Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

the last thing that misha texted or said to anybody before the accident was to talya,

сідаючи на американські гірки, я поговорю з тобою пізніше. я люблю тебе

( getting on the roller coaster, i'll talk to you later. i love you. )

and then he remembered the creaking of the cart and the horror on noel’s face next to him, then— nothing.

no, that wasn’t true, there had been something…

the sudden lurch, the scream of metal slipping and twisting, the world spun, and the last thing misha remembered was the sickening lurch of the rollercoaster car tilting off the tracks, watching the bar holding him and noel in the cart twist and impale noel. and then misha screamed and grabbed his limp hand before the cart lurched again and misha flew out. he heard people yelling, the wind roaring past his ears, the rush of weightlessness before—

now nothing.

pain. that was the first thing he felt. a deep, throbbing, all-consuming pain radiating from his head, down his neck, through every limb. his ribs, his knees, knee.. too. it was too much. too much to think, too much to breathe. he tried to move, but his body wouldn’t listen. something was pressing against his face, something in his throat. a tube. he couldn’t—he couldn’t breathe properly.

panic surged through him, and suddenly, voices swarmed around him. hands holding him down. words he couldn’t understand. a machine beeped frantically, too fast, too loud.

“shh, mishka, you’re okay—you’re safe, just breathe—”

a nurse, a kind looking nurse. misha blinked, his vision swimming, shapes melting together into blinding white. his body felt wrong, heavy and weak, like it wasn’t his own. his head ached so badly it made his stomach turn. the room was spinning, everything too bright, too loud, too much.

misha tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. his throat burned, his mouth dry, and something was wrong. he knew something was wrong.

why did everything feel so slow? why was his body not listening? he blinked again, and this time, he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of a nearby monitor. there was a thick bandage wrapped around his head. his hair was shaved unevenly. his face—bruised, swollen.

his stomach twisted. he tried again to sit up, to talk, but his limbs were sluggish, clumsy, like they didn’t belong to him. the frustration burned inside him, but all that came out was a choked noise of effort.

the nurse grabbed his hand quickly. “hey, hey, don’t push yourself. you—” she hesitated. “you had brain surgery, misha. you hit your head…badly. we weren’t sure if you’d wake up.” 

brain surgery. one that his adopters wouldn’t pay for, and probably couldn’t afford. he had nobody. the words barely registered. his fingers twitched, but they felt slow, unsteady.

something was wrong.

misha tried again to speak, to ask, to demand answers, but what came out wasn’t right. the words were jumbled, broken. his tongue felt heavy, his thoughts lagging behind.

“it’s okay,” the nurse said softly, even though it clearly wasn’t. “you’re alive, mishka, and so are your friends. somehow. that’s what matters. we’ll figure everything else out.”

***

days passed. then weeks. the hospital became a prison, he wasn’t allowed to see his friends, and was even advised not to… noel and penny, he had heard, were the worst off…. and misha was trapped inside his own body. his brain felt foggy, scrambled, words slipping through his fingers before he could grasp them. his thoughts moved too slow, his mouth too clumsy. when he spoke, it didn’t sound like him.

he couldn’t read properly. couldn’t write. couldn’t even walk without help.

everything was wrong.

physical therapy was hell. his legs trembled, weak and unreliable. he lost his right leg in the crash and had been provided with a metal prosthetic. his balance was off. he fell, over and over, frustration bubbling up until all he could do was grit his teeth and push forward, even as tears burned his eyes.

speech therapy was worse. he knew what he wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out right. sometimes, they wouldn’t come at all. sometimes, they made no sense.

and the mirror. he hated the mirror.

the angry scar across his head. the way his eye didn’t track quite right anymore. the way his face looked different, how his voice sounded different, slipping in and out of other languages, not able to speak english as well as he used to. sometimes, most of the time, he couldn’t find the word. he used to be a polyglot, but now he didn’t think he could keep track of the words swimming through his head. he had them, but they never came out right. and then everybody looked at him like he was stupid.

he didn’t think that he was misha anymore, and that’s how he sat on his hospital bed, trying to find the words to answer talya’s frantic text messages over a period of 3 weeks… he had just gotten his phone back, and he needed to talk to her, and to see his friends.

truly, he needed to see noel, most of all.

