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When day breaks, so do his lungs, bleeding red from his mouth to spill into his hands, flustered with darkened shades and melted into hearts. Half-broken hearts, ripped in between its shape by the heaviness of his coughing, torn by his fingers in another moment’s worth of anger. Even the smell of the plant taunts him, its traditional odourless fashion replaced with a strong, vacillating scent of sickening sweetness and fruit to the most sour, expired smell of over-soaked leather and vomit.
“George?” says a faraway voice of concern, and he almost forgets what has happened, breath freeing and elated at the call of his name. But the threat of barbs scaling the lining of his throat and tearing at the inner walls of his palate burn from his lungs, screaming at him to move and choke and cry, and all he can do is lurch forward against the ground, fall to his knees, and pray that he does not die.
Loose petals stutter from his mouth, slipping from beneath his tongue, catching in his teeth, seeping from between his lips. The pain presses tears to his eyes, heavy and hot, rushing to grace his cheeks and fall to the floor. Then a knotted, tight fit of itchiness scratches at his throat, his hands scrambling to kneel at his neck and pull at his skin, nails digging in as he tries to grab at the clump stuck there. He pulls air through his mouth in desperation, the flower only pushing all the air back out, and he cries as an agony of silence, screaming just as the flower wants him to.
The stem of the anthurium comes out with his vomit, having been clogged just behind his tonsils, and the foul of its scent is strong in its heavy, odourless stench, soaking up nothing as his vomit stains the carpet and his fingers are covered in blood, holding on to the long, bloomed plant.
A heart-shaped flower for his heart’s unrequited desire.
“George! Open up, mate!”
Then comes loud, heavy thuds against the door, George still on his knees with cries finally freed and screams so harrowing to his own ears, flower clutched to his chest as blood spills all over his hands and grazes at his knees.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispers to himself, raspy and broken, collapsing onto his body and letting the dizziness get to him. There is darkness in the corner of his eyes, flooding like ink to his vision, his body weightless as he falls.
***
(The first time it happens, it happens right before a race.)
The morning greets him with the sour sight of Alex laying beside him. His naked back facing George, the canvas where lines of George’s fingers bruised skin and where his kisses turned harsh, traced possible by eyes alone. They sit there like a taunting image; black smudges that blend together and sharpen at its edges.
He stares for a while, unflinching and shameful, unable to tear away his gaze from his friend, just out of reach of him. Then Alex’s muscle twitches, shoulder pulling backwards as he shifts his weight, forcing George to shut his eyes tight and turn away, heart suddenly loud in his ears.
But then the noises coming from Alex’s side of the bed stop, silence overcoming, and George lets his eyes open, turning his head to the side. He meets Alex’s gaze, gentle and undeterred, half-opened and still drowned in tiredness.
“Hi,” Alex whispers, voice croaky and morning breath heavy.
“Hi,” George says back, wobbly. He tries to sound firm, nudging Alex as he whispers, “Go back to sleep.”
Alex hums in reply, eyes closing. His breathing slows enough that George lets out a sigh of relief, shuffling himself from beneath the covers.
He slips off the bed with little protest, Alex reaching his arms out to cover where George was laying down just before, eyes still closed and breathing still steady. He could watch Alex sleep for ages, the urge to kiss at where his skin blushes most to where his bone juts from beneath and is easiest to bruise with a love so sore it stings. But he does not allow himself, staring at Alex’s chest rising and falling, watching as his muscles fold along and crease into where George had just touched and burned.
He finds his clothing from the previous night left along the bedroom floor, his phone falling out of his pocket when he pulls at his trousers. His jacket has a stain on it from coffee that he had spilt, and his shirt stretched beyond repair as it sags down his shoulders.
The kitchen is warm and cosy, just like Alex’s bed, calling out to him to scour and familiarise. He sees the dirty dishes still left in the sink, abandoned when Alex had weighed a hand against his waist and pressed his lips to his neck, hard and gentle all the same.
