 

“Don’t worry, I’m not jealous of your happiness. In fact, I have something to say about every couple here.” 

Boston’s been uncharacteristically quiet and stiff as a board, so that’s where he stumbles to next. 

“Boston,” Ray croons, slapping an uncoordinated hand over the guy’s broad shoulder. “Even you brought someone tonight? Finally made it official yet?” He snickers, because of course Boston hasn’t. “You don’t have to tell me now— I’m sure I’ll get all the filthy details later. I always do.” 

Boston’s jaw is clenched but his eyes are soft, and Ray shifts his attention to the nervous-looking, curly-haired boy at his side. 

“Nick, don’t tell me he’s convinced you that you mean anything. Let me guess— he fucked you in the darkroom? Took your picture, talked about New York? Told you you’re his favorite?”

Nick’s face falls, and it’s clear Ray’s struck a chord. But before he can let it ring out, Sand’s hand is yanking him back by his shoulder. 

“Ray, that’s enough,” he warns him. 

Ray wriggles out of his grip, sending him stumbling back a few paces before his venomous gaze settles on the very man who’d just tried to hold him back. Sand has just stepped into the line of fire— he’d even loaded the gun himself— and Ray doesn’t care anymore who gets hurt. 

“Give me a break, Sand,” he says, dropping his voice and staring daggers up at his lanky form. “You like talking big about all these cute little hopes and dreams of being this hotshot singer, but that’s not what you really want, is it? At the end of the day, all you actually care about is the money.” 

He steps closer into Sand’s space and sees the musician clench his jaw. Ray lowers his voice even further into a sick mockery of what it sometimes sounds like when they’re in bed together. “If you want it that bad, I can give it to you. Fuck me for it, and it’s yours. Name your price.” 

Sand mutters an “asshole” and shoves him hard, and Ray can only giggle as the room spins with him. 

Ray’s back on his feet, just in time for his grand finale. He turns on his heel and he’s face to face with a rigid Mew, guarded by his hulking lapdog. 

Ray’s eyes soften for a moment. 

“Mew,” he murmurs, and just a thread of a sincere, sober Ray slips out. “No one is as kind and loving as you. You’re the best person I’ve ever known. You deserve a good love, someone who will never hurt you. Even if that’s not me, I hope you find it. You deserve it more than anyone.” 

Then, he turns, and Top’s smug but cautious face is staring down at Ray. 

“And Top…” Ray’s voice is still saccharine, until the artificial sweetness melts away and his rage takes the driver’s seat once again. “You son of a fucking bitch!” 

Ray throws himself at Top, but is quickly shoved backwards by the guy’s surly frame. Ray doesn’t stand a chance against someone twice his size, but he doesn’t even care. He deserves the punches that are coming. He anticipates the sting of knuckles against his jaw, the crack of bone against bone, with a sort of giddy excitement that bubbles up inside of him like soda pop. 

“For years, I’ve taken the best care of my Mew… and then you come along and fuck it all up!” His voice is hoarse now and he can feel hot tears wetting his cheeks. “Why didn’t you take care of him?! Why can’t you love him how he deserves?!” 

He pounds his fists against Top’s broad chest— hit me, do it, I deserve it, I know you want to— but he’s shoved again, only this time, it’s by Mew. 

Ray loses his footing and goes toppling back into the edge of the stage, slamming his face against the sharp edge. He tastes copper before he can really feel the pain bloom across his cheekbone. 

“Ray. Cut it out.” Mew’s voice is trembling, like a schoolteacher barely withholding from chewing out a troublesome kid. 

And there it is— that look of disappointment, but not surprise, never surprise, the exact one he’s been hoping for by putting on this little performance. Of course Mew’s eyes are disdainful— everyone’s always are. Seeing the horrified, disgusted looks from everyone in the room only fills him with manic glee and settles into his veins like poison. 

Good. They all deserve to be uncomfortable. 

And here Ray is in the middle of it all, dragging the blade against his skin before anyone else has the chance to do it for him. He’s good at playing scapegoat, good at offering himself up as a sacrificial lamb for his friends’ cheap laughs and misplaced frustrations. This is the space he feels most comfortable, the only place he belongs. The only place he’s useful. 

“Boston, you’re awfully quiet over there,” Ray remarks after swallowing a mouthful of blood. “You gonna tell him, or should I?” 

The color drains from Boston’s face and he squares off his shoulders and stands chest to chest with Ray. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ray,” he says. “Don’t start shit you can’t finish.” 

A crazed laugh rips its way out of Ray’s chest. 

“You’re one to talk about finishing things you’ve started.” He turns to look at Top as he delivers his next line. “Had him once, but when he got Mew, you just had to come back for more, didn’t you?” 

Now Top has crossed over to stand before Ray, jaw twitching in anger. 

“Really, Ray? Making accusations without proof? Careful there, that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

“Go ahead,” Ray spits through clenched teeth, voice trembling with adrenaline. “Sue me. I’m sure your family’s patriarch would just love to hear the sounds of his darling heir taking a joyride on the gay moto-taxi of Bangkok’s club scene.” 

“Oh, you miserable little piece of—” 

Top charges forward, his intentions clear. Ray stands still, waits for it, braces for the impact of Top’s fist against his face, but it never comes. He cracks an eye open to see Mew standing between them, eyes wild with anger but fixed on Ray. 

“Ray. Go home,” is all he says, and Ray does. 

He takes one more look around at the roomful of eyes that have gone vacant, deserted of all sympathy or even pity after his outburst. They don’t look at him, they look through him, writing him off as the over-emotional, unstable, drunken basket case they always do. 

They don’t care to ask the reasons why he did it. They don’t care that he’s only told the truth even throughout his rampage. They don’t care how he’s getting home, or even if he’s okay. No, they only care that he made them uncomfortable, that he put a damper on their illusion of happiness for an evening. They only care that he leaves as soon as possible so that he can free them of the burden that is watching him fall apart. 

Selfish fucking assholes. Every single one of them. 

He leaves the bar that’s gone silent, but not before screaming out a single “Fuck!” as he storms past the small crowd that has gathered to watch his implosion. 

Ray trudges through the parking lot, and only in the cool night air do the tears start burning behind his eyes as he fumbles to fish out his car key from his front pocket. 

“Ray! Ray!” 

A familiar voice calls from behind him, breathless with the short jog taken to catch up with him. Ray feels the hand on his shoulder just as he’s able to swing the driver’s side door open, and he shoves off the gentle touch as soon as he feels it. 

“The fuck do you want, Sand?”

Sand looks at him, pained, as Ray whips his body around to square up to the taller man’s frame. 

“Ray, you can be mad at me, but don’t drive. You’ve been drinking.” 

A wild, humorless laugh bubbles out of his chest. 

“Really? You came here to lecture me? Well, thanks for the life lesson, dad.” 

Ray turns to duck into the car, but Sand catches his arm again. 

“Ray, I’m serious—” 

Sand’s eyes are soft and sincere, and it only adds fuel to the fire consuming Ray from the inside out. 

“Get the fuck off me!” Ray wrenches his arm free, sending Sand back several paces. 

“Can you stop thinking about him for once?” Sand yells, and the air stills around them. “It’s not Mew standing here in front of you. It’s me. Can’t you see how much I care about you?” 

“And who the fuck asked you to do that, huh?” Ray screams, taking a step forward, spitting out a cloud of whiskey and smoke and blood that wafts directly into Sand’s face. “Who said I wanted your care, huh?! Tell me, Sand— what the fuck are we to each other?!” 

Sand has the audacity to look wounded. As if he hadn’t started all of this. As if he had no idea this was coming. 

“Tell me, Sand! What are we to each other?!” 

Sand doesn’t speak. He just stares with those wide brown eyes filled with disappointment. Just like everyone else. Fuck this. 

“Can’t answer?” Ray laughs, loud and manic. “Then let me say it for you: Nothing. Fucking nothing. We are nothing to each other. That’s what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?” 

Sand’s eyes go vacant, like he’s just absorbing all the fire and hatred and rage that’s been festering inside of Ray since long before he realized it was even there. 

“You’re right,” Sand eventually says, broken, defeated. “We’re nothing to each other. So consider me a concerned samaritan. Risk your own life all you want— but don’t you dare put that burden on someone else.” 

And there it is again— that fucking word. Burden. Burden. Burden. It echoes against the walls of his skull, reverberates against his eardrums. 

Ray can’t take it anymore. 

He turns back toward his car door, but right when his fingertips brush against the handle, a weight is lunged over his back and tightens around his midsection. It’s Sand, throwing himself at him in an attempt to keep him where he is. 

“Ray, don’t—!” 

“Fuck you!” 

“Ray, please, just—” 

“Let me fucking go!” 

“Not until you—” 

Ray writhes until he gets a good grip of leverage against Sand’s shoulders and shoves. Sand staggers, but doesn’t release him. 

“Get the fuck off me!” 

With his last bit of strength, he throws Sand off of him with all his body weight, sending Sand to crumble against the pavement. He hisses and cradles his wrist immediately upon impact, but Ray is still so high on the adrenaline he couldn’t calm down even if he tried— even if he cared. 

“Or do I have to pay you for that too, you fucking whore?” 

Ray spits the words down at the heap of Sand’s limbs on the pavement. Big brown eyes look up at him, pained and watery with unshed tears, but the rest of Sand’s face is devastatingly stoic. 

Ray curses again before he realizes he’s free now to get into his car, slamming the driver’s door shut behind him after he clambers in. 

He peels out of YOLO’s parking lot without looking back. As much as it kills him to admit, Sand was probably right back there— he shouldn’t be driving like this. The alcohol is one thing, but his vision is blurred by tears now and the lines on the road begin to melt into the streetlights. 

It would be easy to pull over and call a Grab ride to pick him up wherever he is. He takes his phone out to open the app, but as soon as it’s unlocked, the music he was playing on his way there connects to his car speakers. 

Love is natural and real 

But not for you, my love, not tonight, my love…

Love is natural and real 

But not for such as you and I, my love…

It’s a song by some post-punk Britpop band that Sand had added into a playlist he’d titled, “Songs Ray Should Hear That Aren’t By Micro.” A sob racks its way out of Ray’s chest. It’s the closest thing he’s ever received to a love letter. 

Why couldn’t Mew be the one that sees him so entirely? 

Why does Sand have to always punctuate the moments of their softness with things like, “I’d never take someone like you as my boyfriend”? 

Why is he always the one who ends up alone?

What is so bad about him that not even his own mother could bear to love him? 

His fingers hover over the Grab app. He doesn’t press it. 

Instead, he swipes to his messages. 

Sends Mew a file. 

And he speeds off into the night. 

The last thing he remembers is a crushing weight on his chest that jolts him into sobriety for no longer than half a second. 

He remembers everything hurting. 

A pounding on the window. 

Smoke. 

And the bitter melancholy of the voice that languidly croons from his radio, a single phrase that seems to mock him as his body drifts off to sleep. 

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head…

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head…

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head…

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head…

Ray can’t open his eyes. They want to, but the space behind his eyelids is so bright he feels like he’s looking into the sun. 

His body aches. His chest feels like it’s been crushed, and his breaths come in shallow, painful gasps. 

He can’t move his left arm. 

He tries to blink, but his eyes are barely able to open. He wants to speak, to ask what’s happening, but his throat is so dry nothing but a wheeze comes out. 

“You’re awake.” 

The voice sounds exhausted, but relieved. Ray squints against the sun to see who’s speaking to him. It’s a vague outline of a man, tall but folded in on itself, and it jumps up to leave, maybe to inform someone else of his consciousness. 

Ray catches the figure’s hand before it can go. 

“What happened?” he rasps out. 

“You were in a car wreck, Ray,” the voice says, and it seems to have a similarly calm, silky timbre to Sand’s. “You’re lucky to be alive.” 

The information is delivered softly, but still, Ray doesn’t feel lucky. He just feels… 

“Thirsty,” he chokes out. The figure moves beyond his range of vision, but then the plastic rim of a water bottle is pressed against his lips and Ray takes several long sips, his throat feeling like he’s swallowed glass as it works around the cool water. 

“Lay back down,” the voice says, pressing gently at his shoulder. Ray doesn’t have the energy to refuse. “I’ll go get a doctor. I’ll be right back.” 

Ray still doesn’t quite know what’s going on, but he nods obediently and settles back into the scratchy blankets. He closes his eyes again and sighs a rattling exhale. 

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but when he opens his eyes again, the room is dim and the windows are dark with the arrival of night. 

All he can hear for several long delirious moments is the rhythmic beeping of whatever hospital monitors he’s hooked up to, and the shuffle of nurses down the hall. 

“Ray,” a voice calls softly, sweetly. 

Mew. 

Ray turns his head, and there sitting in the guest chair is his Mew, clothes rumpled and hair greasy like he’s been running his fingers through it for hours. 

“Mew,” Ray says, equal parts confused and happy to see him here. 

“Do you remember what happened? Are you in pain? Do you need a nurse? Let me go get a nurse—” 

Mew stands, but Ray grabs his wrist before he can take a step. 

“Stay,” Ray pleads. Mew hesitates, then nods, then sits back down at his bedside. He holds Ray’s hand between both of his own. 