***

noel had survived a lot in his seventeen years on the hellish planet earth.

was living surviving? was surviving living? he didn’t ask himself those questions anymore.

at six, he’d brushed with death. he didn’t remember it. his mother, however, would never let him live it down. noel was a late bloomer. small, even for a child. too-small children were too easy to crush with hulking school bus wheels. it was stupid, anyways; his fault for walking in front of a bus. he had only sustained a broken leg and a few scars that eventually faded with time. 

a lot seemed to be lost over the years, melting then solidifying once more as a mental block, keeping the rest of noel’s brain safe from the memories he didn’t want. memories he didn’t want didn’t equate to ones he didn’t need. there should’ve been an instinct that roared within him the second he got into that stupid rusty cart—no, there had to have been something, some tiny voice, that told him disaster was imminent. that inner voice of his six-year-old self, unable to do anything but sit and watch from his mind’s eye as the monster wheels inched closer and closer. there was nothing, nothing he could ever do. the danger bells set off too late on the roller coaster. 

noel only realized he’d been stabbed when the blood spurted onto his face, into his eyes, bathing his vision in a quite beautiful scarlet haze. death was a dangerous beauty, taking everything it claimed and creating art out of its remains. maybe there would be enough left of noel to create art. only then did the anger come. why like this? why in a ridiculous accident? noel didn’t care that he was dying. he didn’t care that breath suddenly wasn’t coming to him. he cared about the fact that this wasn’t how he wanted to go out. 

it was supposed to mean something—a fall from the highest rooftop, a blur of motion before landing too beautifully in a jet-black hearse. the most beautiful suicide. a slow death in an alleyway, a gradual descent into a corpse that became quite the sight for any passersby. maybe noel did care that he was dying. maybe he did care that the world had stopped spinning for a moment. maybe he did care that he could feel misha’s hand taking his. he felt no pain. it was the end of a film. the slow fade to black, but no credits were to be shown. just an empty screen, leaving its confused viewers asking, simply, “why?” why could something like this happen? six innocent teenagers, gone with the wind. except…that wasn’t true.

confusion couldn’t even begin to describe what noel had felt when he first opened his eyes. it was there, yes, but mixed with so many other emotions, like some fucked-up cocktail in noel’s brain. 

noel’s brain. it was supposed to be thinking, running. however, a thick haze of fog clouded the vision in his mind’s eye. a weak groan of pain was all that escaped him, if you could even call it a groan. it was more like a slow exhale, no vocals. it fizzled out. he tried again. nothing. 

noel gasped out again and again, trying to formulate words, a cry of pain, for help, but it was just nothing, over and over. that was the second noel realized that he had really survived. it was also when he realized that he might not have wanted this. that little fiasco in the hospital kicked off the worst month of his goddamn life.

noel had never been an attention whore, but he’d liked eyes on him, up until all eyes were on him. 

everyone was always crowded around him, making sure he was okay, making sure he was eating the disgusting purées the hospital fed him through tubes. even then, they had to put him on anesthesia for a while as they probed through his guts, making sure he hadn’t busted them open again. 

***

after it was finally confirmed that he could eat like normal and leave his cramped hospital room for a few short hours, physical therapy started. noel hated that even more. he just wanted to walk again, but it hurt, it hurt so bad. and even after he went off the crutches, sharp pains would still shoot through his legs whenever he dared take a step the wrong way. he was stuck with a fucked-up gait and compression forever, since his legs had been smashed and crushed every which way. 

the worst part was the cavity in his stomach, the bag attached above his hip collecting sickly waste that his intestines couldn’t handle anymore. and the hole– the place where the bar had pierced him seemed to jeer at him, mocking his stupidity for getting into this situation in the first place. it just added to the stress that made his head explode daily, and the pressure didn’t seem to be loosening. 

his mother visited frequently, fussing over her sweet baby boy, sitting by his side whenever she could. it pissed noel off. she only paid attention to his pain when she could physically see it, and still ignored essentially everything else he had to still carry with him. it was exhausting. noel was exhausted, more than he’d ever been. he couldn’t write—his handwriting just didn’t look right anymore. it was all messed up, too loopy, too sideways. his wrists and fingers always quivered like quills on a porcupine whenever he tried to do anything, including typing, so he just gave that up. sketching, too. everything was abandoned. he wasn’t even a one-trick pony anymore. it had all been stolen so fast. noel knew that he needed to heal, and, eventually, he would be able to at least type again, but it was hard. as he sat down in the hospital bed, gagging down that stupid fucking baby food, noel told himself not to think about it too hard. he couldn’t get his hopes up. 

his phone buzzed. noel looked over. whoever was texting him would be a fine distraction from…all of this. he picked up his phone and opened messages, eyes narrowing as he read over the message. 

another text from his mom, asking if he was okay. never mind it being a distraction. noel rolled his eyes, leaving his mom on read. he didn’t want to take the agonizingly slow time to type out a reply. noel flopped backwards onto the cushy bed, carefully resting his hands over his chest. he knew he wouldn’t be sleeping, and the rest of the choir wouldn’t be either. maybe he could go and bother them.

