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“Careful timid steps,” Luke whispers, forcing himself to stifle a laugh. It’s the ninth time Michael steps on his toes at his attempts to get the turn right, but every shoot of pain to Luke’s poor toes becomes more bearable as they come.
“I know, you twat,” Michael hisses.
He repeats the routine by memory, placing foot after foot before, almost ending up stepping on Luke’s toes again before he finally, finally turns themselves in a full 360 and eases their halt with a confident step of his heel.
“You did it,” Luke grins, arms falling from where they hang over Michael’s shoulders. “I guess putting up with your constant complaining was actually worth it.”
“Like I wouldn’t mess up next time,” Michael shakes his head, knowing better than to believe that because he will in fact mess up the next time he does it.
The smile on Luke’s face falters for a second before it returns. Michael catches the slip and decides not to ignore it.
“I’m sorry, I just—I’m gonna try for you, okay? Dancing just really isn’t my cup of tea but I know how much you like doing it, so I’ll keep this up for you, don’t worry.”
“I know,” Luke offers a tired smile. “I’m proud of you.”
“I’m proud of you as well.”
If Michael is being honest, he’s growing more worried as each day passes. Luke is only days away from his surgery for a stem cell transplant next week but here he spends his days wallowing in their shared apartment like he isn’t even afflicted with such a serious disease in the first place.
But it also means being have a longer span of time watching the smile on Luke’s face grow wider, to catch his subtle but no less fluent strides across the floor like he’s floating on thin air where elements are bounded by nothing.
It’s rather selfish, if you think more of it. Michael needs Luke to be okay, needs to see the blond actually resting far much longer as he is required to. But Michael just cannot pass up the offer to witness his best friend make the most of his remaining days.
It sends a pang to his chest. How can he ever be ready to lose everything? Words from his friends allow him to recognize that no one will ever be truly ready to lose someone, but Michael just cannot imagine having to even accept that he’s going to lose someone.
So he reaches out and places a hand over the cotton of Luke’s beanie. He’s bald underneath it, hairs no longer present to assure him of his health.
“We go to the hospital tomorrow,” Michael reminds him.
Luke nods. “Seventh session of chemo.”
When they retire from their living room where music still floats out to all corners, they proceed to the kitchen for their dinner. Michael isn’t fond of cooking, but tonight he recreates his mum’s recipe for baked scallops, and offers them to Luke with the promise to hold him in their sleep later when they chase their dreams.
…
It happens two weeks after Christmas eve.
Michael had seen it coming, really. Their trips to the hospital occupied every slot in their schedules that leaving Luke in the house with either Calum or Ashton just wasn’t an option anymore.
Eventually after spending the holidays at Liz’ house, they decided to let Luke stay inside the hospital by the doctor’s request. Michael was always there to attend to his needs, but if he was unable, it only took a single call for Calum or Ashton to arrive.
“I learned a routine for you,” Michael says, one day when Luke begins coughing up blood every now and then. “I still really suck, though. Get better and I’ll show you.”
Luke does get better, and Michael begins to hope more. Only that it lasts for five days before he’s coughing up blood again, and loses weight but gains a terrible swell in his stomach.
Michael continues to hope, even when Luke grows weaker and much more paler throughout another stretch of a week. At the last two days, Luke sleeps for a couple of hours.
Bone marrow failure, or to be more specific, infection and haemorrhage. When the two panels of the doors fly open and the doctor announces those words along with the confirmation of Luke’s passing, Michael feels himself getting swallowed by the ground.
If only mourning and accepting that Luke is gone was easy. Michael doesn’t even know if he’s ever going to reach that stage at all because he cannot seem to cease denying that Luke is gone, that Luke is gone.
At night, he reaches for the sheets to search for a single trail of Luke’s scent. He doesn’t find any. Instead, he lies awake in the dark memorizing Luke’s every step as he dances.
…
"I thought you wouldn’t be here.”
Calum carefully slips out from his boots and places the leather pair near the steps of Michael’s door. He walks into the living room, fingers reaching behind to secure the door locked, pelts of rain visible across his forehead.
Michael offers a loop-sided smile. “Where else would I be?”
It’s been exactly three months since Luke passed away. Three months of sudden aching for nostalgic memories, shattered alcohol bottles here and there and of course, the soft string of syllables from Michael’s chosen music, quietly replacing the silence of the house and never actually allowing the silence to return.
Every weekend, Ashton would visit him. Michael is occupied with work almost all the time every week so finding him alone in the house on a Tuesday must had somehow surprised Calum.
Michael lies across the couch. Calum sits beside him wordlessly.
“I’ll make you dinner tonight.”
It isn’t phrased as a question, so Michael nods at his friend and doesn’t say anything more.
It turns out that Calum had brought two bottles of wine with him. Later that night he informs Michael that he’s going to uncap one and urges him to have a glass or two. Michael doesn’t bother protesting. He surely needs some company tonight.
“Did you visit him today?” Calum asks sometime later before midnight approached. The air is cold and Michael shivers visibly.
“Yeah, this morning.” Michael tips his glass with a finger. “I left when it started to rain.”
Calum only nods, thinks it would be wise to just drown in silence again. It’s only a while later when Michael speaks in a sad exasperated voice.
“Mum loved him, you know?” he says. “She didn’t even get to visit him much when he was still strong enough to walk around town and drive with me."
Michael sips from the glass, swallowing the quiver of his voice.
"She had known Luke for like, a year, I think. Two months in Perth was all she had to learn more about him. The next time she did, he’s already on his hospital bed.”
“She gave you both this house, didn’t she?” Calum turns to him to find Michael already nodding. “What happens to this place now?”
“She asked me if I considered selling the property. Not that she wants me to sell it, it’s just. She wants to know if I have some kind of feelings about the house.”
Calum sends him a knowing look. “You don’t want to leave, do you?”
“Maybe.”
Calum nods, taking a long sip from his glass. “If you do decide to sell this, you can move in with me or Ashton.”
“Maybe,” Michael repeats, sighing.
When Calum finally leaves that night, Michael does not return to his bedroom. The night is still cold the shivers that tremble throughout his body do not falter. He drowns out the last inch of alcohol from his glass and stands.
The music barely reaches his ears, but Michael hears it still. With a weak smile, he walks to the center of the room, hands falling pliant at his sides.
“Luke,” he whispers to the ground, soon realizing that he’s been staring at his feet far too long now so he clears his throat and whispers again. “I never got to show you my routine. But you’re better now, so I might as well just do it. Please don’t laugh at me, you’re clearly the better dancer.”
Then Michael makes a step forward, shutting his eyes for a brief moment to remember the steps and opening them to follow his own instructions with more conviction.
“Careful timid steps,” Michael reminds himself, growing frustrated over the fact that it’s Luke who says those words in his head but when Michael says them himself, they only come with the rough scratch of his voice.
A few steps in and Michael’s there again, already turning, completing the 360 turn Luke had always wanted to master ever since he and Michael had been learning several routines.
Michael stays like that for a while, sweeping across the floor with clumsy but confident strides, relearning every step Luke had ever graced the floor with, basking in the night’s chill with hot tears welling up in his eyes.
With another breath, he stops midway into the dance, only to continue moving when the yearning in his chest burns oh so painfully and the tears in his eyes are ones he can no longer suppress. They fall and fall and fall as how Michael falls apart.
Luke is a memory, one he can only remember perfectly when all is lost and hopeless yet at the same time still very much bearable. Michael fades into the remaining hours of night, drowning out the whole world and pictures dancing with Luke’s soul through every corner of the house.
Michael falls asleep hoping that Luke would still be proud of him.