“Ray, I don’t know how much you remember, but… I… I got your message,” Mew begins softly. Ray’s head swims with confusion, trying to conjure the memory. “The audio file. Ray, I’m sorry… I… I should’ve listened to you, I shouldn’t have—” 

Ah. Right. That bastard Top. 

“It’s fine, Mew,” Ray says gently. “I’m sorry that happened to you.” 

“But I yelled at you. I pushed you, I made you bleed. When all you were doing was trying to help me,” Mew says, shame creeping into his tone. 

“Water under the bridge, I swear.” Ray chuckles softly, but immediately regrets it, wincing and clutching his side. 

“Oh, shit— are you okay? Should I get someone?” 

“No, no, I’m okay,” Ray insists. “Really, I’ll be fine.” 

Mew’s expression darkens. 

“No you won’t,” he says. “The doctor already told me about… about the hanahaki.” Ray looks away, feeling a pang in his chest that has nothing to do with the flora growing inside of it. “Ray, why didn’t you tell me before? This is a big deal.” 

“It’s not your problem to deal with,” Ray mutters. “I’ll be fine. I’ll take care of it.” 

“How, though? You don’t have to go through this alone. I’ll be there for you. Do you… Do you know who it is?” 

Ray doesn’t know what to say. He looks through a spot on the floor, eyes distant and unfocused. “Yes,” is all he can manage. 

Mew is silent for a beat. Then, he lets out a soft breath. 

“Is it me?” 

Ray squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t bear to witness the pity he knows is filling his friend’s eyes right now. 

“Like I said… it’s not your problem to deal with.” 

“But… if it’s me…” Mew inches closer, squeezing Ray’s hand between his palms. “Then it kind of is my problem to deal with.” 

Ray sighs. He feels tears prick behind his eyelids. 

“I know I can’t make you love me, Mew,” he whispers. “I learned that a long time ago. Please don’t let me be a burden to you about this, too.” 

“This isn’t a burden,” Mew says, soft and certain. “This is your life.” 

“Same thing.” Ray almost huffs out a laugh. 

They’re both silent for a long while, and the quiet between them is sterile as the room they’re currently sitting in. 

“What if I tried?” 

Mew’s question catches him off guard. 

“What? Like… tried to love me?” Ray asks. Mew shrugs. 

“If it’ll save your life, I’ll do anything,” he says earnestly. “You’ve never hurt me, not like Top did. I already love you so much as a friend. Maybe… maybe those two kinds of love aren’t so different, after all.” 

Ray’s chest swells with hope, but still, it doesn’t feel like his own. It feels borrowed. Loaned. 

“Mew… you really don’t have to do this.” 

“I know,” Mew says. “I want to. Please, just let me try.” 

Mew holds his hand so tightly, looks at him with the expression in his eyes that Ray’s waited so long to see directed at him, that he can’t possibly refuse. Not now. Not after everything. 

“Okay,” Ray says softly. “Let’s try.” 

Once Ray gets his green light to be discharged, his days become a whirlwind filled with Mew, Mew, Mew. 

Just like he’s always dreamed. 

Now, Ray finally has his chance. He can hold Mew’s hand, kiss his cheek, hold doors open for him, and no one can say anything about it, because Mew is finally his. 

He can tell Cheum and April aren’t totally sold on the idea, based on the skeptical side-eye glances he catches when they think he’s not looking— which have only increased in frequency after Mew starts asking to go out drinking with them more often, even on school nights, which before would have earned any one of them an earful from Mew the next day about responsibility and the importance of education. 

But it doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. All that matters is Ray and Mew, and their relationship, and the fact that Mew is finally his. 

“Cheum, do you think Boston’s still with Nick? His shop sells those disco lights that sync up to music, think he could get us a discount?” Mew asks.

They’re at the hostel, planning a Halloween party for this weekend that Mew is apparently planning on going all out for. 

Cheum shifts in her seat a little uncomfortably at the mention of Boston, who hasn’t been named so casually in conversation since that night at YOLO. 

“I don’t think Nick has talked to him in a while,” she says. “Probably not.” 

“Oh, well that’s too bad,” Mew says with an indifferent shrug. “Kinda wish we knew someone who could get in contact with Nick for us. But, whatever— we can just get some from the regular store.”

Ray has an immediate gut reaction to say that he has a connection to Nick, through his relationship to a certain grungy musician that happens to be Nick’s roommate. Sand’s name is on the tip of his tongue, and he almost says it out loud, but clenches his teeth together to bite back the urge. A pair of wide brown eyes and a dimpled overbite pass through his mind uninvited, though, and the memory is accompanied by a painful constricting sensation in his chest. 

Mew and Cheum have been continuing their party discussion, and Ray only tunes back in once Mew turns to speak directly to him. “Could you handle the alcohol, Ray? I want this to be a real party, so pull out all the stops. I want the red Solo cups and everything.” 

Ray giggles lightly and slides in closer so that their knees touch as they sit side by side on the couch. “Of course,” he replies. “Anything else?” 

Mew thinks about it, eyes trailing to the ceiling adorably. “Hmmm… last time you handled music, do you want to do that again?” 

Something bitter spreads across Ray’s tongue and he swallows it down. Sand’s face— wounded and watery like it was the last time he saw it in person— passes through his mind’s eye once again, and that tightening feeling is back in his chest. It’s like the roots in his lungs are clutching deeper into the soft tissues of his alveoli. He really doesn’t think it would be wise to reach back out to Sand, not since the radio silence he’s gotten ever since he was discharged and texted him the update about his newfound status with Mew. 

“Maybe Cheum should handle it,” Ray says, quickly schooling his expression with a sweet smile. “You always say I have the music taste of a 50-year-old woman.” 

“True,” Mew replies, giggling. “Cheum, is that cool with you?” 

“Sure thing,” Cheum says, making a note on her phone. 

“Great. It’s Halloween, so make sure everyone that’s invited knows they have to dress up,” Mew states. “And a t-shirt with the words ‘this is my costume’ isn’t going to cut it. I want to see an effort being made.” 

Ray laughs. “How do you suppose we enforce that rule, hmm?” he asks, sliding his arm behind Mew’s shoulders. “Should I hire a whole security staff? Bouncers trained in recognizing crimes against fashion?” 

“Ray, don’t be ridiculous,” Mew giggles. “I just mean, make sure to put it on the invite next to the address, or something.” 

“Got it,” Ray winks. “And in fine print: ‘violators will be subject to public shaming and scrutiny as well as a fine up to 200 baht.’ How’s that sound?” 

“Oi, Ray, now you’re just teasing. We can’t charge people money for that.” 

“That’s why it says ‘up to!’ Zero is technically under 200 baht.” 

When the night of the party finally arrives, Ray’s skin seems to buzz with excitement— and with alcohol, and with the line he snorted in the bathroom earlier. 

The music is pumping, the lights are flashing, and Mew, the second half of his couples costume, is off somewhere refilling their cups with whatever too-sweet concoction of liquor Cheum had whipped up in the punch bowl. 

The three-piece Joker suit is a little stifling, especially as the jitters of cocaine vibrate through his fingertips, but Mew had picked out this outfit meticulously for him, and he is determined to remove not even the suit jacket until the end of the night. 

Where is his little Harley Quinn, anyway? It’s been awhile since he had said he’d be right back. 

Ray stumbles down the stairs and into the living room, and finally, he sees him. Dressed in the little baseball tee and varsity jacket, with the thick leather choker half-unclasped around his neck, his Mew looks absolutely edible. 

But then Ray realizes he’s not alone. 

Mew is talking to someone dressed in— what is that, a military outfit? Aviator uniform? Whatever the movie reference is, the conversation looks tense. Ray steps closer, and realizes why. 

Did Top really have the audacity to show up here?

Apparently so. 

Ray gets in between the both of them, instinctively protecting Mew. 

“Is there a problem?” he asks in Top’s direction. 

“I’m here to speak to Mew,” Top says, smugly. “None of your concern.” 

Before Ray can respond, Mew sidesteps Ray to come face-to-face with Top. 

“Actually, it is his concern,” Mew snaps, venom in his tone. “Seeing as he’s my boyfriend now.” 

Top scoffs. 

“Really, Mew? You’re choosing… that… over me?” 

“Whether I am or not is really none of your fucking business, actually,” Mew shoots back. “Or, what? Did you want proof?” 

Before any of them can react, Mew grabs Ray by his tie and forcefully yanks him towards him. Their mouths collide sloppily, with Mew immediately making a show of licking into Ray’s mouth. 

It’s their first kiss. 

Ray probably would have made the setting a little more romantic. Probably would have asked permission first. Probably would have started the kiss slow, soft, sweet, before they ever reached this point. 

But right now, Mew is in charge. 

And Ray will take what he can fucking get. 

So after half a second of pure, frozen shock, Ray gets the memo and reciprocates the kiss. He cradles Mew’s face between his hands, tilts his head, and allows him to take from him whatever he wants. 

He parts his lips and Mew’s tongue is everywhere. He tries to keep up, but it’s a little much, even for him. Ray tries to slow it down, tries to maintain some semblance of pacing, but Mew seems determined to make the kiss as filthy as possible, curling his fingers into Ray’s hair and holding him there. 

Several blissfully numb seconds later, Mew’s lips separate from him with a wet smack and Ray’s eyes flutter open. 

He realizes Top isn’t there anymore. 

He looks to Mew, confused, but he’s already looking away and wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. 

“Mew…” 

Mew takes a breath before turning to Ray with a smile he can tell is fake. 

“Ray, did you have any more of that coke you brought? I want another line.” 

Ray blinks. Allows the disappointment to settle in his chest like stone. Then, he smiles. Nods. 

“Come with me.” 

Stairs have become a bit more difficult to scale without Ray becoming winded— physical proof of his lungs’ diminished capacity with the progressing disease. Eventually, they make it to one of the spare bedrooms upstairs, the one with a loveseat and a glass coffee table. 

Ray helps Mew settle onto the cushion and takes his place beside him. Their knees brush, and Ray feels a flutter of something warm that travels through his whole body. His eyes dart toward Mew’s, but he’s just looking at the pocket of Ray’s jacket that he already knows the dime bag is tucked into. 

With a sigh, Ray pulls the tiny baggie from his breast pocket. He shakes out a small mound of the stark white powder onto the surface of the coffee table and starts cutting it into skinny lines— a smaller one for Mew, and a larger one for himself. Even in this state, he’s mindful that it’s Mew’s first time experimenting and doesn’t yet know his own limits. 

“Remember how to do it?” Ray asks, handing him the little paper straw they’d used earlier. 

Mew nods eagerly, his eyes flashing with excitement. “Suck hard and fast. Don’t exhale ‘til I’m backed away from the table.” Their fingers brush when he takes the straw from Ray. 

“Right,” Ray confirms with an endeared chuckle. “You’re basically a pro now. Whenever you’re ready,” he adds, gesturing to the small white lines of powder on the table. 

When Mew ducks his head down to snort his line, Ray’s heart clenches. He wished he could have introduced Mew to these new experiences while it was just them, not surrounded by all the flashing lights and loud music and Top. Something inside him grieves the loss of his innocent, wide-eyed Mew he fell in love with all those years ago, even if Mew is the one who asked him to bring the coke here tonight. 

Still, something else inside Ray, something far darker, puffs its chest with the pride of knowing that he’s the one to have tainted that purity in this one specific way. Not Top. Him. 

Mew’s head flies back up from the table and thrusts the straw back into Ray’s hand, exhaling and widening his eyes from the sudden rush. 

“Feels good,” Mew beams, giggling. Ray giggles back before he snorts his own line. 

Mew’s eyes are wild and unfocused when he raises his head again. Ray swallows around the thick bitterness dripping down the back of his throat, doing his best to drink in the vision of Mew in this state. 

His cheeks are flushed, and his hair is sticking to the sides of his forehead where they’d been plastered down by sweat earlier. His nose twitches like a bunny, and his eyes are big and glassy, bouncing around Ray’s face rapidly like he’s searching for something there. 

God, he’s beautiful. 

So, Ray tells him. 

“You’re beautiful,” Ray breathes, brushing a strand of his bangs away from his brow. He lets his fingertips linger there, trailing the line of his soft cheekbone, watching those big brown eyes framed by dark lashes. 

Mew smiles. “Thank you.” 

It’s the perfect window of opportunity. Ray can hardly keep the impulse to kiss him tethered inside for any longer. He leans in, slowly, the way he wanted their first kiss to happen since the beginning. 

Mew’s breaths are rapid and hot against his lips. Anticipation swells inside of him, and Ray’s eyes fall closed as he takes that last step, that last leap of faith, the final push against what has always stood between him and everything he always wanted from Mew. 

But their lips don’t meet. Ray presses against nothing but air, and his eyes flutter open, confused. 

Mew stares back at him wide-eyed and nervous, posture straightened like he’d suddenly become stone-cold sober from the advance. 

“I’m sorry, Ray,” he says. 

Humiliation. Rejection. Emptiness, even as his body is slowly filling with foreign organic material that cuts him off his own oxygen supply. 

And then, Mew is gone. He exits the guest bedroom like he’d never entered it with anyone else to begin with. 

Ray feels used. But not surprised. It’s exactly the bitter reminder he needed that this was all he was ever good for to anyone— a tool, an object, an endless well of money and drugs and booze and fun. But not love. Never love. 