***

the only thing that misha had left out of the things he had on him before the accident, was his, now cracked, iphone 5. they cut his uniform off of him in the ER, and the hat that he had been wearing was splattered in his own blood, so it got thrown away. he didn’t even have his wallet, not like he had much, if any, money in there… but he did have a polaroid of him and his mother. a photo taken at his 8th birthday, at their little house on the coast of odesa. it was small, but it was theirs. his family didn’t have much to show for themselves but their pride and their kindness— tamara would have given the shirt off of her back and the blood from her heart to anyone who needed it.

he remembered the clothesline in their backyard, his favorite vyshyvanka pinned to it. the breeze blowing the curtains into the house. the stained mahogany furniture. playing in the rolling fields with his cousins. his mother, golden and beautiful, (her smile was the sun, to him.) the dappled light of the dusk in the kitchen and the hope in his heart, hope that took root like a worm inside of an apple. 

when his mother got sick, that all fell away, and the ground pulled misha under and ate him alive. there was no more mahogany floors, no more medivnyk to fill up on before dinner or hills to roll down. that was all gone, now, and only rage and passion were left in its wake. just a cold basement, and a cold heart, and then he met talya, and he could almost imagine himself running in those fields again, with her by his side. he could almost see her hanging clothes onto a clothesline and him holding their baby on his hip. he knew it was irrational, he knew that it was stupid, sure, but he ignored any doubt and he ignored any criticism. talya was a physical manifestation of his home, and damn God and the sinners the same. misha never quite believed in God, anyway.

and here he sat, that cracked phone in his hand, scrolling through hundreds of messages from talya, which was expected, and hundreds of comments on his youtube page bad egg? misha decided the comments were a question for later. misha stared at the cracked phone screen, the shattered glass distorting the words just enough that he had to squint. His head throbbed–an ever-present ache that never seemed to fully go away—but he forced himself to focus. 

misha had always had migraines, ever since he was a little boy in and out of hospitals in ukraine. they told them then that there was nothing they could do, that the migraines and his pain were an effect of the radiation around them. that there was no way to fix it. that it would probably get worse as he got older. but now, whenever it got bad, misha had to sit in the dark with no stimulation (one of the nurses had to bring in black-out curtains) until his head stopped pounding, until it stopped feeling like somebody was shoving an ice pick into his skull over and over and over, and he would cry and scream but then that would make his head hurt even more and it was a cycle of tears and pain, and misha gave up that tough boy act the second that he woke up. he was the same little boy kicking his feet in the hospital all those years ago, his mother fighting for the doctor to just listen to her, that her boys pain was real and that they needed the answers. 

Таля: МІША ВІДПОВІДАЙ МЕНІ

Таля: Міша, будь ласка. Просто дай мені знати, що ти живий.

Таля: Клянуся Богом, якщо ти мене ігноруєш, скажи мені, що з тобою все гаразд.

Таля: Я їду в Канаду, якщо ти не відповіси.

Таля: Мишеня моє, я щодня думаю про тебе. Я знаю, що тобі боляче.

Таля: Мені так шкода, моя маленька мишка

Таля: Будь ласка, не кажіть мені, що все так погано, я бачила в новинах.

he had been dying to talk to talya, she was the last person who he had texted, he thinks… and he thinks he remembers reaching for his phone from his pocket as he was falling. 

he thinks, but the screen is making his head hurt again and he doesn’t think that he can bear to talk to her right now. he doesn’t understand why, but he closes the app again.

instead, he tabs over to the choir group chat, which had been dead since the day of the accident. the last message was from constance: 

[ brb, bathroom! ]
[ where are you guys? ]

before anybody could respond, she had found them waiting in the line for the cyclone, saving a spot for her so that while she was in the bathroom, the line would still be moving. it was her favorite ride, after all.

misha’s shaking fingers hover over the keyboard.

he exhales sharply, then types:

[ where r you guys, need 2 c u. ]

but he doesn’t hit send. instead, he tabs over to the page of ‘members’, and directs himself towards his messages with noel. a few back and forths. a few missed calls. a few ‘r u ok’s. all before september 14th.

he types in this text box instead.
[ need 2 c u. plz/ ]

he waits for a response and leans his head back against the pillow, closing his eyes. his whole body feels too heavy and this new world still doesn’t make sense to him, but maybe if they see each other again, they can help glue each other back together.

***

noel glanced down at his phone upon feeling it buzz against his leg. he opened it, squinting down at the text. from misha. 

he wasn’t necessarily shocked that misha of all people was the first to text again. he started typing. 

[kn mg rkm iys a755]

noel frowned, backspacing. jesus christ, he needed to work on the eternal shakiness in his hands, or it’d be the death of him. maybe a voice to text message would be better.