George takes a deep breath, staring at the domesticity of the mess they left there, the urge to walk into the kitchen to clean the dishes and make breakfast and crawl back into bed with Alex like a deep ache in his bones. But his alarm rings, phone blaring a loud siren and shaking in his hand. He fumbles with the controls of his screen until it silences itself, and the time greets him with a reminder of reality.
“Fuck,” he whispers to himself, looking back at Alex’s bedroom. It was already ten o’clock, cutting it close to the time he needed to arrive at work by, and he knew Alex’s schedule like the back of his hand, a meeting just half-an-hour away. But if he walked into that room and looked at Alex asleep, saw the relaxed curve of his muscles to the tired expression of his body, he would fall by his side again and try to hold him close. He would fall back into a land of dreams and hope to never wake.
“Fuck,” he says again, louder, and jams his hand on the door handle, eyes shut tightly. The door gives way easier than he would have liked it to, and he slips away.
—
His chest starts to hurt just a few minutes before he is meant to go on track. He feels it first by the familiar heartburn, watching Alex from afar and longing gnawing at his stomach. But the knots he feels do not go away, resting there and climbing to where his shoulders rise and fall, tense and hurled in pain.
His throat also feels clogged, breaths coming out wheezy and disjointed, a sharp sting crawling as he swallows and prickling as he tries to wash it down; growing, growing, growing.
Then he heaves, aiming at nothing and choking on air, the rough edges of sand gritting at his mouth and forcing its way outward. A red, bloodied shape covered with phlegm and saliva, sticky as it falls, lands on his carpet.
George blinks, staring at the heart-shaped red, ripped in the soft middle of its belly. Oh, oh, oh.
—
After the race, George tries to ignore any person he comes across. He makes his way from his side of the paddock with an uneasy smile, queasy in his stomach, nodding rigidly at any person who comes toward him. When he excuses himself to use the bathroom, he makes a break for it, slipping past a few staff members and sneaking into his motorhome.
The door clicks and shuts, the handle pressed twice to make sure it was properly locked, before George allows himself to lean his back against it and slide downward. He takes his phone out and stares at the picture of the plant he had coughed up earlier, still stinging his lungs and scratching his throat. It was just a leaf, the search results tell him. There was no flower; no disease.
He closes the app on his phone with a slip of his thumb when another opens in its place, a picture of Alex from a gossip account he had forgotten to close, staring at him so intently. It had the gentle shadows of lighting and a soft frame of love from his eyes, where he had been looking at George, just out of shot. At least, as he looks at it and reads the caption once more, the fans seem to think that Alex loves him.
Then his throat roughens up again, insides churning and his lungs chafing with a burning pain. He feels his heart slam into his ribs and doubles down over in pain, muscles clenched around his stomach and a long vine reaching out from his throat. George tries to heave, pressing at his throat and pinching himself hard, forcing a cough out to dislodge another leaf.
Instead, a petal falls, this time fully ripped in half with its stamen like a teardrop. But where pollen would once appear white and unblemished like a fallen heaven’s purity, it was instead draped with red to complete a bleeding heart.
He takes a picture of the petal in his hand, trembling and shaken, and searches the internet with the image that he has. The blood comes off the flower and sticks to his fingers like honey, dripping like sweat and staining the calluses of his hands. The result comes back with the name of a flower.
There is a flower growing in George’s lungs, and with a flower from love so strong, there it was; a disease.
—
It has been a month since the first breath fell from his lips, and George makes a routine of it. Cough the petals into his palms, praise it with a picture to stare at and mourn, and toss it into a bin covered over by a fresh packet of tissues. It works to disguise the sight of it, an easy excuse of a nosebleed when someone sees the blood.