He’s sad, but mostly, he’s angry. Angry at himself for thinking he could ever have something that’s his alone, that’s his entirely. 

Ray stands on swaying legs and trudges out of the room, almost plowing over a vampire making out with a scantily-clad Sailor Moon. He hears them curse at him, but he waves them off, beginning the treacherous journey of descending the stairs and back toward his lighthouse in this storm— the alcohol table. 

Shaky hands are liberally pouring whiskey into a plastic cup he hopes is clean when something catches his attention from the corner of his eye. It’s Sand, clad only in a white tank top and light-wash skinny jeans, a band of studded leather affixed around his scrawny bicep. He looks good, and he knows Sand knows it too, the way he’s wearing the bedroom eyes that Ray recognizes all too well and leaning in toward some guy in a tacky fake moustache, enthralled in a conversation that can’t possibly be that interesting. 

The scene makes something bitter and ugly boil in the pit of his stomach. He knows Sand doesn’t want him, at least not like how he wants to be wanted— he’s made that clear since the beginning— but couldn’t he at least have the decency to refrain from being so blatant about it at Ray’s own party?

His feet move on their own. The freshly-poured whiskey sits abandoned next to the bottle it came from. Ray slinks in between them, sitting so that the heat of his body is pressed all the way up against Sand’s side, in a way that is both a claim and a plea. 

Sand looks shocked and bewildered to see him here. Funny he’s so surprised, when he’s the one so shamelessly soliciting a hookup with a stranger inside a building that Ray owns. 

“Whatcha talking about?” he asks casually, but he knows Sand can tell it’s anything but. 

“Ray…” Sand says warily, nervous eyes darting between him and the man he’d been chatting up. 

“We were talking about Queen,” the stranger offers unhelpfully. “Freddie was really one of the greatest of all time.” 

“Oh, you’re a fan?” Ray muses, feigning interest. Sand rolls his eyes. 

“Uh… yeah,” the stranger replies, as if it were obvious. Ray grins as he feels his jealousy take on a life of its own inside of him, sprouting roots and branches and taking control as if he’s been supernaturally possessed. 

“Did I interrupt a hookup?” he asks with fake shock. “Were you heading back to yours, or Sand’s? Doesn’t matter, let’s go back to mine instead.” He hears his name from Sand’s lips, a low warning. He ignores it. “I’m sure the three of us can find some way to have even more fun.” 

He knows by now that Sand is not interested in his threesome propositions. To be truthful, Ray really isn’t either, but he’d do it for Sand. He’d do it if it meant Sand would use him for the purpose he’d established in Sand’s life just one more time. If it meant Sand wouldn’t share himself with the strangers he gave himself away to before Ray walked into his life. If it meant he could have Sand’s attention on him, even if it had to be split between someone else, for even one more miserable, wonderful second. 

Sand has never taken him up on it. Those results are good, too, Ray figures— because it means Ray scares off the unworthy and gets Sand alone. He’d subject himself to a million more exasperated lectures if it meant Sand’s disappointed eyes weren’t looking at anyone else. 

The mustached stranger shifts uncomfortably on the couch, and Sand looks like he’s seconds away from either killing Ray or himself. 

“Sorry, I think I misunderstood,” the man tells Sand before standing. “I don’t go after people’s boyfriends. You all have a good night, though.” 

“Thanks! Bye, you too!” Ray calls after him, though he’s already out of earshot. “Try the punch, it’s really good!” He’s been drinking whiskey all night and has no idea if the punch is any good. 

Slowly, he turns to face Sand with a victorious smile, and is met with a furious glare. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Sand spits at him, before Ray is being shoved aside and Sand is standing. “You have Mew now, so why bother me? Go worry about your little boyfriend.” Ray meets him at eye level, makes himself as tall as he can, standing nose-to-nose with Sand’s brimming anger. He smiles, eyes sharp as daggers, basking in Sand’s attention that he finally has all to himself. 

He’d be like this even without the stimulants coursing through his veins. The drugs just add a sense of urgency and recklessness that might otherwise be dampened. 

“Careful there. It almost sounds like you’re jealous,” he coos, lowering his voice into silk and crushed velvet. “You have no right to tell me who I’m allowed to bother, Sand.” He’s taunting him now. He knows it, and he doesn’t care. It’s worth it to carve out his own heart if he can watch the way Sand stares at it in disgust as it beats on its silver platter. 

“But I have the right to remove myself from this fucked-up little game you’re playing, don’t I?” Sand shoots back, a little louder, losing control. He’s right where Ray wants him. 

Ray studies every feature on his sculpted face. The way his eyebrows raise, the way his upper eyelids lift, the way his jaw twitches with restraint as he holds himself back. Just a little more. Just a little more, and he’ll crack. 

“Just admit it, Sand,” Ray says with unearthly calm, stepping even closer. “You like me.” He pokes Sand in the chest, and Sand takes a step back, something tortured and beautiful whirling behind his eyes. “You love me.” Ray drags a hand up Sand’s chest, up his neck, feeling the pulse thrum rabbit-quick beneath his fingertips. “You can’t walk away from me, no matter how hard you try.” Sand is frozen, looking dazed and wounded and so, so pretty. 

Sand is a taut rubber band, pulled to its limits, ready to snap at any second. Just one more tiny push. “You belong to me, Sand,” Ray says loudly, shoving his shoulder to back him into a corner. Perhaps if Ray hurls it as an accusation, it will manifest itself as reality. Sand lets himself be moved, almost trembling with the tension, and stares at him with an expression that Ray wants to sink his teeth into. 

“I’m not your fucking backup plan, Ray.” Sand’s voice is low and thick and quivering with emotion. His eyes are wide and shiny and Ray would almost be happy to see that Sand feels something if it weren’t for the fact that they looked so empty, like Sand had finally given up completely. “Remember that.” He shoves Ray backwards, sending him sprawled out on the floor, and walks away without a single glance to spare him. 

Ray’s tailbone radiates with pain from landing flat on his ass, and the cocaine’s excited jitters have worn off and been replaced by those of paranoia. Ray has ended his night exactly the way he ends the rest of his nights— completely alone, high, and drunk off his ass. 

Fuck. 

He knows he fucked up. 

In the convoluted state of his current impairment, he can’t quite piece together how… but he knows he fucked up. There’s no relieving sense of clarity in knowing how to fix it, just the empty, hollow feeling of knowing this is how his story will always end. 

All alone, as a burden who is incapable of loving something without crushing it between his desperate hands. 

Ray’s getting worse. His time is running out. 

He feels hungover all the time, even while he’s drunk. He’s always short of breath, and he hasn’t taken a satisfying inhale in what seems like weeks. Everything aches, and he’s resigned to his fate and confined to his bed. 

It’s been weeks since that stupid fucking Halloween party. He’s heard very little from Mew, and even less from Sand. The phone works both ways, he supposes, but he’s far too proud to be the one to reach out and apologize to Sand first, especially since the memories of their argument are still a little blurry around the edges. 

The maids have begun to notice. They knock tentatively on his bedroom door, softly announcing their arrival with a “Mr. Pakorn?” and only stepping fully inside when they hear his grunt of acknowledgement. They vacuum and fluff the pillows around him while he buries himself beneath downy blankets, while he suppresses bloody coughs into silk bedsheets worth a small fortune. 

It’s getting worse. 

He’s laying in the dark and staring blankly up at the ceiling. There’s another tickle at the back of his throat and he tries to swallow it down, but it persists. He clears his throat, trying to dislodge the petals, but this time it’s stubborn. It only ever gets worse. 

So, he heaves himself off his mattress and pads barefoot to the ensuite bathroom. His reflection stares back at him, sallow and splotchy, with hollowed cheekbones, lips so pale they’re almost blue, and dark, heavy bags around his eyes. He looks like a corpse. 

His knuckles tighten around the edge of the sink as the scrape of leaves rises up his throat with every shallow breath. The nausea makes him lightheaded and saliva pools beneath his tongue. 

It’s all the warning he gets before he’s gagging blood onto stark white porcelain. Goosebumps bristle his skin and he trembles as the coppery fluid coats his teeth and rouges his lips. He can’t breathe. 

Red fibers bloom into the scleras of his eyes, and a vein across his forehead bulges. His body heaves again and again, desperately attempting to dispel the foreign matter from his trachea, but it’s not enough. Every muscle along his spine is sore with the exertion. 

The oxygen in his body is running out, and panic sets in. His heart clamors against his ribcage. There’s a frantic tremor in his fingers as he brings them to his lips and into his mouth. 

His fingers slide past the slick pool of blood on his tongue, and he reaches as far as he can to the back of his throat. He feels his fingertips brush against something soft but edged, and he knows he’s found it— he pushes farther, deeper, until he can just barely get a grip onto the edge of a petal… and he pulls on it. 

It drags another shuddering retch through his body and his throat convulses around its absence. He pulls and pulls, and it’s much longer and harder than any other leaf or petal he’s pulled out of himself before. When it finally slides past his lips and lands in the sink with a wet splat, he gasps for air, sucking in greedy inhales, until he’s stopped by the recognition of what he’s just extracted from himself. 

It’s a fully-formed sprig of jasmine— three perfect flowers at its head with delicate white petals encasing a buttery yellow center, complete with healthy green leaves and a branching stem. Blood slides from its surface and flows down the drain, a stark contrast between pristine porcelain and the gruesome reminder of the ticking clock counting down to his demise. 

He’s tired of running from that clock. He’s tired of fighting against it. 

He’s running out of energy. 

Ray picks up the sprig between two shaky fingers, holding it up to the light to be examined. Blood smudges across his fingerprints, and the metallic smell mixes with the heady sweetness of the flowers. 

It is proof that there is life inside him still. 

It is proof that there won’t be for much longer. 

Three raps against the door frame. The hinges groan as it’s cracked open. 

“Mr. Pakorn?” a housekeeper calls into the darkened room. Ray hums out his acknowledgement, already preparing to burrow into the pillows and blankets while the ladies do their work. 

“You have a visitor.” 

Now that takes him by surprise. 

Who would possibly have visited him at a time like this? After he’s been radio silent for weeks? 

Did Sand suddenly decide to forgive him? A spark of hope pulls at his chest as he sits up in bed as quickly as he can manage, hastily running his fingers through his hair and shoving empty liquor bottles beneath the bedskirt. 

“Send him in,” he calls back, voice weak and raspy. He flips on the lamp and waits expectantly on the edge of his bed. 

It’s not Sand who walks through the doorway. His heart sinks a little. 

Instead, it’s Mew, and Ray is surprised that his first instinct upon seeing him is disappointment. 

“Oh, Mew,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting you.” 

Mew musters a small smile and sighs, sitting alongside Ray on the edge of the mattress with significant space between them. 

“I wanted to talk to you in person,” Mew says, and already, the air is awkward. “How have you been doing?” 

“I’ve been better,” Ray replies. “What did you come to talk about?” 

Mew gives a heavy sigh and sinks deeper beneath a visible weight on his shoulders. 

“Firstly, I want to say how much I care about you as a friend,” he begins, and already, Ray’s stomach drops. “I wasn’t lying to you when I said I’d do anything to save your life. I still would.” 

Ray blinks. “But…” he prompts, because he knows the word is coming, as much as Mew is trying to avoid saying it. 

“But I don’t think I can control my feelings,” Mew murmurs, looking dejectedly down at the plush carpet below their feet. “I’m so sorry, Ray. I tried. I really did.” 

Ray isn’t surprised. He could feel it. The whole time they were together, Mew still felt just outside of his reach, and if the gut instinct wasn’t enough to convince him that Mew could never love him, the Halloween party certainly was— Mew only kissed him when it was in front of Top. Never softly, never sweetly, never alone. 

He had expected this all along— so why did it still hurt? 

“It’s okay, Mew,” Ray says, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder. It’s almost funny, in an ironic sort of way, that he’s the one comforting Mew for the fact that he does not— could never— love him. “You already saved my life once. Probably more, if we’re being honest. I couldn’t ask anything more from you.” 

Mew’s bottom lip trembles and his eyes swim in tears. “Ray,” he chokes out. “I’m so sorry.” 

He collapses in Ray’s arms and Ray welcomes the embrace, stroking a hand down his back soothingly. “It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not your fault.” 

Ray blinks back his own tears and doesn’t let them fall. This is not the time to feel sorry for himself.

That time will come, after Mew has left and his bedroom is engulfed in darkness once again. When he’s alone. 

He wiggles back beneath the blankets, swaddling himself like that might keep all the broken pieces he’s made of intact. And then he cries. Silent. Unrelenting. 

His biggest fear has just been confirmed. Ray is unlovable. 

Not even when someone deliberately tries to do it. Not even when it’s offered to him like a last-ditch effort. 

Not even when his fucking life depends on it. 

Turns out, there’s a lot that goes into planning a funeral. 

Ray’s never had to do it before— he was only a teenager when his mother drank herself to death, and he’s never been close enough to any of his extended family members to have been included in the process. 

But there are so many details to consider, and Ray wonders how mourners manage to do it while in the throes of their grief. 

There’s catering and music and monks to arrange, and the flowers— since when are flowers so expensive? At least, the nice, imported ones are. 

Maybe he should just stick to jasmine, he thinks darkly. 