“i’m in my own room. it’s close to the icu, because that’s where i got moved from. room a75, or something.” 

for once, the voice to text worked for him. that blessed noel with a small smile. maybe seeing misha would make him feel better too. 

noel paused, taking a moment to think about misha. misha bachynskyi, who he’d felt drawn to since the beginning. after all, noel had always been obsessed with foreign stuff, so meeting an actual european was the dream for him. it was oddly fascinating, how misha functioned. noel wondered if he had seen it all too—with the warehouse and everything. he wondered if misha knew that everyone knew what had really happened to him, with his adopters and all. he wondered if it even was true, or just a bizarre fever dream. misha would tell the choir on his own time. he just needed time. 

noel sighed, sending another voice to text message. “they probably won’t let me walk down anywhere, even though i really can. but maybe i can convince my nurse to take me down to wherever you are.” noel truly did hope that would happen—he felt like he was slowly going insane, seeing the same two faces every day. his mother and the nurse, his mother and the nurse, two sets of concerned blue eyes, over and over and over and over and over and over and over. all the other faces were covered by masks. it was torture, really. noel had always longed for that, but not like this. he had longed for trauma and drama, but not like this. he got what he wanted, just…not how he wanted it. 

he didn’t even want to go back to town after this. noel glanced down at his phone. on the lock screen was a photo of his dad. samuel gruber, the beloved pastor. uranium city had known him just as father sam. meanwhile, noel knew samuel gruber. father sam was just a blessing, everyone said. he worked with the youth group, as he just loved kids so, so much. he loved his youth group with his whole heart. he loved noel, who always had to remind himself that love comes in different ways, manifesting in all sorts of varied forms. it was still love. it had to be. if it was anything bad, noel would’ve realized it, and, being frank, noel didn’t remember samuel. did he want to?

samuel passed away when noel was eleven. a car accident. the entirety of uranium came to the man’s funeral, with buckets of tears gushing from their eyes. noel had just stood with the flowers, like he’d been told to. he didn’t get it. his mother wasn’t on her knees by his grave like he had expected her to be—she was just like him. blank. there wasn’t as much color in the flowers that day, noel had noticed. it was supposed to be a celebration of samuel’s life—the incredible life of father sam, who loved everyone. would noel have gotten the same treatment if this accident killed him? he truly did doubt it. but how else would he have wanted it? he would have wanted no one there, as they all knew that he’d just been trouble, no reflection of his father. good. noel didn’t want to be a reflection of samuel gruber. “i’ll talk to my nurse.” he hit send, shaking his head out. noel needed a good thought-clearing.

***

misha heard his phone buzz a few times before he picked it up. he had already forgotten about the message he had sent to noel, and assumed that it was just talya again… until he picked it up to put it on silent, and saw the replies from all of his friends. 

“поет!”

“i am brain? area. up per level, yes?” he typed, although he didn’t really know what he was saying at all. he knew that he was in the neurology unit, but he couldn’t find the word even though he saw it everyday in the signs in the hallway. everything was so sterile, and he would be pushed in a wheelchair to whatever therapy he had to go to by the same nurse every day. she wore yellow scrubs and had honey brown hair. misha didn’t know her name, but she always tried to cheer him up and would sneak him extra snacks, even though he didn’t eat much of anything. it made his stomach churn if he even tried. misha had just gotten the ng tube they placed after his surgery taken out, as they deemed him recovered enough to eat on his own. he didn’t. and they were already talking about putting it back in.

“meet  in couch place. down area by door ok?” misha meant to say to meet in the lobby. he didn’t know where everybody else’s rooms were, and he was surprised that none of the members of the choir had seen each other in a whole month. not even while they were all going to therapies… misha wondered if that was intentional. to keep them apart to keep them from reliving the trauma of the accident, or something stupid like that. 

“sorru if i talk bad. i got hit my head. я дуже стараюся.” (i’m trying really hard.)

misha decided to just invite himself to go down and meet his friend. he didn’t care to ask for permission, even though he knew he couldn’t walk well. at all. but he did have a pair of crutches, like the ones that ricky had, that he was supposed to be practicing using. they were sitting next to the bed, so he shrugged and carefully slid off of the stiff hospital bed, reaching towards them.

he slid them onto his arms and stood up as carefully as possible. he wobbled a bit, and his vision blurred and his stomach twisted. but eventually it settled, and the salt in the sea in the boy mellowed. step by step. like he had been practicing in physical therapy, even though he fell most of the time. step by step.