But then today comes with Lewis present as George starts to cough, panic rushing through him, a thick, clumped force stuck in his chest. It is unlike the first few rough, thin pieces of plant from the past, rather sticking like debris and jamming at his breathing. It staggers and cuts through the layer of his throat and rips at the line of his cheeks, hard to pull as it crumbles by his lips.
He retches when it touches his uvula and vomits, the body of a flower crawling out from his jaw. He stares at it, mortified, and a fleeting glance forces him to look at Lewis.
“George-”
“I’m sorry, I’ll- I’ll clean it up, I didn’t mean to, I’ll-”
“George, is that…” Lewis says, trailing off. He moves slowly with his hands in surrender, before gently placing them on George’s shoulders, careful as he shifts his weight over. “Who is it?”
“Nothing, no one,” George replies quickly. He shakes off Lewis’ grip and rummages through his pockets, hands picking at stray tissue as he attempts to clean up the mess of the flower and his discharge, fumbling as things flutter forward and he accidentally cuts his own finger against his zip.
“But that’s chrysanthemum, isn’t it?” Lewis asks. George stiffens, slowed in his movements as he scrubs at the floor, his chest still contracted tightly and his breaths completely shallow. “George, please. It’s-”
“Alex,” George whispers. He drops the tissue at the splattered stains amongst the ground, the botched flower he urges to take a picture of. “It’s Alex.”
“Oh,” Lewis says. He reaches out hesitantly at George, an offerance of a hug, and pulls him for a side-by-side embrace. In a tired, quiet voice, he asks, “You know the options, right?”
George takes a deep, shaky breath and leans his head on Lewis’ shoulder. “I do,” he answers, shattered like a sob. “And I’d rather die.”
—
“This is-”
“Nico Rosberg, yeah,” George says, weakly. “I just don’t understand why he’s here.”
“To try and… console you, I think it was?” Nico tells him. “To help you.”
George sees the way Lewis tenses his grip on Nico’s hand, fingers tight around his knuckles until he sees them blotch spots of purple across his skin. “For what?”
“Your condition,” Nico replies, stern. “It’s not easy, George, but-”
“I’m fine,” George says. He feels an anger simmer from where the flowers grow in his lungs; a pain that hurts his head and twists his breaths into knots. “I’m fine, I don’t mind what happens, and I don’t- I don’t need your help. Lewis shouldn’t have told you anything, it wasn’t his right.”
“But-”
“I had it too, you know,” Nico interrupts, pressing a firm pinch of his thumb to Lewis’ fingers. A long, shaky breath fills the air, almost like a wheeze from a cough long healed. “I couldn’t breathe for months, and all I knew of the best was what it was like to choke on flowers. I thought I would die by drowning in a garden. The most prettiest and bloodiest garden, but one made of my love.”
“But you didn’t,” George points out, a low and dangerous blow. “You’re still here.”
“Because Lewis found me,” Nico says. “He found me there at my last moment, curled on the ground with chrysanthemums decorating the floor like a deathbed. I nearly died and he found me, and all he could do was tell me he loves me.”
“I love you,” Lewis whispers, as if to prove a point; as if he were still scared.
“And you were cured?” George asks. “Would you want me to start dying with flowers around me in front of Alex?”
“I’m telling you this so you won’t,” Nico answers. He pleads with his voice, his tone a motherly, concerned wave of rage. “Talk to him. Tell him, or it will never be better. At least tell him, so you won’t die without trying.”
“At least tell him so he won’t find out by finding you dying or after you’ve drowned yourself,” Lewis adds, a pointed gaze to George. “And I won’t let you die. I can’t, and I won’t. Not for this.”
“But you’re allowed that choice, anyway,” Nico says, warning. George watches the way Nico’s fingers trace patterns on Lewis’ skin or the way Lewis melts his body against the curve of Nico’s back, the fluid movements of a love that was nearly lost at its founding, so intimately woven yet yearning to be publicised. “Just don’t do it without talking, please?”