He laughs at his own self-deprecating joke, but regrets it as soon as a coughing fit overtakes the small scoff his throat made. The jasmine growing in his lungs did not appreciate being trivialized, apparently. He tastes blood, and the coughing turns into dry heaving. 

His hands scramble to find the whiskey glass on the coffee table, finding it empty. 

He drinks straight from the bottle instead. 

Because, really, what difference does it make? No matter what vessel it’s served in, it’s whiskey all the same, and it’ll all be in his system by the time the night is over. 

He’s sprawled out on the floor of his music room, papers and pamphlets spread out all around him. 

For the first and last time in his life, he’s planning a funeral. 

The first time he pulled an intact flower from his throat had been a shock, but now, it’s a sight he’s grown morbidly used to. 

He’s lost weight— a lot of it. He’s pale and sickly and his ribs jut out now and it’s a wonder how he managed to descend the stairs on his way down to the music room earlier tonight. 

He doesn’t eat much anymore. There would be no purpose, even if he could keep solids down for more than a few minutes. 

Because the day is almost here. He can feel it with every blistering drag of air that shudders into his lungs, with every rattling exhale that leaves him unsatisfied. 

His skin is ghostly, pulled tight over bones he’s never seen evidence of existing inside his body before now. It hurts to move, it hurts to keep his eyes open for too long. It hurts to breathe. 

It hurts to keep himself alive. 

Soon, he won’t have to, which is an unnervingly comforting fact he hasn’t exactly grown comfortable with knowing, but one he’s accepted. Long before the first petal made its gruesome appearance. 

Perhaps it’s good he had so many years of practice— wishing for death, wondering what would be waiting for him on the other side. Perhaps it was always meant to prepare him for this. For now. 

He takes another long swig of whiskey, tipping the bottle back as its last drops spread across his lips. When did he open the bottle? Earlier tonight, right? Or was it yesterday? Last week? Last year? The days blur together and his mind can’t keep up with memory recall. 

He’s been living in this sort of liminal state of existence for what could be days, weeks, or months. He’s not quite sure. It’s hard to remember, and consuming nothing but alcohol for the entire duration of it can’t possibly be helping. 

Still, he uncorks another bottle, one he’d dragged down from a high shelf in this room, stashed behind dusty vinyl records and priceless knickknacks his father can’t bear to look at. 

The last person to have touched this bottle was his mother. 

Did the whiskey taste this sweet, when it was her lips that met the glassy rim all those years ago?

Her ghost lingers in the shadows of Ray’s mind, in the corners of this room. He can still see the chalk outline of her lifeless body ground into the carpets if he squints. 

Did dying feel this exhausting for her, too? 

He swallows again, the liquid smoke doing little to soothe the razor blades lodged in his throat. 

Maybe the next drink would have different effects. 

Or the next one. 

Or the next. 

They don’t. 

It still hurts. And Ray is still dying. 

The room itself bends into a fisheye lens, the door suddenly looking miles away from where it did before. 

His mother is here. 

He can’t see her, but she’s here, he knows it. He can feel her. Smell her. Taste her on every mouthful he gulps down. 

“Why didn’t you love me?” he asks her, but his tongue feels doughy in his mouth and he doubts she understood him clearly. 

She doesn’t answer. 

Doesn’t ask him to clarify. 

Ray is alone. 

Ray is so fucking sick and tired of being alone. 

With leaden limbs, he claws his way over to the indent in the carpet. There’s a patch here that looks tampered down, like the grass in a meadow after a doe has chosen her bed for the night. His elbows shake as he lowers himself down onto it. 

It takes a great effort and an amount of energy he does not have to arrange his limbs exactly the way he remembers they should be.  

Left arm, folded around his face. Right arm, outstretched, reaching. Hips tilting the opposite direction of his shoulders. Spine twisted and contorted. Left leg, then the right, tangled like they’d become useless halfway to the ground. 

He breathes. He tries. 

He doesn’t know if the blood he smells is his own or his mother’s. 

If the chalk outline really was still here, he would have fit perfectly inside it. 

The spitting image of his mother. 

He was told that a lot, as a kid. Mostly by well-meaning relatives who he never learned the names of. Said his eyes were just like hers. Said his smile was just as bright. 

Not even his beauty ever belonged to him. 

Just like his fate, it’s always been hers. 

He’s eye-level with the scattered pamphlets now, and he somehow remembers why he’s here. 

There’s a funeral to plan. 

There are flowers to order. Catering to manage. Monks to arrange. Music to… 

Music. 

Music. 

Music. 

Without shifting his position on the floor, he twists to reach the phone in his back pocket. There is a tremor in his hand as the screen lights up his face and sears into his retinas. 

A number he could recite in his sleep. 

The phone rings. 

Once. 

Twice. 

Three times. 

Four— 

“Hello?” 

“Sand,” he exhales, more of a wheeze than a name. 

“Ray? What’s going on? Are you okay?” 

Too many questions. Ray can’t keep up. He has his own to ask. They’re probably much more important than anything Sand wants to lecture him about. 

“Sand…” 

He pauses to cough and swallow a mouthful of blood. 

“Sand, can you sing at my funeral?” 

A silence. It’s long, and heavy, and Ray almost starts to think he’s hung up on him completely. Wouldn’t be the first time. 

“Ray… what?” 

“Can you sing at my funeral?” he repeats. His head feels heavy with the amount of concentration it takes to get the words out legibly. “I’m preparing it ahead of time so that… I won’t be a burden. At least, not in death.” 

It’s meant as a joke. A jab at himself that Sand, not too long ago, might have rolled his eyes affectionately at and chuckled under his breath. 

Sand doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t even breathe. 

“Ray…” 

And Ray can’t decipher the emotion in his tone. Can’t picture what his face looks like as he breathes his name. He wishes he were here so that he could find out. 

“I want you to sing Micro,” Ray says, softer. “I know you told me to branch out, and I really have— I listen to your playlist every day, Sand. Every day since you made it for me. It’s just… Micro’s my favorite.” 

Silence again. 

“I know I… I know I’ve treated you so bad, Sand. I know you don’t owe me anything. And… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t good to you. I wanted to, I wanted to so badly, but…” Ray loses grip on that train of thought and another one replaces it. “I’ve always wanted to thank you, you know? Every time we were together, I was so damn happy, Sand. So, so happy. Thank you for showing this pathetic burden that kind of happiness, even for a little while. And I’ll understand if you don’t want to sing at my funeral, but… I really want you to.” 

More silence, heavy and aching. 

“So… can you do it, Sand?” 

As he says it, he feels the burn of tears prickling behind his eyes, even as he feels empty. Hollowed out. 

Another beat. 

Then, Sand’s voice crackles from the phone, melodious and trembling. 

“You know I’d do anything for you, Ray.” 

Ray smiles, even as a tear numbly streaks down his face and seeps into the carpet below. 

“Thank you,” he whispers back. 

“But… but I won’t need to,” Sand says firmly, like he’s trying to convince the both of them. “You’re gonna be okay, Ray. You’ll… you’ll fight this, somehow, and you’ll live, and… and you won’t even need me to sing.” 

Ray’s smile widens. Tranquil. Serene. 

“You and I both know that’s not the truth,” he says slowly. 

Ray hears a choked whimper from the other end of the line. 

“Don’t cry, Sand,” he whispers. His weak heartbeat clenches in his chest. 

“I’m not,” Sand insists. That’s a lie, too, but Ray doesn’t call him out on it. Not anymore. 

Silence stretches on the call and Ray can hear him sniffling and hastily wiping away snot. 

His head feels heavier. 

He’s so tired. 

“Sand…” he calls out softly as his eyes flutter shut. “Do you think anyone will come to my funeral?” 

A pinched whimper. “Ray…” 

“Probably just my father, and you, if I hire you for music.” Ray’s smile is a soft surrender. “I won’t blame them for not coming. Who wants to honor the life of an asshole like me, right?” 

He almost laughs, but he doesn’t have the energy for it. 

“I would be there,” Sand states. His voice is weak and damp. “Even if you didn’t want me to play. I’d be there anyway, Ray, I—” 

Ray smiles. Sand will be there. 

“Sand,” he interrupts, and Sand halts his growing panic. “Will you sing for me?” 

“I… now?” 

“Yeah,” Ray says. “Sing me that one song from our playlist. The one with the Englishman who sings that it takes strength to be kind. What was it… The Jones?” 

“The Smiths,” Sand corrects him with a wet laugh. “I didn’t know you liked that song so much. I’ll play you their album the next time I see you, okay?” 

“Okay,” Ray agrees. There won’t be a next time. “Sing me the song, Sand… please?” 

A beat of silence. Then… 

“Okay.” 

Sand sniffs again and takes a shaky breath. 

Then, he starts. 

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head… 

Ray sinks deeper into the feeling. Sand’s voice wraps around him, stripped bare from the fanfare of instrumentals, gravelly and trembling as it fights to keep its seams intact. It breaks at times, and the vowels are distorted through the phone speaker, and still, it’s the most beautiful sound Ray has ever heard. 

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head… 

See, the sea wants to take me, the knife wants to slit me

Do you think you can help me?

Ray doesn’t think he’d have the strength to turn his head back to the phone screen to end the call even if he tried. Even if he wanted to— which he doesn’t. His body feels both heavy and weightless as galaxies bloom behind his closed eyelids. He floats along to the hum of Sand’s raspy vocals. 

And I know it’s over, still I cling

I don’t know where else I can go, over and over, and over, and over… 

Is this what dying feels like? It’s much softer than Ray thought it might be. 

I know it’s over, and it never really began 

But in my heart, it was so real…

This might not be so scary, after all. 

Ray doesn’t feel scared. Not now. Not with Sand. 

Sand’s always had that effect on him, hasn’t he? He makes things seem calmer. Softer. He makes them better. 

‘Cause tonight is just like any other night

That’s why you’re on your own tonight

With your triumphs and your charms,

While they’re in each other’s arms… 

Ray doesn’t feel scared. He just feels tired. 

The very line he’d conjured when requesting the song echoes in his mind, but it feels so far away now, just out of reach. 

It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate, it takes strength to be gentle and kind 

Over, over, over, over… 

All that’s left of him now is his mind. His conscience. And it’s so tempting to let go, to just release a thread of tension in his grip on his awareness. But he wants to keep listening, even as Sand’s voice becomes interspersed with soft sobs… 

Love is natural and real 

But not for you, my love, not tonight, my love

Love is natural and real

But not for such as you and I, my love…

Ray feels himself smile, at least he thinks he does. He can breathe. His body doesn’t hurt anymore— nothing hurts anymore. 

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head…

Sand is here, and Ray can breathe, and nothing hurts anymore. 

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head…

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head…

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head…

Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head…

“…Ray?” 

“…Ray, can you hear me?”

“…Ray, are you still there?”

“If you can hear me, please say something, anything.”

“Ray, please…” 

“Ray?”

“Ray!”

“Ray!” 

“Ray, please!”

“Please, say something! Anything! Let me know you can still hear me!” 

“Please, Ray, please, you can’t do this, not now, not yet!”

“Please, Ray, I can’t lose you. I can’t. I can’t.”

“Ray… please… don’t do this…” 

Ray can’t move. 

It’s too bright here, a fact he knows even as his eyelids are unable to open even a crack. 

He’s not inside his body anymore. He floats somewhere above it, watching, witnessing, though the details of the room are consumed by the light like an overexposed photograph and there’s not much he can actually comprehend. 

So this is what happens when you die. This is where you go. 

It’s not heaven, but at least it’s not hell. 

There’s a sound like a heartbeat coming from somewhere, slow and tinny and mechanical, and somehow Ray knows it’s not his own. His heartbeat had stopped back on the green carpet of his music room floor. It couldn’t be his own, because Ray doesn’t have a heartbeat anymore— that’s what happens when you die. 

Then, there’s a soft sniffle and a pressure against his chest. Ray’s not crying, so it couldn’t possibly be his own tears wetting through his shirt. 

The exposure is lowered by just a few degrees, and he thinks he can make out the silhouette of someone’s back, fitted in a dark t-shirt, hunched over and shoulder blades jutted out, pulling the fabric taut. 

It’s a memory he’d purposely seared into his subconscious, the sight of bony shoulders shrink-wrapped in a black t-shirt that he’s certain is printed on the other side with the squiggly white line of an Arctic Monkeys album cover. 

Sand. 

Sand is here, wherever he is— in his own memories, or maybe purgatory. He’s glad to see him here regardless. 

But, he’s crying. 

Sand wasn’t crying the last time he'd logged this memory. 

And if he strains his ears, he can make out babbling words, half-formed through painful whimpers. 

“I’m so sorry, Ray. I’m so sorry.” 

What is he apologizing about? Sand has nothing to be sorry for. He never has. It’s always been Ray who—

“I should’ve said it. I should’ve told you. But— I was— I was scared. I was a coward. I was always such a fucking coward when it came to you.” 

That’s not true, Sand. Please don’t cry. Please don’t cry for me. 

“Never in my life have I been too scared to say something out loud. Everyone says I’m too blunt, too straightforward with my thoughts. Fuck, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been punched in the face just because I said some shit out loud to someone I absolutely shouldn’t have said it to.” 

He laughs softly. Ray wants to, too. 

