Work Text:
She’s standing in the corner of the room.
She doesn’t look right, stood against the white tile walls of the hospital – or maybe she doesn’t look right because she’s not smiling, or maybe it’s her dead eyes piercing through him. Renet had always been so expressive, a bundle of light and life trapped in the slums of the city with scum like Mikey. She didn’t look right dead.
Maybe it’s the sunken eyes and pale face, but the drugs had impacts on them all. He’s sure he doesn’t look right himself, sprawled in an unfamiliar bed as a fever rages through his system. The doctors had told him to expect it – a withdrawal from meth can cause a fever.
But they hadn’t told him he would see her. He can’t tell whether the sight of her is nauseating or filling. She was his everything, and now she lies rotting underneath the ground in a public park without a headstone to be found.
“I’m sorry” He hears himself croak, tears blurring his vision. He should’ve been better, should’ve been strong enough to carry her the entire way to sobriety like they’d planned, should’ve built the life he’d promised her when she got pregnant – a small house in the city, just the two of them and the baby making it work forevermore.
But the sickness was stronger. The sickness is always strongest.
And now she haunts him from the corner of the hospital room, her soulless eyes scorning. Look at what you did to me. Do you remember what you promised me? Do you remember? Do you remember?
Something nudges his side before he can reply. “Mikey?” Comes Leo’s ever-soothing voice, and it’s doing that thing where he’s trying to keep it steady but the fear rushes beneath it audibly, “You with me?”
His heart is crushed by the unforgiving claws of grief and shattered in his chest. “Yes” He croaks regretfully. Yes, he’s here, here in the hospital room with Leo, here in the world where Renet is dead, here in the world where he’s failed even though he tried he tried he tried he tried he tried he tried he tried he tried he tried he tried he tried-
Leo leans closer, running gentle, cool fingers through his hair, shushing him softly. “You’re okay” He murmurs, “You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
He’s crying. He hadn’t noticed it, but now with Leo cuddled around him, getting in the way of his view of Renet, he can’t help but feel the way his chest jerks up and down with shallow breaths, the sensation of his sobs as they push their way out through his mouth.
“I’m sorry” He sobs, but she can’t hear him. All she can do is stare blankly ahead, the emptiness in her gaze carrying so much more penance than just the glares she used to fix people with when upset with them.
Leo shushes him again. “You’re forgiven” He lies, “It’s all going to be okay, baby. It’s all going to be okay.”
Another lie, though only in a technical sense. He’ll never be okay again. Maybe at one point he had a shot of it with her, but now she lies deep beneath the ground in a sloppy grave – deep in a sloppy grave with him.
Even as the fever boils through him, Mikey knows into his very bones that he died with her that day. It doesn’t matter that his heart still beats – without her, he’ll never live again.