“I can’t promise you,” George says. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Lewis says, almost hesitant and unyielding. His voice shakes in a way that is unlike him, unconfident and caring.
Nico seems to cry with unshed tears, and he pulls George into a hug so tight it warms his heart and fills his lungs with daylight. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
—
George knows it before it happens, sitting on the ledge of his bed hunched over an overflowing bin. He has never had so many petals flow from the faucet of his mouth, spilling like unwashed sins and crying with bloodied scars. They come in the form of pinked white chrysanthemums, some petals held clustered by the remains of sepals that cling unmoving while the others remain dipped in the soil of heartbreak.
If he stares at the petals long enough, held by the stained tips of his fingers, he can imagine the colour of a wedding and the sound of Alex’s laugh, triggering another bleed in his chest and a collapse of nature into his palms.
George knows that sleeping would make it easier. To crawl in between the sheets of the hotel bed – kept tight under white sheets and warmed by tiredness – and be knocked out by sleeping pills. Easier to go to sleep with; easier to die with little pain. But then Lewis would find him later, passed out and unmoving; a flower and a stem jammed in his throat and his mouth filled with bile.
“I’m sorry,” he says to no one, emptiness filling his lungs that are satisfied by flowers. “I’m so sorry for loving you. I’m so sorry for leaving.”
He grabs the pills from the table, fighting the cough that tickles at his chest. He swallows them dry, far too many to be safe yet too little to be sure of escape.
Then he crawls in between the sheets of the hotel bed, kept tight under white sheets and warmed by tiredness, knocked out almost as soon as he lays down. He feels dead anyway, and it hurts less when he does not dream.
***
He hears the door crash open, hears the footsteps that awaken the soreness in his head, the presence that restarts the ache in his heart. His lungs are clambering with itchiness once more, allergic to this man with the strongest hunger to keep him close, heart thudding in his ears and patchy as he heaves.
“George, hey, what- come on, George-” Alex says, choking as if he is the one with a garden of broken hearts, frantic as he tries turning George to his side, to pick him up from the floor, to hold him against his chest. “Someone get an ambulance! Help, please!”
George is weak when he tries to lift his hand to touch at Alex’s skin, to grab his wrist and tell him to stop, fingers twitching and voice faltering, another cough wrecking his throat and cradling at his lungs.
“Alex? What is-”
“Lewis, Lewis, please-”
“Oh,” Lewis says, staring at the scene, stuck at the doorway. Then he moves, antagonising in his steps, powerful in his intention; he takes George’s weight against him, kneeling on the flower, and pries at Alex’s fingers. “Alex, Alex, you need to leave. Now, okay? Go call the ambulance, I swear I-”
“But he’s-”
“Call the ambulance,” Lewis tells him again, stern. “Get the help George needs, but right now, you need to go, okay? I’ll stay and watch, I promise I’ll tell you if anything happens.”
Alex shudders, breathes in a shallow breath, shoulders shake in a sudden strain. He nods, mouth trapped together and fear, before he picks his body in forced, rigid movements to back out and walk out of the room, hands clutched to his chest. Lewis can hear when his feet begin to run, the footsteps loud even in the padded hallway, strained like a heartbeat.
He tries to pull George closer to his body, passing on warmth to the skin that seems to cool each passing moment. There are chrysanthemum flowers laying by his body, coating his skin like steam of white, pretty fabric. Untouched, uncoloured petals that float by him, fleeting unlike the singular plant of anthurium rested by George’s chest, bloodied beyond repair and leaves torn with ragged edges.
“Nico,” Lewis tries to greet, phone laid beside them. “George is dying.”
A harsh breath plays on the other side, before coming on with a croaky voice, whispering, “How many, Lewis?”
He tries to count as accurately as he can, the chrysanthemum flowers scattered across him and plaguing him with hayfever, high fevered daze. “I think there’s seven?” he mumbles, fast and threaded together. “And, another flower. The stemmed flower.”