“But with you, it’s like— suddenly it mattered, or something. Suddenly there were stakes in someone else’s opinion of me. And I just couldn’t say it.” 

Sand sniffs and breathes a heavy, shaky sigh. 

“I wanted to. God, I wanted to. Every day. Every time I saw you. Every time you kissed me, touched me, looked at me like what I had to say mattered. Like you were really listening. Really seeing me. But then, I’d remember you already… you already had him— and I just… I just couldn’t.” 

He huffs a sad, wet laugh. This time, Ray doesn’t want to join him in it. 

“I had to keep you in whatever way I could have you.” 

If Ray could feel his heartbeat, if he still had one, he’s sure it would be pounding in his chest, in his throat, in his ears. 

“Fuck, Ray. I still can’t say it. I still want to. But I’m still scared, even now. How pathetic is that? You must hate me.” 

Never. 

Sand reaches out to brush a strand of hair from his forehead, and Ray can feel the gentle touch across his skin, but he can also see it happening from his viewpoint somewhere on the ceiling. 

“I love you, Ray.” 

Everything stills. The words are so quiet, so tentative, that Ray thought he could’ve conjured them all on his own, but Sand’s voice quivers and breaks as he says his name, and Ray wouldn’t want to hear him cry, not even in an imagined fantasy scenario where someone is confessing their feelings for him. 

“Fuck, that felt good to say it out loud. I love you. I’m so fucking in love with you, Ray, that it kills me that you think there’s nothing inside of you worth loving.” 

Holy shit. Holy shit. Ray wants to open his eyes, he wants to scream and run and throw his arms around Sand and cry until his body runs out of water. But he can’t. He’s still trapped in his own paralyzed flesh, watching, observing, but being so completely, uselessly unable to do anything. 

“And I know I’m not him—” 

Of course you’re not. I don’t want you to be. 

“—but I just… I want to be selfish. Just this once. I know it’s so, so selfish and audacious and unfair of me to ask, but—” 

I’d give you the world if you asked for it. 

“Please wake up. Please. For… for your friends, who care about you more than they’d ever tell you out loud. For your dad, who’s got too much pride to admit he’s made the same mistakes twice. Jesus, even for Yo, too— you’ve kept her in business longer than she probably deserves. But… Ray?” 

From this angle, he can’t see Sand’s teary fawn eyes, but he can feel the weight of them, looking straight into him, pinning him in place, pulling him into their orbit. 

What Sand says next comes out shaky and almost in a whisper. Raspy, cracking under the weight of emotion, and so sincere that something inside of Ray cracks, too. 

“Please wake up for me. For someone who loves you and doesn’t want to sing fucking Micro at your funeral.” 

Sand’s breath hitches and he turns his head to whimper into his own shoulder, biting down against the urge to sob loudly or openly. All Ray wants is to reach for him, to hold him, to cry with him. 

To kiss him. Just one more time. 

But he can’t. He can’t move or cry or even breathe— he can only watch it unfold, utterly helpless. 

The unshed tears turn into pressure inside Ray’s skull until he’s dizzy with it. It’s a dull, nauseating throb, and yet, something has loosened its hold inside of him. He’s so tired, even still, even as the pressure builds until he’s unable to grasp onto the remnants of this dream that still lingers in the edges of his sanity. 

He can rest, right? 

He can let go. 

The next time Ray has a tangible thought, he’s absolutely positive that he’s dead this time, if he wasn’t already. 

He’s still in the bright room, and has to blink several times to adjust to the light. 

Why is he still here? Why won’t the powers that be take pity on his tortured soul? 

His eyes adjust enough to make out the figure of a woman. He’s laying on a bed, and she’s sitting at the end of it, silken robe clinging to her frail frame and ringlet curls mussed and wiry. She’s not looking at him; she’s slumped over and staring at the direction the floor would be, if there was one. 

She smells like vintage Chanel eau de parfum, and Virginia Slims, and a toppled glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. 

“Mom,” he croaks, and the sound of his own voice comes from far away, like it’s been carried here by the wind. 

Still, she turns, slowly. 

Her eyes are dull and yellowed, and flakes of mascara have gathered in the hollows of her eye sockets like tiny, darkened snow drifts. Her cracked lips stretch into a slow smile, lipstick bleeding around the edges, though there’s no real emotion there. Like the expression itself was conjured by muscle memory alone. 

“Ray, my boy,” she sighs, the consonants too heavy and the vowels stretched long and thin. Slurred together in the only way he can remember her ever speaking to him. 

“Mom, what are you doing here?” he asks. “Am I dead?” 

She laughs, just once, a sound that’s more ‘silly, stupid boy’ than amusement. 

“Not yet,” she replies, foregoing the first question altogether. “But you will be. Soon.” 

“Then why are you here?” 

He blinks, and suddenly she’s much closer, leaning toward him with an outstretched hand. Her shaking hand combs gently through his hair, something so deeply buried in his childhood subconscious that he’d forgotten it had ever happened at all. 

“You tell me. You’re the one that brought me here,” she says, as if it’s an explanation. It sounds more like an accusation. 

It’s silent for a moment, and Ray’s head is swimming with so many thoughts and questions that he’s not sure where to begin. 

“Mom,” he says. “Did you ever love me?” 

The fingers in his hair go still, and for one, gut-wrenching moment, Ray regrets saying anything at all, afraid he’s ruined it again, afraid he’s asked for too much. 

Then, the touch returns and his nerves settle. 

“No,” she replies simply, and Ray’s stomach drops the rest of the way to that nonexistent floor. “I thought I would, as soon as I saw the ultrasound pictures. Then, I thought it would be as soon as I held you in my arms, saw your face for the first time. Then, it was as soon as the postpartum hormones passed, as soon as you could walk and talk, as soon as you could fend for yourself. But it simply never came.” 

Her eyes glaze into something not sad, but distant. 

“I wanted to, Ray. Everyone kept telling me it would happen soon. Soon, soon, soon. But I was never meant to be anyone’s mother. That instinct they say is inside of every woman— I never had it.”

She laughs. It’s dry, but not unkind. 

“But don’t take it too personally, kid. It wasn’t just you. In fact, I’m not sure I ever really loved anything in my life. I started in showbiz young because that’s what I was told to do. I married your father because that’s what I thought I should want. And then I had you, because that’s what was expected of me. Everything in my life just sort of happened to me, like I was a bystander in it.” 

Ray can’t really wrap his head around it. It makes sense, with the information he’s been given through both his own experiences and others’ testimonies, but it doesn’t explain why either of them are here now, having this conversation. 

“So I was a mistake,” Ray concludes. 

His mother smiles again, and that same distance has returned to her eyes. 

“You certainly started that way,” she says, her words doing nothing to ease the dull ache sitting deep in Ray’s chest. “But you didn’t stay that way.”

He feels his eyebrows furrow. “What does that mean?” 

She chuckles and it rattles in her chest. “We all have choices, Ray,” she says instead of answering him directly. “I chose not to take mine. I chose to let life pass me by. It’s easier that way. But you already know that, don’t you? You’ve always resembled your mother so much.” 

The statement makes Ray’s skin crawl. Not because she’s being dishonest or cruel— but because she’s right. 

“But there’s one thing that makes us different,” she drawls, smile widening, leaning in so close to him that he can smell the oaky heat of whiskey on her breath, somewhere beneath the sour wine that stains her teeth. “That love that I never seemed to feel? You’re not like me. You have it.” 

Ray’s surprise must show on his face, because his mother laughs again. “Your choice is whether or not you decide to feel it. You’re here today because of it, aren’t you?” 

He nods, fingers tracing over his own chest where jasmine blooms within his lungs, hesitant and skeptical of where she’s going with this. 

“This love you feel, it’s killing you from the inside out. Almost makes me glad I never had it to begin with,” she scoffs. 

“Me loving him isn’t the problem. It’s that he doesn’t love me back,” he corrects her. 

“Oh, Ray,” she sighs, shaking her head. “You fool. Such a beautiful fool, you are. Just because I didn’t love you doesn’t mean nobody else does.” 

“Mew doesn’t love me,” he states, feeling his temperature rise and his patience wearing thin for the way she cryptically dances around the point. 

To this, she tilts her head and laughs. It’s a loud, scratchy sound, one he doesn’t remember ever hearing in his youth while she was alive. 

“Of course he doesn’t,” she says, like he’s stupid, and Ray is so frustrated he could cry. What, she’s here just to rub it in his face that neither she nor Mew ever loved him? Never could— not even after deliberately trying to? 

“I never said anything about Mew, my boy.” 

Ray’s heart slams to a stop. “What do you mean by that.” It’s a question, but sounds more like a statement. A warning. 

“Open your eyes. Look around you. You’re so blind, Ray. Perhaps this is my fault, that now you seek love in all the places it’ll never be found. Perhaps you just like the chase. Perhaps I’m the one that taught you that love is supposed to hurt you in this way.” 

And Ray is crying now, a fact he’s only made aware of by the tear that drips from his chin onto the shirt he’s wearing. It’s not his own— he’d never be caught dead in this pastel cotton-blend nightmare, which means someone had to have dressed him in it. 

He stares at the wet droplet soaked into the stranger’s clothes he’s wearing, racking his brain for where he’s seen this particular getup before. Suddenly, it comes to him. 

He’s wearing a hospital gown. 

His mother seems to be able to read his mind, or maybe she just knows because her very existence here has been created by it. She smiles knowingly and leans forward. The thin mattress of what Ray now conceptualizes as a hospital bed creaks under her shifting weight. 

“You have a choice to make, here and now. Do you really want to waste away like this, entirely alone and unloved because you were too much of a fool to see it? Or do you want to be something more than my son— creating a life for yourself less miserable than the one you inherited?” 

He looks back up at her, and the vision of her is already hazy around the edges. Her silhouette pulses, fading in and out, until all that remains of her is a watermark on the veil of reality. 

He’s still unsure what all of this means. Why she’s here, how much of this has been real, whether Sand’s words were true, or merely another hallucination the desperate depths of his mind had betrayed him with. But he knows, somewhere deep down, that she’s right. She wouldn’t feed him empty words simply to placate him— otherwise she would’ve been able to muster telling him that she loved him, even if it was untrue. 

He says nothing, but still, his mother replies, “Good choice,” before she fades from his view completely. 

With her, the edges of his vision disappear too, closing in on him, enveloping him in blackness. 

Ray is not afraid to die. 

But he has the sneaking suspicion this isn’t where he is supposed to end. 

Ray doesn’t awaken all at once. 

It’s a slow trickle back into his body, awareness bleeding back into his limbs. His eyes are the last to move. 

When he blinks them open, the room is dim, curtains drawn, and it’s identical to the one he’d dreamt about. He only knows this time isn’t a dream by the way his entire body aches with injury and dormancy. 

Slowly, he pushes himself up into a somewhat seated position and takes inventory of his surroundings. There’s the creaky bed below him, and the slow-beeping monitors all around him, and when he shifts he becomes aware of the IV drip trailing from the back of his hand. The walls are bare, sterile and clinical, and in the corner, there are two chairs. 

One is empty. One is not. 

Curled up in what looks to be the most uncomfortable chair ever manufactured, there is a dark figure, knees folded against its chest and shrouded under the warmth of a bulky leather jacket draped across it as far as it’ll reach. The toes of a pair of scuffed Converse peek out from below its hem, over the edge of the seat. 

“Sand?” he croaks, because although he’d recognize those sneakers anywhere, has memorized the sound of them squeaking against linoleum because they’re perpetually sticky from the bar’s floor— he just needs to be sure. 

An unruly mop of chestnut hair pokes out from where it had been tucked into the collar of the jacket as the makeshift blanket is tossed to the side unceremoniously. It hits the ground at the same time as those sticky sneakers do, and in a few quick strides, Sand is at Ray’s bedside. 

“You’re awake,” Sand says, amazed, as he reaches over to press the call button mounted to the side of the bed a few times. “Holy shit, Ray, you scared the fuck out of me.” 

He’s still too weak to laugh, but not so much that he’s unable to grin up at Sand. 

“We absolutely have to stop meeting this way,” he says, which earns him a disbelieving chuckle. 

“It’s a deal. I’ll stop when you do.” 

And then, Sand is leaning down to cradle Ray’s body in a very delicate hug, one arm looped behind his head and the other taking great care not to jostle any of the tubes or monitors leading from his limbs. It’s gentle, but Sand still manages to hold him tightly. Ray hugs him back. 

“Don’t go pulling this shit ever again,” Sand murmurs into the crown of his hair, and Ray catches a whiff of stale cigarette smoke and the musk of sweat that’s unique to Sand. It’s so familiar he could cry, and the threat prickles at his nose. 

When Sand pulls away, Ray can see that his eyes have taken on a similar shine, one that neither of them acknowledges. He also notices that Sand’s wearing the faded Arctic Monkeys t-shirt he’d conjured in his dream. 

Ray doesn’t mention it, or the dream, or the fact that somehow he’d ended up in a hospital and doesn’t remember the details that led him here. Instead, he wrinkles his nose and announces: “You stink.” 

Sand’s eyebrows shoot upward, and there’s a split second where Ray thinks he’s offended him, before a familiar dimple pokes into Sand’s cheek and he’s laughing. 

“Oh, do I?” he says. “Can’t imagine why. I’ve only been here three days.” 