he made his way to the small bathroom attached to his room. every time misha was in the hallway, he passed decorated rooms with posters and fairy lights and printed sheets and blankets and pillows. misha had none of that stuff. he didn’t even have any of that in his basement, let alone anybody who would come and bring it and set it up for him. it made him kind of sad. he wished he had cool stuff in his room, he had cool stuff back in ukraine. 

his right side was weaker than his left side, his right leg was gone and replaced with a prosthetic that he was supposed to be learning how to use and live with. kind of badass, in all honesty, if it hadn’t been him. if it hadn’t been so damn hard. his arm hung weakly, and his leg dragged behind, but he kept pushing. even though he was going agonizingly slow. 

he looked in the mirror, the scar along his hairline not as angry red anymore. not scabbed over anymore. his hair had mostly grown back now, too. brown wisps and curls. he still didn’t look so much like himself. his face was still puffy from the steroids for brain swelling, and his body was still bony from all the weight lost. 

before the accident, misha had been beginning to fill out again. he even ate a funnel cake and shared some cheese curds with noel at the fair. he was, at least a little bit, happy. he had friends, (even though they got on his last nerve), he had a girl (even though she was across the world), and he had noel to help him through it. 

but now, he was back to square one. any weight he had gained, he lost tenfold. the sweatshirt and pajama pants that the nurse in the yellow scrubs had given him were too big, hanging over his body like rags that didn’t belong there. like they were meant for somebody stronger, not for misha’s broken body.

a shaky breath escaped his lips involuntarily. he leaned heavily onto the crutches and held himself over the sink. “все буде добре.” he mumbled to himself like a mantra, grabbing his phone and texting noel again.

“i going.down K? see there” 

he, agonizingly slowly, made his way out of his room and to the elevator. slipping under the radar just in case he wasn’t meant to be going anywhere. but he decided it didn’t really matter anyways. 

once he got downstairs, it was a few steps to the couch area that he was talking about. he huffed and threw himself onto one of the larger ones, watching around and waiting. he found himself shivering as he slipped the crutches off of his arms and sighed.

***

eventually, noel gathers himself and manages to shamble down to the lobby. since he’d been in the icu for so long, they had just decided to keep him on floor one, and he couldn’t say he minded. focusing on using the crutches is exhausting, especially with his perpetual quivering like a wet puppy, but he makes it. “hey,” he rasps upon arriving, collapsing onto one of the couches with a sigh of relief.

“my poet! oh i have missed you.” misha smiled sideways at noel. he looked him up and down, trying to assess his injuries. he looked— better… but “better” was a given after what misha had seen. the blood spitting from noel’s mouth and the screams.. he pushed it away. focus. the room started to spin around him, and the ice pick in his head started again, so misha held his head in his hands for a minute, his eyes dark and fluttery, trying to keep himself awake and alert.

noel smiled back, sliding in next to misha. he opened his mouth to speak again, but frowned upon noticing misha hide his head in his hands. noel hadn’t exactly gotten to be around him, so this…this was new. was it a panic attack? some sort of side effect? he could see the huge scar peeking out from the little wisps of hair on misha’s forehead. was it from that? uncertain, he reaches out a hand, some sort of silent offering of help. he had to help.

“i am okay, my poet.” misha rasped under his breath, shaking the pain off and running a hand through his hair. it still had an iv port in it, but he had somehow, gotten used to it. “how… are you?” he asked, not really knowing what to say or how to start a conversation. he wanted to ask if noel had that crazy morphine dream with the talking fortune teller machine but he wasn’t about to look insane quite yet.

noel nodded, leaning back against the couch. he shifted uncomfortably, wanting his stupid tight compression sleeves off his knees, but he knew that he’d be in blazing pain if he did. mild discomfort was better, he guessed. “um…okay. i don’t think i can say i am okay, but…” he laughed awkwardly. “i can function now? and eat. i have to eat this disgusting baby food, though…it’s so that my intestines don’t get torn open, though, so it’s better than that. barely.”

misha nodded along with what noel was saying, extending his other hand out to rub noel’s back. he took a deep breath and pulled up his right pant leg the slightest amount, revealing a mechanical prosthetic leg. “i got hit on the head bad. get headaches, can’t talk good. i do not know. they said i have a TBI. and this. leg got crushed so they took it off, i guess. i had sick tattoo on this leg, man!” he pushed his pant leg back down and scooted closer to noel, really, really wanting to put his head on his shoulder, but he was afraid to hurt noel. “had a tube in my nose for food like ricky has in stomach. took it out the other day, but say i might need it back again. fuck!” the boy’s voice shook. he wasn’t so tough, he wasn’t so strong. he just wished his mom was here to hold him. “i had this weird dream, though, man. i do not want to talk about it. weirdo machine, like the guy that give you the little paper, yeah?...”