“Shit,” Nico says on the other side, the sound of movement playing by it. “Where are you? Can I get there fast enough?”
“We’re at the hotel, Nico,” Lewis says. Then quieter, pained, whispers, “Alex found him.”
The line hangs up, George’s faint attempts at breathing gathering the silence and slicing apart the air, hissing as pressure weighs at his chest.
“I’m sorry,” George seems to say, mouthing his lips but no sound escaping. Lewis shushes him, pulling his body toward him, arm wrapped behind his neck.
“We’re going to get help, okay?” Lewis says. “We’re going to- we’re going to be okay. I promise.”
George shakes his head, fingers weak as he tries to grab Lewis’ hand. “Please don’t tell him,” he manages to wrangle out from his throat, a mess of words slurred and shattered by dryness. “You can’t.”
“I won’t,” Lewis promises, grabbing at George’s hand and holding him tightly. He presses his fingers against the groove of his knuckles until he sees how white his skin turns beneath, a pressure hard enough to bruise. “And I won’t let you go, mate. Nico’s coming, alright? He’s not letting you go, either.”
“Uhm, Lewis,” Alex says, stumbling into the room with a heavily sobered step. “I got help, they’re coming. Can I, is he- shit.”
“Come here, Alex, it’s okay,” Lewis says, a hiss in his tone. He sounds scolding and scalding at once, a comfort to lean on yet an embrace so unwanted. It forces Alex to kneel by George’s side, hands fumbling to touch and haste to pull away.
“George, hey, stay awake, yeah? We’ve got help coming.”
Lewis’ phone rings, a loud familiar ringtone, and the contact name flashes in Alex’s sight just before it gets answered. Lewis looks at Alex’s face of confusion, shaking his head as if to say thousands of words. “I’ll- Alex here, hold him for me, please?”
He lays George gently against the steady form of Alex, and gets up, hesitant as he walks away; the sound of Nico’s voice takes him away from the room.
“Hey, George, it’s going to be okay, mate,” Alex says, rushing out as he plays with George’s hair and brushes his pinky across George’s cheek. “Hanahaki, right? Shit, I’m so sorry George. Whoever you love is an idiot, and I think you deserve anyone in the world, okay? Don’t worry-”
George makes a noise close to a whisper, a stumble of words that fall apart at his lips and bite at his teeth, eyes drooping closed. His head tilts to the side in an unconscious manner, falling with little grace and heavy as Alex tries to hold him up.
“What- no, George, please,” Alex screams, moving George’s body to lay him directly atop himself. “Hey, no! Don’t do this, please. I need you, George. I need you. I need you to stay so fucking badly that I’ll do anything, anything. Please. I love you, I need you, come back, please.”
“Alex-”
“No, Lewis, George is going to die! He’s going to die and I didn’t even get to tell him I’m sorry, that I love him, that I need him so badly in my life. And he’s going to die on me because he loves someone else, and he loves them so much he’s willing to die for them-”
“Alex,” Lewis says again, voice cracking. His phone is clutched so tightly in his hand that his knuckles have paled and are bruised with white stains. He tries to keep his hands firm on Alex’s shoulder, resilient even when Alex moves harshly to his left in a violent attempt to stop crying. “The paramedics are here. They’re going to help George, okay?”
“Oh,” Alex says dumbly, George's body being moved onto a stretcher and the blare of sirens so obviously bright just through the curtain. “Okay. Can we, fuck, can we go with them? In the ambulance?”
He does not get an answer before he is pulled along to follow the paramedics, dumped in the back of the ambulance to hold the hand of a man he loves, who is as pale as a ghost and as cold as the dead. Lewis pats him on the back, affirming as best he can.
“I’ll meet you there, okay?”
Alex does not ask how he would get there. He just stares at George’s body, so grim and tort. He feels his fingers and traces his knuckles, holding on so tightly he sees a smear of purple brush at the line of flesh. He does not stop. He cannot stop.