“Three days?” Ray echoes. “How long have I been out?”

Sand gives him a funny look. “Three days.” 

Now it’s Ray’s turn to look surprised. “And you’ve been here the whole time? You didn’t even, like, go home to shower?”

Sand shrugs nonchalantly, eyes trailing somewhere along the wall, but his cheeks grow a little pink. “Yeah.” 

“And you’ve been sleeping on that torture device of a chair instead of an actual bed?” 

“Sure have.” Sand turns to fiddle with the objects on the bedside table. 

“And— Wait, Sand, have you been skipping work? Oh my god, I will absolutely pay you for your time. Or, no, better yet, I’ll get my dad to do it himself— he’ll pay you triple what you would’ve earned, I promise.” 

Sand sighs. “Ray, it’s not a big deal,” he says, handing Ray a water bottle with the cap already cracked open. 

“It’s absolutely a big deal, are you joking? You never miss work, and you could’ve spent this time earning money, but instead you’ve been trapped here doing fuck-else. It’s only right that you're compensated for your time.” 

“Drink that,” Sand says, pointing to the water in Ray’s hand. Ray does, and it’s only while he gulps it down that Sand actually acknowledges anything of what he just said. 

“I’m not taking your money, Ray.” It’s said with a sort of finality, a flatness that always seeps out whenever Ray offers him what Sand considers to be pity money. It lets him know that this is a line that Ray has no hope attempting to cross. 

“Then… then why?” Ray asks quietly, capping the bottle. 

Sand sighs again, long-suffering, but patient. Always so patient. 

“Because I wanted to be here when you woke up.” 

Ray meets his eyes then, and the sincerity in them floors him for a moment. He feels his own cheeks flush at the simplicity of the sentiment, but the weight it holds nonetheless. 

“I… Thank you,” Ray settles on, quiet and honest. He’s not sure he’s ever met anyone else in his life willing to do even half the things Sand does for him. 

Sand just nods marginally. 

There’s a small commotion at the door, and they’re simultaneously snapped out of whatever heavy moment they’d pulled themselves into to watch a doctor and a nurse walk into the room. 

“Good morning, Mr. Pakorn,” the doctor says, pulling on a pair of gloves. They snap against his wrists. “You’re certainly looking much more lively than when I saw you yesterday.” 

“Truly magical, the powers of a good beauty sleep,” Ray replies. The man chuckles. 

“I don’t know about magic, but it’s great to see you’re feeling a little better.”

He seems to only just notice Sand’s there, too, giving a once-over to his lanky, disheveled appearance. He speaks to Ray, but he’s still looking at the corner where Sand hovers helplessly. 

“Would you prefer a bit of privacy for this examination, Mr. Pakorn? We can ask your friend to step out of the room.”

And it’s like Sand is suddenly made aware of his own appearance, the way he mindlessly smooths a palm down the front of his wrinkled t-shirt. It makes something sharp twist in Ray’s gut. 

“No,” he’s quick to say. “He’s… He can stay.” 

Sand’s eyes flicker up to him. “No, I can go,” he says. “I promised the others I’d call once you’d woken up anyway.” 

He’s already slinging his messenger bag across his chest, and Ray takes note of the way the zipper had broken at some point, so it gapes open against his hip. He ought to buy Sand a new, better one. If he wouldn’t accept cash, he’d surely accept a practical gift. Deciding against holding him hostage here for any longer, Ray nods. 

“If you’re leaving, you should go home, get some rest. Take a shower,” Ray tells him. “Sleep a few hours horizontally.” 

Sand hesitates a moment longer, but nods. 

“I’ll be back later,” he says. 

“Thank you,” Ray replies. Watches him turn and duck into the busy hallway. 

“Right, then,” the doctor says. “We’re just going to check a few of your vitals, test some reflexes, make sure everything’s still in working order…” 

It’s not long after the doctor leaves with his clean bill of health— well, besides the whole flowers-slowly-cutting-off-his-life-force thing— that Ray finds himself drifting back to sleep in the dim, quiet room. This time, it’s a much less permanent-feeling kind of rest. It’s peaceful. It’s a see you later kind of sleep, rather than one of goodbye. 

He awakens to what sounds like a small audience shuffling around the room, giving sharp shushes and hissed “you’ll wake him up”s. Too late. 

Ray opens his eyes and takes in his present company. There’s Cheum and April, and Mew stands closest to the bedside. Even Top is here, hovering somewhere behind them all, one eyebrow raised like he’s half expecting Ray to start spitting venom like some exotic lizard. 

“You’re awake!” Mew chirps in a strange echo of how he’d awoken to Sand earlier. 

“Did Sand leave?” Ray asks, blinking the nap away. “Did he say if he was coming back?” 

“He was here, but Mew sent him straight back home to rest,” Cheum pipes up. “He looked like hell. Like, truly. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him care about anything, much less look as stressed out as he did.” 

“The poor thing,” April agrees. 

Ray nods distantly. Good. Sand needed the rest, based on the last time he’d seen him. Selfishly, he’s a little disappointed he’s not here now, though. 

Before he can respond, Mew looks between the three of them a little frantically. 

“Can you guys give us a moment?” he asks them. “I need to talk to Ray alone.” 

Cheum and April nod immediately, heading out the door, but Top lingers silently just a moment longer. He looks between Mew and Ray skeptically. 

“Top,” Mew says evenly, a little scoldingly. It sends a smug sense of pride through Ray when he sees Top’s back instinctually straighten at the tone. 

Though he clearly doesn’t want to, Top nods, too, and follows the girls out of the room, swinging the door shut behind them. 

Mew watches them go before he eagerly turns back to Ray. 

“What happened?” he asks. “Sand said something about you calling him, and passing out, and then he had to call you an ambulance. Why didn’t you call me if you were in trouble?” 

Ray doesn’t really have a good answer for that. He sighs heavily, and whatever painkillers they have him hooked up to must be top of the line, because the breath doesn’t even hurt on its way out. It almost feels like the roots inside of him have loosened their hold. He’s grateful for the momentary reprieve. 

“I don’t remember much,” Ray admits. “I just know I was in my music room, and I was… doing some research… and I was drinking and felt the need to call him. I think he sang to me over the phone at some point.” 

“Research?” Mew asks with scrunched brows. “What kind of research?” 

“Umm…” Ray clears his throat, and miraculously doesn’t taste blood. “Funeral research. For, you know…” 

Mew’s face falls, and his wide, owlish eyes fill with tears. 

“Oh, Ray,” he whimpers, throwing his arms around Ray’s frail body. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you’ve had to do that alone.” 

“It’s nothing,” Ray says in a voice he hopes sounds lighthearted and casual. “It’s gotta happen sometime, you know, and I just figured it was better to get it over with now. Before anyone else has to deal with it.” 

Mew sniffles, and when he looks up at Ray, his lip is quivering. 

“Let me try. Let me try again,” he insists, scooping up Ray’s hands in his palms. “Let me try one more time. Maybe it’ll be… maybe I can help this time.” 

Ray winces and has to look away. 

“Mew, you know that’s not how it works.” 

“Let me try anyway. I’ll do it. Just let me try. Please?” 

And Mew is begging him, with round, tear-filled eyes, and Ray knows, has known for years, that there’s not much he’d ever say no to, when it comes to Mew. 

“Okay,” he says, even as the word sounds wrong in his ears, feels wrong in his mouth. He braces himself for the pain of knowing it won’t work. 

Mew nods emphatically, and squares himself up like he’s preparing for a high dive from a cliff. He takes a deep breath. 

“I love you,” he announces, and Ray has to close his eyes. He knows it’s not real, and the words don’t sound like relief, they just sound like years of his own fruitless desperation being reflected back onto him. “I love you. I love you, Ray. I love you, I love you, I love you.” 

He’s full-on sobbing by the last “I love you,” and he has to take a hiccupping gasp to catch his breath. 

It hurts Ray, to know that this is everything he’s ever wanted to hear from him, and somehow it’s nothing like he’d imagined. It doesn’t vibrate against his eardrums like he thought it would, and it doesn’t light him up from the inside like he’d always dreamed. Instead it sits, heavy and wrong, in the air between them. 

“Did it… did it work?” Mew asks after a beat, sniffling. 

Ray finally meets his eyes. He’s not sure how to tell, or how it’s supposed to feel, but he knows that whatever state he currently occupies is devastatingly unchanged from before he heard Mew say it. Slowly, he shakes his head. 

A pained whimper gets trapped at the back of Mew’s throat and he squeezes Ray’s hands tighter. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Ray squeezes him back. 

“It’s okay, Mew,” he says softly. “You can’t control how you feel. It’s okay. I’m okay.” 

“But you… But I…” 

“Mew,” Ray says firmly. “I’m okay.” 

He looks at him meaningfully, and Mew searches his eyes in turn. And as Ray stares, all Ray can see is exactly who’s in front of him— his best friend, the boy who’d saved his life all those years ago. He knows Mew doesn’t love him, not like that, anyway, and somehow, he’s strangely… okay with that. He knows Mew loves him in a different way, and he believes him when he says he’d do anything for Ray. And for the first time since the day they met, that feels like enough. 

Mew eventually beckons the others back in the room to say their goodbyes. He hugs both the girls, and Cheum catches him up with an abridged version of all the gossip he’s missed since he’s been out. Mew gives him the biggest, most tearful hug, and makes him promise to call him if he needs absolutely anything. Even Top nods a goodbye, and Ray can almost swear he hears a muttered “get well soon” when Mew elbows him in the side. 

And then it’s quiet again, and Ray’s alone, but he doesn’t feel quite so alone as he had in the weeks leading up to his hospital stay. He’s loved by his friends, and he’s grateful for them, and he could never ask Mew to give him anything more than he already has. 

He thinks about his “I love you,” and how deeply, unnervingly wrong it felt to hear. It didn’t feel like relief, or like it cured anything inside of him, it just felt like a jigsaw piece shoved into a space where it wasn’t meant to fit. 

Mew’s “I love you” felt nothing like Dream Sand’s “I love you,” which is perhaps the most bizarre part of it all. Mew’s “I love you” was the one he’d always dreamed to hear. He’d waited for it for years, and if he told the younger, love-stricken version of himself that he’d be almost disappointed to hear it now, years later, younger Ray would’ve scoffed and laughed in his face. 

It’s just… Dream Sand’s “I love you” felt so real. So vulnerable. So unlike anything he’d ever felt before. It reached into the deepest parts of him, and he sank into it like a bed of feathers. It wrapped around him, drowned him in warmth, clutched its hand around Ray’s very soul and tugged. It was exactly how he’d have thought Mew’s would’ve sounded. 

Except, it was better. Because it was real. At least, it felt that way. 

Ray drifts back to sleep with an ache in his heart, but not the one shaped like an unrequited love for his best friend he’d grown so accustomed to living with over the years. This time, he aches to hear Sand’s voice say those words again, and he thinks, given the opportunity, he might have even said them back. 

The next day, after an unappealing breakfast of bland oatmeal and an even more unappealing lunch of whatever food-shaped paste the nurse had brought to him, he tries to keep his attitude under control as the doctor examines his vitals, the same way he does every day. 

He allows the cold stethoscope to prod his bare chest, he follows the tip of the pen with just his eyes, he says “aah” when prompted. The model patient, really, save for the occasional eye-roll he truly couldn’t suppress. 

The doctor is sliding the stethoscope along his back, listening to his lungs as he takes deep breaths, when the man pauses, furrowing his brows and cocking his head to the side. 

“Do that again— another deep breath for me.” 

Ray complies, and the doctor looks even more confused. 

He has Ray repeat the action several more times, pressing the cold disc along various points of his skin, until Ray feels lightheaded from all the deep breathing. He thinks he’s about to pass out when the doctor finally removes the instrument and sits back on his stool, giving Ray a studious and almost unreadable expression. 

“You can be released by the end of the day, so long as you follow the at-home care plan we’ve set up for you. Lots of fluids, three square meals a day, and under no circumstances are you to touch even a drop of alcohol.” 

“...Okay?” Ray says. That sounds like good news, and it doesn’t match the doctor’s muddled expression. 

“Your lung capacity has significantly improved since the beginning of your stay. Have you had any conversations with anyone recently that I should know about? Any confessions from a previously unrequited love?” 

Ray’s heart drops. Oh. That is not news he had been expecting to hear in this lifetime. 

“I, uh… I don’t think so?” Ray stammers. “I mean, not from anyone who loves me, like, romantically.” 

The doctor’s eyes narrow. “You’re sure?” he asks, skeptical. “We don’t typically see this kind of improvement in patients with late-stage hanahaki, like you were exhibiting at the beginning of your stay.” 

Ray swallows thickly. “Um… No.” His voice comes out small and weak. “I, uh… thought it was my friend, and he tried, but… but no. He doesn’t feel that way about me.” 

The doctor strokes his chin thoughtfully, like Ray is a riddle he’s trying to figure out. 

“And are you sure you feel ‘that way’ about this friend of yours?” 

Ray’s mouth gapes open, and he feels his face heat. “I… What? I mean, of course I do. I always have. It’s always been Mew. I don’t… There’s no one else it could be.” 