noel looked up, leaning closer to misha ever-so-slightly. okay, so he wasn’t the only one. he swallowed, ignoring the way it felt like a marble down his throat. “yeah, i… i thought that was just the drugs.”

noel nodded, cheeks warming up slightly as he remembered his performance. in drag, sucking face with misha. and if he saw it and felt it, everyone else had seen it, and misha had felt it…he almost chokes on his own spit. it was embarrassing, yes, but it was also amazing, how he had done something he never had before, even if it was in a drug-induced hallucination.

misha nodded, his eyes fluttering, he reached up and rubbed them softly. “you got your tragedy, my поет.” misha sideways smiled at him again, not really knowing what else to say. “it is good to see you, really. i missed you. it is lonely up there. only one good nurse, her name is karna-? come to see me sometime. я втомився і болить голова.”

“ah—yeah, i…yeah,” noel replied, scooting closer to misha once again, but keeping his head turned the opposite direction. he wanted to talk about that makeout sesh, but he’d also heard misha’s ballad to talya. that was real tragedy. it had truly made him think, and now, well, now he felt bad for wanting something like that. “i certainly did.”

“блін, я б хотів випити! трохи горілки зняло б!” (damn i wish i had a drink! a little vodka would take the edge off!) misha listened to noel, almost sensing what he was thinking about. “i haven’t spoken to her, you know. she has been texting since it happened. i could not bear to answer. я її люблю, просто не знаю. я не знаю.”

“i just got my phone back. it is cracked. hundreds of messages from her…”

noel glanced towards misha, eyebrows raised. “christ, you just did? i mean, i guess it makes sense, blue light would fuck with headaches and stuff.” he goes quiet for a second, considering what misha had said.

"yea, it do. hurt my head to look at it too long. had to get black out curtains in my room. speaking of. do you guys have, uh, how you say...um. posters, and stuff? i do not. i wish i did. but that is not a big problem." he rambled on and on a bit, but he didn't really have any kind of filter, anymore. 

he used to be angry, every emotion was tenfold the normal amount on misha, but now, he just felt numb. like he got hit in the head and suddenly he was a different boy. a different boy, but still with the same trauma. still with the same pain, but his mood shifts didn't mean that he wasn't still stubborn as hell. he would refuse medication, thinking that he didn't need it, and then cry from the pain in his head and what was left of his leg and regret it. 

misha hated feeling useless, he hated feeling or being dependent on other people. on anything. canada took his mother and it took his leg and it took the one thing that heralded him as himself -- his passion.

noel glanced down at his shaking hands folded in his lap, all bandaged up. he didn’t like this change. he could tell that misha wasn’t really misha anymore, just as he didn’t feel like himself sometimes. but misha was worse. 

he hated thinking that, “worse”, but it was true. he sighed, leaning back against the couch, but that hurt, so he tried to readjust. more fucking pain. great. he had to move around slowly, because he couldn’t tear his intestines open again, and it was agonizing. “um…i mean, i got some fairy lights that mother brought. she didn’t want any of my other posters to be there.”

“i will get you a picture of lolalola, my poet.” misha yawned softly and brought his hand to his head, playing with his recently grown out hair, trying literally anything to calm down the pounding in his brain, until it throbbed even more and turned into a searing pain along the scar on his head. after the accident, they had to cut out a piece of his skull to relieve the pressure in his brain after his head trauma, and then he was in a coma, and then once the swelling was down, they put the piece of his skull back in. 

misha still had to take steroids to keep the swelling down, marking his puffy cheeks, and even then, he still had seizures, his right eye was always loopy, and he couldn’t exactly control what came out of his mouth:

“трахни мене!” (fuck me!) 

he exclaimed in regards to the pain, he felt his face getting hot and he wanted to cry and scream and he wanted his mother. 

he was happy to see noel but it also hurt at the same time because he remembered. he remembered the blood and the guts and his scream. and he remembered him dancing around in a wig and they kissed and got drunk and they were dead but they were together and it was the best time. misha noticed noel wincing and misha just wanted noel to feel better, but he knew that he could do nothing, and he knew that he still had work to do, too.

noel managed a soft smile, but it faded the second he noticed a hint of pain on misha’s face. he couldn’t help but reach out again, because he wanted to do something, he wanted to help, he had to help. would misha want help? would he want it if he knew it was just because noel felt bad? insensitive? it was a bit of a slap to the face for noel. but he took himself back to reality, where all he could do was offer silent support, because, otherwise, he couldn’t really do anything. and it physically hurt.