He has stopped enough times before.
—
George wakes up.
It surprises him, the lack of flowers in his chest. The absence of an object occluding his breathing, the smooth ridges of his throat none healed and painless as air gushes through. He almost imagines that he is dreaming, that perhaps he is in heaven.
But then something tugs at his hand and holds him firm at his wrist, and he notices Alex with his head laid next to his thigh, asleep and grim under his eyes.
“Alex?” George mumbles, staring at the rise and fall of Alex’s back, and the parting of his hair that he yearns to comb through. He sees the firm structure of Alex’s friendship tucked into the nook of his skin and warm in the hold of his hands. Then he wakes, shudders at the sudden trance of George’s consciousness, and leaps to hug him even half-sitting up.
“George?” Alex says, disbelieving. “You’re awake, bloody hell- doctor, please! I, you’re, George you’re awake, oh my gosh-”
“Of course I’m awake?” George says. His voice comes out dry and broken, almost unused and fearful. “Why am I here, Alex? Did something happen- did I crash? Is everyone okay?”
“What?” Alex asks. “What do you mean-”
“Mr Russell,” says someone entering the room, dressed in scrubs and a shiny badge on his coat. “Mr Albon, can I ask you to leave, please? Just for privacy.”
“I- of course,” Alex says, shaky. He leaves the room with a reluctance that swells at George’s wrist, a reminder of the strong grip that held him still and the pain he had woken up without.
“Mr Russell,” the doctor says, “do you remember why you’re here?”
“Because I was sick,” George says. “Is that correct? I was sick so badly that I remember an ambulance had to get me. Blimey, poor Alex, no wonder.”
“Well, not really,” the doctor tells him. “You had hanahaki, and due to the circumstances… we gave you emergency surgery.”
“Oh,” George says, numbly. Dumbly, perhaps, with the clouds of words crowding his head and an endless spiral of pain dipping his ears. “Do you know who it was, at least?”
The doctor shakes his head, smiling with a grim note. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t. I’m just here to keep you alive.”
“Drive to survive, innit,” George says. He laughs, awkward, and something feels wrong when there is no pain in his lungs and no scratches in his throat. There is also a person missing from his thoughts, almost plucked out without care and drowned in an ocean of flowers.
“However, your medical proxy was Alex Albon, and he opted to put you for surgery,” the doctor adds, writing down a note to his chart and getting ready to leave. He looks sullen, then, and gives a sly nod in his direction; saddened by grief in his eyes. “Perhaps you should talk to him. Good luck.”
“Maybe,” George says. The word falls on deaf ears, a door sliding closed and sounding like a slam. He falls asleep almost immediately, the sound of laughter crooning in his mind.
—
The moment he arrives back in his hotel room – Lewis and Nico trailing behind him – the flowers return to his throat and clog his lungs. It feels like a fire, scratching and clawing to escape, burning until it reaches the end of his jaw and drops off the tip of his tongue.
Molten rock of chrysanthemums that had never left, bleeding from his lips and flowing through the floor, intertwined with the carpet in a gross combination of white, red, and grey. It stares at him as if it has eyes, a messy pile of fluids and petals, fallen into the shape of a flower with nothing but its skin.
Nico rushes to him and holds a hand warm against George’s back, patting him comfortingly and soothing with his touch. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, let it all out, alright?” Nico tells him. He looks over his shoulder to where Lewis is putting down George’s stuff and trembling from the shake of his shoulders, fingers twitching and dropping things to clutter at his feet. He calls out to him, gentle,“Lew. George is okay.”
“I’m okay,” George breathes out. “Just tired. I’ll- I’ll clean this up.”
“No, I’ve got it,” Nico says. “Maybe clean your mouth or something then you go rest, okay? Don’t worry about anything else.”