“No one else?” the doctor prods. “Love is a very complicated emotion, and it can be one that is extremely hard to identify for some people. For some, love feels like butterflies and nervousness, all that happily-ever-after stuff we see on TV. For others, it can feel like a burning-hot kind of urgency, almost close to anxiety. Others have described it as just a deep sense of comfort, a sort of peacefulness where you feel unafraid to be your true, transparent self. It can be especially difficult to recognize for those who have experienced trauma in early childhood. Now, I don’t know if any of that resonates with you, but could it be possible that you have misidentified your feelings towards this ‘Mew’ friend of yours?”

The tinny sound of the heartbeat monitor behind him quickens. Ray feels his mouth go dry. 

“I… I…” He lets out a shaky breath. “Maybe?” 

“Then I’d encourage you to do some introspection about this,” the man says. “You’ve got all the time in the world for it now. In my professional opinion, the improvements you’ve exhibited in such a short time frame can only suggest one resolution.” 

Ray just stares. 

“Congratulations, Mr. Pakorn. It appears you’ve gotten your cure.” 

The words crash over him like the first great wave of a tsunami, dropping the air pressure in the room before sending him spiraling out to sea. It feels too big, too deep, and his breath hitches like he’s actually drowning. 

“My… My cure?” Ray asks. 

Something in the doctor’s eye glimmers, and it’s the closest Ray’s seen to him actually cracking a smile in all the days he’s been lying in this hospital bed. 

“Your cure,” he confirms. “Your long-awaited ‘I love you.’ Your requited unrequited love.” 

“Oh,” is all Ray can reply with. 

“Think about it,” the doctor says as he stands, flipping through papers on his clipboard. “I’ll get your release papers sorted, and you should be good to go by this evening. You’ll need to arrange a ride home, though— no operating heavy machinery while taking the prescription you’re on.” 

Ray’s head is spinning, and he thinks he hears something like a goodbye from the doctor, but he couldn’t be sure. The outside world has seemed to have melted away, and he’s trapped in a feedback loop of his own thoughts, racing back and forth through his mind faster than he can grab ahold of them. 

You’ve gotten your cure. 

I love you, Ray. I love you, I love you, I love you. 

Did it work? 

You can’t control how you feel. It’s okay. I’m okay. 

I wanted to be here when you woke up. 

And then, more distantly: 

I’m so fucking in love with you, Ray, that it kills me that you think there’s nothing inside of you worth loving.

Something shifts, and maybe it’s the axis on which the entire world is tilted upon. There are a million things running through Ray’s mind, appearing in blinding flashes of light: It’s the knowing, coy almost-smile of the doctor. It’s the image of his mother that told him “Just because I didn’t love you doesn’t mean nobody else does,” in that bittersweet voice that should’ve reminded him of a sense of belonging he never got to have. It’s Mew’s trembling voice, desperately repeating “I love you,” and it’s the deep feeling of wrongness it elicited inside of him instead of any kind of relief. It’s a dark, faded Arctic Monkeys t-shirt and the closest thing to the smell of home he’s ever experienced. 

Clarity hits him like a flash flood. He knows what he has to do. 

First, he has to get out of this goddamn hospital. 

Then, he has to find Sand. 

Ray practically topples out the door of the cab that’s pulled up to the curb of his familiar haunt in his frantic eagerness to get inside. He manages to remember to throw a few bills from his wallet into the backseat for the driver, likely far exceeding his owed fare, but Ray doesn’t care— that’s something his father can yell at him for later, after he returns from whatever business trip he’s on when he remembers he has a son to look after. 

He elbows his way to the front doors, ignoring the protests of the line he’s just cut through as he throws them open and runs inside. It’s a busy night— it always is, but it’s Friday, if his calculations are correct, which means that Sand’s on the mic playing a set, and the place is packed with warm bodies and whatever club pop music Yo’s put on in the meantime. 

As he tries to see over the crowd, hoping to catch the eye of a familiar lanky singer, Ray finds himself wishing he was taller, or at least, that he was wearing his heeled boots. It’s useless, though— he can hardly see over the ocean of bobbing heads in the darkened bar, and if Sand is here, there’s no way Ray would be able to catch him before his set. 

So, instead, he pushes his way to the bar, where on the far side, Plug is pouring a row of some sort of violently magenta shots, and closer to Ray’s side, Yo is patiently holding out the bar’s card reader for some drunk girl to attempt to decode the apparently extremely complicated process of tap-to-pay. 

“Yo!” he shouts over the music, and when Yo nearly jumps out of her skin to look at him, she shifts in such a way that the chime of an accepted payment rings out from the device in her hand. She thanks the girl and turns fully to talk to him. 

“I don’t know if you noticed, sweetheart, but I’ve got a line,” she calls out to him. “Get in the back if you want to be served. No special treatment, even for my prettiest customers.” 

“I’m not here to drink!” he calls back. She raises her eyebrows at this, surprised. “Have you seen Sand?” 

“Should be around back having a smoke. He’s on in—” she checks her watch, “—fifteen minutes.” 

“You’re the best, Yo!” 

She blows him a kiss as he turns on his heel, shoving his way back through the crowd. Disgruntled protests fall on deaf ears, and he’s pretty sure he’s knocked someone’s drink down the front of their shirt. It doesn’t matter— he’ll buy them a new drink, a new shirt, even. Hell, Ray will buy them a new fucking car if he can just get to Sand. 

The music is too loud, and it vibrates his whole chest, and the flashing rainbow lights are disorienting. He almost gets turned around completely more than a couple times before finally, finally, he reaches the doors to the back entrance, which he throws open and sucks in a deep breath of night air. 

Clouds of burning tobacco and something much more fun fill his nose, and he scans the alleyway for a familiar face. There is a cluster of girls lingering near the door, caught up in some loud, drunken inside joke, and farther down is a couple getting way too handsy to be considered publicly decent. 

Then, he sees him. 

A gangly silhouette leaning against the bricks, one impossibly long leg propped up on the wall, with one hand buried in the pocket of a leather jacket while the other brings a cigarette pinched between slender fingers to a pair of full, rosy lips. 

Sand doesn’t see Ray at first, which he uses to his advantage. Silently as he can, Ray sneaks up until he’s standing about a meter in front of him, and then he speaks, heart racing, lips curling into a smile he can’t keep off his face. 

“Got a light?” he asks. 

That’s when Sand looks up. His eyes go wide and his lips part, and Ray wonders if his heartbeat has quickened to the rapid pace of Ray’s own. The cigarette falls from his fingers completely, though the digits still hover in midair like it’s still resting there and not burning a mark into the concrete below. 

Sand straightens, and Ray waits for him to speak, to say anything, but then he does something that would have been last on Ray’s list of possible outcomes. 

He takes a slow step to the side, and then he runs. 

“Sand!” Ray calls after him, panic flooding his veins. “Sand, wait!” 

But Sand’s not waiting. He’s sprinting into the night, curtain call be damned, and Ray groans. 

Ray can’t remember the last time he’s truly ran, to or from anything, for any reason. But he does. He follows Sand into the alleyways without question. 

He’s quickly reminded of exactly why he doesn’t run. God, this sucks so bad, has it always sucked this bad? He can just barely keep up with Sand’s long strides, tracking every twist and turn he takes through the back alleys of the city, dodging dumpsters and a stray cat feasting on a pile of discarded fries. 

“Sand!” he yells, strained and completely winded. “Fuck— Sand, just wait! I just need to talk to you!” 

He takes the next left, where he last saw Sand duck into, and his footsteps slow as he realizes it’s a dead end. 

“Holy shit,” he heaves, bracing his hands on his knees, sucking in deep breaths and trying to get rid of the stitch in his side on sheer willpower alone. 

Across the way, Sand is also leaning against the brick wall, chest rising and falling, bangs sticking to his forehead in a sweaty mess. He’s wearing that stupid leather jacket to look cool, and when he’d gotten ready for his shift earlier, he was undoubtedly dressing for a night of sending cheeky smirks to a crowd of drunk, swooning bar patrons, not being chased through the dingy alleys of Bangkok by an ex-fling. 

The image of Sand earlier, with still-damp hair, standing in front of the full-length mirror in his bedroom, holding up jackets to his chest in an effort to see which looked coolest with his dark grey The Clash t-shirt, not knowing he was actually choosing a workout outfit, is so ridiculous, Ray starts laughing. He would’ve doubled over, had he not already been folded in half due to exhaustion. 

Ray laughs and laughs, already breathless from the sprint, but doubly breathless from the tears brought to his eyes, and this is all so ridiculous, he doesn’t even know why Sand had taken off like that in the first place, and he laughs some more. 

“What the hell is so funny?” he hears from the other end of the alley. Ray finally catches his breath enough to look up at Sand, who has his hands on his hips, and in the dim, flickering light of a streetlamp, he can tell Sand’s fighting off a little smile of his own. It sends Ray into another fit of giggles as he walks toward Sand. 

He’s still panting a bit when he gets to him, and he stops so close that Sand has to tilt his chin down to look at him. 

“Why’d you run?” Ray asks. 

Sand scowls, looking away. “Why’d you follow?” 

Ray tuts his tongue in disapproval. “That’s not an answer,” he pouts. 

“Maybe I just didn’t wanna talk to you,” Sand says with a huff and an eye-roll. “Seemed like you were being taken care of just fine.” 

To that, Ray furrows his eyebrows in confusion. 

“What do you mean by that?” 

Sand shifts his weight, looking uncomfortable and uncharacteristically vulnerable. 

“At the hospital,” he says, like it’s an explanation. When Ray still looks equally lost, he presses onward. “Mew sent me away. Said he had it all taken care of. Said Ray needed his best friend there, that he was the best one for the job.” 

“He said that?” Ray asks, scrunching his nose. Sand just shrugs with a put-on nonchalance. 

“Well, he was wrong,” Ray continues, surprising himself with how easy it is to mean it. “I didn’t want him there. I wanted you.” 

There’s a complex parade of emotions that dance across Sand’s face to that. It starts as a bit of surprise, then shifts to something soft that Ray can’t quite identify— but then his eyes go vacant, and his face becomes guarded again, resigned. 

“Right,” Sand says, to the bricks beside them. “Sorry about that.” 

“Don’t be sorry,” Ray is quick to reply. “I didn’t run a whole half-marathon after you to get an apology.” 

Sand narrows his eyes, and they drift back to Ray’s. 

“So why did you run after me?” 

There’s a pause where Ray is trying to figure out the answer to that question, when suddenly, Sand’s eyes go wide with shock. 

“Wait.” 

His hands reach out to grab Ray by the shoulders, and he’s examining him up and down, like he’s looking for some sort of gash or wound or blood seeping from his clothes.

“You ran after me.” 

Sand says it like a statement this time. Ray nods, slowly. Yeah, he knows. He was there too. 

“Ray, you ran.” 

Ray just stares, watching the pieces fall into place in Sand’s head like a rapidly flickering slide projector. 

“And you’re… There’s no…” 

“Flowers?” Ray finishes for him, and Sand pales upon hearing his thought confirmed aloud. 

“But this… You… This doesn’t make any sense,” he says, brows furrowing and shaking his head. “I thought… Did Mew…?” 

Ray laughs softly, just a quiet exhale of breath. “No. Not Mew.” 

Sand’s eyes snap back up to his at that. His eyes are darting across Ray’s face, searching, looking heartbreakingly hopeful, but full of doubt nonetheless. Like he can’t bring himself to believe it. 

“Sand…” Ray begins, careful, coaxing, like he’s afraid to spook an animal. 

“Do you love me?” 

Sand freezes, all at once, body going rigid and panic settling into his pupils. 

“Ray,” he shudders. His voice is quiet, pleading. “Why aren’t there flowers?” 

Ray takes a step closer. 

“You love me, Sand. Say it.” 

The panic turns to active fear, a wash of dread. Sand’s lips part and they wordlessly work around sounds that won’t come. In the moonlight, beneath the glow of the buzzing streetlamp, his eyes take on a brilliant shine, the sparkle of limning tears brimming at his eyelids. 

“Say it,” Ray says again, gentler, and it tears a strangled sound from Sand’s throat. His eyes bounce across Ray’s face, like he’s still expecting this to all be some sick joke, and when a thick teardrop finally trails down his cheekbone, Ray is almost tempted to abandon the line of questioning, wipe it away, murmur that it’s okay and they can just forget it all and go back to normal. But he knows there’s no going back from this, not now, not anymore, and he needs to hear it out loud. He needs to know it was real. 

Sand swallows thickly. “Ray, I…” 

He winces and has to tear his eyes away for a moment, squeezing them shut like he’s trying to block out the reality, the weight of this moment, the intensity in the words they both know he’s about to say. 

“I love you.” 

And it’s said so quietly, so brokenly, that Ray almost doesn’t catch it at all— but he feels those words, wrapping around him, filling his senses, confirming that it wasn’t a dream, that this is real, that Sand is here, and he loves him, and nothing else could ever matter the way that this matters right now. 

It’s like a gasp of air, a sigh of relief. It settles warm and deep into his bones, dislodging something that had been so deeply rooted in his viscera, and he sighs a breath that releases the last remaining flora to be carried off by the breeze. 

By the time Ray finally regains some sense of bodily awareness, he realizes Sand is still watching him, still so unsure and nervous, steeling himself for disappointment, humiliation, the way he’s always had to when it comes to Ray. 