***

the hospital lounge was too bright, too loud, too much.

but it was the first time they’d been together again since the accident. no more hushed voices in hallways. just noel—noel was right there. sitting next to him, wrapped in a hoodie way too big for him, pale but alive, laughing and talking together. not like they did before, (it would never be like before). misha had lost everything, but he hadn’t lost his poet. misha didn’t believe in God, he never had, not even when he went to the orthodox church with his mother and she lit votive candles and he watched and felt something come over him. maybe something like hope. and he secretly prayed for a friend— for somebody who would understand him like nobody else. it took coming to uranium city to find him, but misha thinks his prayers were answered. misha doesn’t believe, but thank God for that. thank God for noel.

misha had missed this.

even if he was exhausted. even if his head ached so badly he could feel it in his teeth. even if his weak side was shaking, his stump sore where his prosthetic connected, his balance, even sitting down, an unsteady thing. he could push through it. just for a little while.

then—

“misha bachynskyi! young man!”

nurse karna, that was her name, stood in the doorway, looking furious. yellow scrubs on, arms crossed, eyes locked on him with the kind of glare that made even the strongest-willed patients fold.

“you are a fall risk, you are not cleared to walk unsupervised, and you didn’t tell anyone where you weren’t going!” she snapped, marching toward him.

noel opened his mouth to speak again, to say something comforting for misha, but he was immediately cut off by nurse karna. 

oh, yikes. he knew her—well, not personally, but he’d seen her around. he sank a bit more into the hoodie, wincing internally. he knew the feeling. he’d gotten yelled at his fair share of times for doing something he wasn’t supposed to, getting close to once again destroying the intricate set of organs that he’d managed to fuck up. 

but for misha, who would probably be killed by another fall if he hit his head, and he could easily fall with the prosthetic leg…noel could definitely see the risk there as well. still, he didn’t think misha deserved to get chewed out. he winced, not because of the sound but because his head throbbed even harder at the sudden shift in attention. his vision wavered as he turned toward her, forcing himself to stay upright on the couch.

misha's chest tightened. his mouth was dry, and the headache was so bad that it felt like his skull was going to split in two. his heart raced, and his breathing became shallow as he tried to calm himself, but the words wouldn't come. he just wanted to crawl into himself and make the world stop spinning.

"i-i just wanted—" misha tried to speak, but the words didn't come out right, too jumbled, too painful, like his brain wasn't working in sync with his mouth. he felt weak, too weak to stand up for himself, but more than that, he felt small. and the tears started to sting his eyes, the frustration building to a point where he couldn't stop them from spilling over.

"i can't—" misha gasped, his throat tight as he tried to explain. "i-my head-hurts so much...i’m sorry. я сподіваюся, що я помру .” his voice cracked, the words barely a whisper.

he could feel his body trembling, the weight of the reality hitting him all at once. he needed noel. he needed noel more than he needed air right now. noel had been the only one who understood, the only one who knew how to calm him, how to make the pain feel like it wasn't so unbearable.

"... i just wanted to see… my friend… noel," misha said, his voice barely audible, the tears falling freely now as he struggled to stand up, but his leg wasn't cooperating. he felt dizzy, like the world was tilting sideways.

nurse karna hesitated, her eyes softening, but she wasn't the one who could make him feel better. she wasn't the one he needed right now.

as misha's breathing grew more erratic, his vision swimming with spots, he cried out in frustration. his hospital room had been too small, too suffocating, he just needed to get out.

noel bit the inside of his lip, willing himself to move, to do anything remotely helpful. he wanted to help misha—no, he needed to. he knew that misha cared a lot about him, so misha had to let him, right? 

“hey—hey,” noel whispered. he’d never been great at comfort, but he owed misha this much after how kind he’d been.

 “it’s okay. look at me. it’s gonna be okay.” he finally rose up slightly, reaching out as much as he could without fucking with his fragile torso. he hated that—the fragility. trauma had made monique gibeau tough. why did it make him soft and dainty as a leaf? he should’ve become the thorn of the rose, not the silky petal. 

noel ran a hand through his hair. lightly. he needed to focus on fostering misha, not on the way he was deteriorating into everything he’d tried to escape from. “misha? misha. i’m right here. can i hold your hand?” 

he said it through gritted teeth. not annoyed, just trying to think of misha. what else was he supposed to say? how was he supposed to fix someone when he couldn’t take care of himself? how was he supposed to actually think of misha, when it was misha, always on his mind, taking him over? misha was all he thought about, yet, at the same time, wasn’t. noel had long given up questioning how that worked. all it ever was was misha, misha, misha. 

he didn’t want to help, he needed to help. he needed to help. needed to. it was the very, very least he could do. misha had no one, so noel had to be his someone. it was simple as that. the concept was so simple, so why was this so fucking hard? noel ignored the tiny little voice in the back of his mind telling him that it didn’t have to be.