“Okay,” George says, almost like a wheeze. He leaves Lewis and Nico at the entrance of his hotel room, shutting himself in the bathroom until he could only taste cheap toothpaste and the feeling of a plastic toothbrush embedded in his gums.
When he gets out, he sees Nico pressing a finger against the dorsal of Lewis’ hand, strong and bruising in a surety George has seen between them before, a calming gesture that soothes his own hurt. He feels the phantom grip of Alex’s fingers against his own knuckles, crackling and close, a murmur of love that trudges in his lungs.
The flower sputters out onto his palm, clean and fully bloomed, no pain seeping through and little ache in his throat. His lungs feel empty and his heart is no longer heavy, the scratches in his throat gone and his head clear of any haze.
“Nico,” George says, voice cracking, and Nico rushes up from where he was seated. He grabs George’s hands into his own, thumbing over the clean dermis of the petals, pollen cutting under his nails. Lewis stares from his seat, gaze agonisingly distant.
“George,” Nico says, joy starting to form. “This is, you’re…”
“He… confessed?” George says. “Did he, did he say anything? Is this a fluke?”
“He said something, when he thought you died,” Lewis says. “He said he loves you.”
“Fuck, mate,” George says. “Does this mean- is this-?”
“Go,” Nico tells him. “It’s going to be okay.”
This time, George believes it.
—
“Alex?”
He knocks the door again, harder and louder, concern starting to weave at his stomach.
“Ale-”
The door swings open, nearly hitting George, before the latter is pulled straight into the room and shoved against the wall, door slamming shut next to him.
“George,” Alex says, slurred and almost drunken. He sounds stern with his tone, a solemn and accusatory fixture raging in his eyes; red, watered eyes.“What do you want?”
“I,” George starts, nervous at the threat of Alex’s anger. “Alex, are you okay?”
“Of course I bloody am,” Alex spits out, taking a step back from George. “I just, you’re my best friend and you nearly died because of someone you love so badly? And what, you didn’t even tell me about anything that was happening. You didn’t even- we were shagging mate, and you didn’t. You nearly died.”
“I’m okay now-”
“So they love you back?” Alex says, quiet. Then he laughs, almost to himself. “Of course they do. How could anyone not love you? You’re perfect, George, and of course they realise that.”
“Alex-”
“Glad you’re feeling better mate,” Alex says, turning his face away from George and moving to scrub the coarse material of his sweater at his eyes; almost as if he is crying. “Hope I was a good enough lay.”
There is a pause in their silence that stretches, aching and rough.
“What the fuck?” George says.
“George-”
“No, Alex, what do you mean?” George says, the soothing bliss now replaced with an ugly fume. “Alex, you can’t possibly- of course you were a good lay.”
Alex laughs bitterly, “Yeah, mate, thanks.”
“No, Alex, look at me,” George says. “Look at me, please.”
He sees the slight shift of Alex’s head, turned enough that his eyes can be seen and his attention placed on George.
“It’s you,” George breathes out, air clear and steady. “It’s you, Alex. It’s always been you.”
“You mean,” Alex says, facing George with his full body, inched closer than he was before. He makes a choking sound, a delirious mix of relief and guilt crossing his face. “You nearly died, George. You nearly died because of me?”
“Alex, no, I nearly died because of myself,” George tells him, firm and steady. “But you? It’s always going to be you.”
“I love you,” Alex confesses. He brings his hand to grab at George’s, fingers pressed into the shape of his knuckles and denting white spots that flutter into purple. “I love you so much. I’m so sorry. I love you, I love you, George.”
George brings his own fingers to Alex’s other hand, thumb pressed tight against the soft flesh of his palm until it shapes like a mark of blotched blue and black.
“I love you too,” George says.
He grabs Alex by his neck and pulls to kiss him, nails digging into his jaw and their fingers in each other’s hair. For the first time in months, George’s lungs do not fill with flowers, and instead bloom with love; the type that is a cure.