And Ray can’t possibly bear to be the one to make him feel that way— not anymore. 

So he grins, and he lunges forward, throwing his arms around Sand’s bony shoulders, pulling him down to his eye level, and he kisses him. 

It's a collision more than an embrace at first. Ray’s still smiling with his teeth and Sand’s nose is still soggy with tears, but they kiss the way they always have— with their whole bodies, without hesitation. They melt into each other, and Ray wonders if that’s the reason Sand’s kisses have always felt different, felt like more than anyone else’s ever had. They’re given with love, and they’re received with love, and somehow that has seeped into every interaction they’ve ever had, far before Ray had the words to describe this feeling of seamless authenticity that blooms in his chest whenever he’s wrapped in Sand’s arms. 

They kiss, and it just feels so correct, like it’s exactly where Ray was always meant to end up. And Ray realizes he’s crying, too, but still, their lips slide together, their arms clutch at clothes like they’re afraid to let go. They kiss until they can’t anymore, forced to break away for gasping, heaving, tear-filled breaths through matching pairs of bruised, parted lips. 

Ray looks at Sand, really looks at him, at the blush on his cheeks, at his full upper lip, at the little moles on his chin and cheek and the one below his eye. He takes in the swell of his cheekbones, the fluttering lashes that frame wide, sparkly doe eyes, at the hair that’s been mussed from the wind and Ray’s fingers carding through it. 

He’s spectacularly beautiful, even in the jaundiced light of a grimy, dead-end alleyway. Breathtakingly so. Ray almost can’t believe he’s loved by such a creature. He wouldn’t, had his very existence not been living proof of it, in the lungs that can finally breathe, in the petals that no longer fall from his lips. 

“I love you too,” Ray says, because it’s true, and he realizes he’s never said it to anyone in a way that he means, not like this. Nothing has ever been like this. 

There’s a moment that Sand stares at him, not blinking, not breathing, and if Ray were to press his fingers beneath his jaw, he’d bet that his pulse had gone silent, too. But then, his kiss-bitten lips stretch wide, and the dimple in the corner of his mouth winks, and he’s surging forward to kiss Ray again, and again, and again. 

Ray has to break away with a gasp when he realizes that there are other issues at hand. 

“Sand, you’re supposed to be onstage, in like…” He checks his watch. “...Ten minutes ago.” 

Sand just laughs, breathlessly, beautifully. “Fuck the stage. I’ll call Yo. That new bassist has been gunning for my spot, anyway. He’ll be more than happy to cover me.” 

And to that, Ray kisses him again, just because he can. 

They stumble through the doorway to Sand’s apartment as a singular, tangled, soft animal, and Sand’s jacket is off his shoulders, being thrown to a heap on the floor before they’ve even passed the threshold. Sand’s hands are everywhere, touching, grabbing, kneading at his skin, unbuttoning whatever his fingers are patient enough to pause for a spare moment before returning to hungry exploration. 

Sand and Ray know each other’s bodies better than they know their own at this point, but tonight feels different. Everything feels brand new. And in many ways it is— this is the start to the rest of their lives, a shared one, secure in the knowledge that both are loved and in love. 

Ray’s been stripped to his boxers and has a hand buried down the front of Sand’s skinny jeans by the time they even reach the bedroom. They still haven’t said a word, still haven’t broken for breath. This feels more important than the entire universe, right now. The apocalypse could be raining down upon the world right outside the window, and still, they wouldn’t care, wouldn’t even notice, as long as it kept the heated air between their desperate collision untouched from the ruins of humanity. 

Sand’s jeans are shoved down his thighs as he pushes Ray backwards onto the bed, only to reattach his mouth to Ray’s neck, collarbones, chest. Harsh, bruising marks sucked into delicate skin, teeth scraping over them to seal them in place. 

“Fuck, Sand,” Ray hisses, body unable to decide whether it should be writhing toward or away from the pain. “Your fucking mouth.” 

“Can’t help it,” Sand murmurs, kicking off his jeans and sending them skittering across the floor. “Too pretty.” 

Ray groans as Sand laps across his chest, rolling a peaked bud between his teeth, easing his boxers off his legs. 

“Love that,” Ray pants. “Love you.” 

Sand’s blush is noticeable, but still, he grins. 

“So you’ve told me,” Sand replies as he rifles around in his bedside drawer. He quickly locates what he’s looking for, and slathers his fingers in lube before getting straight to work. 

His movements are teasing, coaxing, and Ray can hardly gather the focus required to reply. 

“And I’ll keep saying it,” Ray says, gasping. “Now that I’m allowed to.” 

A shiver runs down Sand’s spine and he sucks in a breath between his teeth. 

“Do you know how hard it was…” He presses his fingers forward and upward, and Ray groans, back arching, shivering at the intrusion. “...That night you asked me to pretend?” His movements are still slow, shallow, gentle, almost achingly so. “Fuck, Ray. You have no idea how hard it was.” A slight curl that makes Ray’s breath catch and his lashes flutter. “How much I had to hold back.” 

“Then don’t,” Ray manages. “Don’t hold back on me. Never again.” 

His fingers go still inside him, and Ray watches as Sand considers. Watches the thoughts flicker through Sand’s mind, before a slow, hungry grin curls at his lips. 

“Yeah?” Sand asks. 

Ray can’t help but return the darkened smile with one of his own. “Yeah,” he nods. 

And then, Sand stops holding back. The thrusts of his fingers are fast, deep, almost punishing, and Ray can only clutch at his shoulders as he takes it. Sand draws back, adds another finger, pulling sounds out of Ray that he’s never even heard himself make— ragged, desperate whines, half-stolen by heaving intakes of air. 

“God, Ray…” Sand grits out. “Always take it so well for me. So fucking perfect— every inch of you.” 

Ray can only respond with incoherent noises, so Sand dips his head down to press his lips against his thigh. He kisses the flesh that, while in a much better state than it had been at the beginning of his hospital stay, is still much more frail than the last time Sand had seen him naked like this. Ray shivers beneath the attention and resists the urge to curl back into himself. Every part of him belongs to Sand— his body, his soul, his love— which is why he can only watch reverently as Sand sucks gently at the sensitive flesh of his inner thigh. 

“These soft, pretty legs…” 

He catches Ray’s wrist, kissing across each knuckle and against his inner palm. 

“These delicate hands…” 

A nose trailing along the side of his throat, nuzzling into heated skin. 

“Your neck, so perfect for kissing and biting…” 

He leaves a little nip there before dragging his lips over each feature on Ray’s face. 

“These pretty, expressive eyes… Your round cheeks… Cute little nose…” 

Sand pauses, ghosts a breath across Ray’s lips, which part in anticipation. 

“And god, the fucking mouth on you…” 

He steals the breath from Ray’s mouth, licking past his teeth, tasting his tongue. Ray gives a needy whine as the sensations pair with Sand’s fingers stretching inside his body.

“Your lips drive me fucking wild.” A soft bite at his lower lip. “They know exactly how to piss me off.” A swipe of tongue to soothe the sting. “They know exactly how to turn me on.” 

Another kiss, this one sweet, almost chaste. Lingering. Sand withdraws just enough to stare directly into Ray’s eyes. 

“I love everything about you, Ray.” 

And that breaks something inside of Ray. Or maybe it pieces it back together. He gives a soft sob that he’s unable to contain, sending hot tears tracking down his face, dripping from his chin onto his chest. The thing that shifts the ground on which the very foundation of his being has been built… is that Ray believes it. 

He believes in Sand the way he’s never believed in anything before. 

“I love you, Sand,” he whispers against his lips, voice shaking beneath the crushing weight of how much he means it. 

“I love you too,” Sand replies, his own voice becoming throaty and pinched in a way that Ray knows that if he were to open his eyes, he’d see Sand holding back tears of his own. 

And when Sand finally pushes his way inside him, it’s slow and thorough, and they’re both clutching at each other, running desperate hands over any expanse of bare skin they can reach. His strokes start out heavy and controlled, like he’s carefully carving out space for himself inside of Ray that was always his to begin with, far before he ever asked. 

It’s so slow, so deep, that Ray can feel every ridge, every vein along his length as his own body grips onto him, like every inch is given out of pure devotion. Savored, cherished, loved. 

And Ray decides that there’s no imitation, no masquerade, no roleplay that could possibly mimic the real thing. The love that pulses warm and real between them can’t possibly be replicated. It’s not hard and fast and wild and desperate like it has been so many times before, and it’s not the carefully constructed choreography of the night he’d asked Sand to pretend. This is something else. This is something new. 

Ray suddenly understands why it’s been called making love. They’re creating something here, shaping a new world between the two of them, where the pretenses of nonchalance and feigned indifference are no longer necessary armors against the mortification of vulnerability. They can have and be had, they can want and be wanted, and they can say the things that have been trapped beneath their sternums, right where their hearts have been beating in the rhythm of each other’s name far longer than they’ve admitted it to themselves. 

He feels himself being turned over, chest pressed against the sheets, Sand blanketing his back with the warmth of his torso as he drives deeper, faster. Ray’s lower back is practically folded in two, the way he arches into it, guiding Sand into an angle that makes his mouth go slack and his ears fill with cotton. Distantly, he feels calloused fingers travelling across his chest, his stomach, pressing into the spot on his lower belly that convexes with every push. 

Sand is inside him, but he’s also all around him— surrounding him, consuming him, filling every gap that Ray has spent his life trying not to admit was empty.  He’s only really made aware of the wetness coating his cheeks when Sand’s hand snakes up his torso, over his throat, wrapping around his jaw and tilting his head to give himself better access to his lips. 

And he kisses him, just like that, still while maintaining his heavy rhythm and with the other hand pressed between his hipbones. It’s a filthy, open-mouthed, disjointed thing, but it’s overwhelming in its own right, tongue painting across his teeth, heightening every other source of sensory input across his skin. 

When Ray feels a hand close around him, where his heartbeat thrums strongest and the heat of his body reaches its apex, where he’s hard and leaking and wanting, he nearly chokes on a sob. It’s everything he’s ever wanted, everything he never even allowed himself to imagine. With a great shudder that echoes through each individual vertebra before lighting his scalp with a heady electricity, he’s coming across Sand’s knuckles, across the bedsheets, across his own chest. 

His vision comes and goes in the moments after, limp and pliant and utterly breathless as Sand fucks him through his own orgasm. He knows like the back of his hand the way Sand’s hips stutter, breaths quicken, moans become high and reedy as he nears his peak, but nothing could have prepared him for this: 

The feeling of Sand finishing inside him as those bruised lips part to confess in his ear, “I love you, I love you, so fucking much— holy shit, Ray, I fucking love you.” 

They shiver in the aftermath, sweaty and spent and still connected as much as the skin of two separate people can be. Sand’s weight across his back, hot breaths panting into the side of his neck, keeping him pinned between sinew and cotton, makes it hard to breathe, but in a way that Ray finds himself enjoying. He feels wanted, like this. Chosen. It’s comforting in a way he thinks could be likened to a swaddle. 

Sand’s body has long since gone soft inside of him, but he still winces as he finally pulls away, taking the slimy condom with him. Ray feels himself guided from the bed with gentle hands, and he sleepily loops his arms around broad shoulders as they walk to the bathroom, chest to chest, burying his nose at the side of Sand’s throat to nuzzle into his body heat. 

A bath is drawn, and steam curls into the air, and Ray slowly comes back to himself somewhere between his hair being washed for him and being carefully nestled against Sand’s chest. 

He’s spent his whole life begging for love from people who couldn’t give it to him. And when they didn’t, he learned how to make himself seen— by throwing money at whoever would catch it, by being the life of every party, by becoming the villain just so people would glare— because maybe that’d be close enough. And here Sand is, here Sand has always been, giving it to him without being asked, in a thousand small ways. In rides home. In calls off work. In precious hours Sand would otherwise be unwilling to spare. In touches, in looks, in careful hands that dress him in clean t-shirts, that stir the pan of a shared meal, that roll him joints and flip vinyls to their B-sides. Hands that give, and give, and give, and give. 

Being bathed by a lover is a kind of intimacy he’s never craved, but one that now that he has it, makes something warm bloom in his chest, somewhere that before was only a garden of thorned, half-wilted roses with no one to give them to. 

What now sprouts from that once-dead soil are still just saplings; tiny promises of life, mere glimpses of a future that have the potential to grow into something greater. But it reminds him that there is still life yet to be lived, choices that have yet to be made. That despite everything he’s been told, everything he’s ever believed about himself, there is something inside him that can create, not just destroy. What now blooms from within him is no longer bitterness and disgust and resentment and jasmine. It’s something he now knows is named love, and it’s the ability to be loved. The ability to allow it for himself. 

The jasmine may be gone, but Ray knows he is not cured. Not fully, and not forever, anyway. When the steam clears from the bathroom and reality settles in like it always does, Ray knows the rest of his problems won’t just vanish like the flowers did. He’ll have to learn to be better, to get better, to drink less and compromise more, and he’ll have to learn how to be someone that deserves to be loved by Sand. 

The road ahead is filled with a million tiny choices, made every day in the hope that it will lead him to a life better than the one he’s been given. 

There are a million tiny choices, and for as many of them as he is possibly allowed to, he will choose Sand— over and over and over again, in this life and the next.