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"I have never found an opportune moment to say this," said Max to Will, voice low but fervent, "but I fear that if I do not say this now, I never will. I love you."
Will remained silent, of course. Max reached out and took his limp fingers in his hand.
Will's skin felt hot and dry, but it no longer burned with the blazing fever that had consumed him for so many days. The doctor had nonetheless shaken his head during his morning visit. The fever may have broken, but Will was so weakened the doctor doubted he would ever wake up.
An animal sound of grief had been torn out of Will's mother's throat. Will's sister, Laura, had held her mother while remaining dry-eyed, but Max saw in her the same incredulity that overlaid a river of grief.
Will may never wake up. Max had tested that thought in his head.
He found it focused his attention admirably.
The words, dammed up for so long, spilled out of him. He had spent his life working to hide his love from his best friend for fear of the fatal blow it would deal their friendship, but now he found himself cursing his cowardice.
"D'you know," said Max, "that I hated you at first? My father would hold you up endlessly as an exemplary specimen of everything a boy should be: athletic, gregarious, brave. Everything I wasn't. Even then, I think, I knew I had a secret to hide. But you didn't make it easy."
He took up Will's fingers and held it to his mouth. "Very well, I lied. I've never hated you. For years, I convinced myself I wanted to be you. It wasn't until...oh, the year we turned fifteen that I realized I mostly wanted you."
Will's fingers remained limp in Max's grasp.
"I've loved you for so long, Will," said Max helplessly. "You gave a shape to my days. I'd say to myself, ah, time to meet Will for our morning ride. Or: time for us to adjourn to White's, where the only bearable company would be yours."
Max gulped. "I almost offered for Laura."
He gave a laugh, soft and wet. "I thought, if I could not have you, I could take your sister as a consolation. But then the thought of almost having you was more torment than I could bear, leaving aside the monstrous lie marrying Laura would have been. She deserves far better."
Max swallowed again. "And now I find I am haunted by what could have been. If I had been brave, would you have been within my grasp? I wondered, sometimes, during our late nights at Oxford. A certain look in your eye. The way you leaned towards me."
Max gave a short, bitter laugh. "But I was afraid of risking everything, and therefore gained nothing. Now, here I am, reduced to a confession of love on a deathbed."
The sound, when it came, was the softest croak—so soft, Max was not sure he'd heard it. "Ain't dead yet."
Max bolted upright. "What's that?" he said, leaning closer to Will.
"Ain't…dead…yet," said Will, softly, but clear as anything. His eyes fluttered open, and pinned Max in place. Such pretty hazel eyes; Max had resigned himself to never seeing them again. Elation lifted him—
—and then he remembered what he had said. The old fear returned: of losing Will, of losing the easy yet thrilling connection they had. He cleared his throat.
"I can see that," said Max with remarkable calmness, considering. "I say, about the other things you may have heard…"
"Coward," whispered Will. A ghost of a smile flickered on his face, sending a pang all over Max's body, equal parts agony and hope.
"Yes," said Max, "I am. I've never been brave—certainly not as brave as you. Christ, Will, we need not hash it all out now, let me get—"
"No," rasped Will, louder than anything else he had said thus far. Max, halfway out his chair, froze.
"No," repeated Will. "Stay." And then: "I love you. Don't marry my sister."
Max sat down and began laughing, catching Will's hand in his again.
"You'd truly do anything to avoid having me as a brother-in-law, wouldn't you?" Max looked at Will, whose face was still drawn and pale from illness, yet with that lively light he so loved rekindled within it.
"A proper sacrifice on my part," Will said, his mouth quirking.
In Max's hand, he felt the faintest hint of a squeeze; on Will's face, there was the faintest hint of a smile. Max smiled back, soft and infatuated—but, no, he would be brave; he would call this what this was:
It was the smile of a man in love.