***

the world was spinning around the boy, crashing waves towards the rocks off the coast of the sea. misha had always thought that the world ending would be more than this, wilder than this, with trumpets and the sea turning to blood. it turns out that the world ending was really just him, heart sinking and vision swirling. it was getting darker outside now, and the lights were blinding and glaring and pulsing like fireworks. the hum of nurses and doctors and the ambulances wailing outside and getting closer and closer were shrill and head-splitting and he heard a sob, a choked sob and a voice crack at the top, and then he realized that it was coming from his own mouth. his own sinful, sick mouth. the fluid in his ears pounded and he was going to vomit. everything was too much and spinning like the swings at the fair, or like the gravitron, ricky’s favorite ride that he had been begging to go on, and everybody said 'after the cyclone', his head was filled with pressure like a powder keg about to explode and everything he had been holding in bubbled under the surface. he held his breath but he still drowned, pulled sucked under the earth, between two places like life and death and heaven and hell and righteousness and sin.

a voice came, but it wasn't just any voice. it was a soft voice, a concerned voice. it was the voice that he heard in his dreams, the voice of the boy who held him and wiped his tears and brushed his hair when everything was weighing on his chest like a bird with a broken wing or a racoon in the middle of the road. it's already dead, why do you keep running it over?

misha just nodded at the other boys question. he couldn't even muster to look him in the eyes, not into those big, brown, sad eyes. he couldn't bear to see the toll that he was taking on noel. but he kept sobbing, and he kept sniffling, because he didn't know what else to do. he couldn't breathe.

"mhm... mhm." the boy groaned under his breath, his face was burning and there was a hole in his chest like when you get the wind knocked out of you, like a laceration through the heart. maybe the worm was entering the apple, maybe the woodpecker was pecking through the bark.

he found himself falling onto noel, his all too puffy face crying into the other boys chest. he hoped he wasn't hurting him, he was at least able to think clear enough to notice that.

misha made a sound—high, thin, and desperate—and nurse karna let out a slow breath. “okay. misha’s been having seizures when he gets like this—when he gets too overwhelmed. we either need to calm him down... or prepare for it.” she muttered. "jesus christ." 

noel drew in a sharp breath at the sudden feeling of misha’s head on his chest, but he didn’t push him off or even try to let him go. he couldn’t. he could never do that. instead, his hands flew to misha’s hair, hovering over the rolling beautifully brown curls for just a moment. it was a few seconds, just barely a heartbeat, but it felt like hours, dragging on and on like chains across a rough steel floor. 

what could he do? what could he do? noel rest his hands shakily on misha’s back, his breaths coming in short puffs from the weight on his chest, but he didn’t care, he couldn’t care. it felt like the rest of the hospital, the rest of uranium, the rest of the fucking world had gone into a blackout, leaving the moon shining down on him and misha alone. 

he held misha against his chest like they were the last men on earth. noel had never been the type to comfort people, he knew that much. but misha was different. he had ignored misha for so long, and he regretted it more and more with every second that passed. misha was the ray of sunlight that peeked through the curtains every morning, the whispered promise of being something, anything, that carried with the light breeze. misha was the beautiful embodiment of everything he needed to appreciate more, the manifestation of all he ignored coming together in a stained-glass portrait of a boy. too beautiful. too finite. finite, yet, he couldn’t take that. noel could hold misha and tell him how much he regretted the months, years he’d spent ignoring him and pushing him off to the side. he could tell him about how much he regretted everything until the sun blazed white and ate the earth.

 to tear his heart out and hand it, still beating, to misha, would still never be enough to make up for his selfishness. all he could do to appreciate this boy was hold him. holding misha, just sitting there, arms wrapped around his quivering form, skittering for purchase on sheets of ice. noel wanted to be that rock that misha had never received, the solidity in a melting cavern. it didn’t excuse what he’d done, but it was close enough, damn it.

“it’s okay, it’s okay, you’re gonna be okay.” noel hated lying. but maybe he wasn’t lying. maybe he was right, and this could turn out fine, but he didn’t want it to. he wanted to prove to misha that he’d fucking vivisect himself just to express that he understood, that he cared. noel couldn’t listen to nurse karna, but still, he looked up at her, clearly falling apart. “i’ve seen him like this before… get—get him a blanket or something! anything to cover his head and ears, block out light, block out sound.”

misha shook his head, the world tilting on its axis, noels body carried the warmth of everything under heaven. of everything holy, of everything righteous. and misha's broken body carried the weight of the sin against it.

"nuh...uh..." he muttered, muffled into noels chest, tears and snot slipping onto noels hoodie. "don' feel... good. don' under-don'... get it."

sun-kissed skin, the overtones in the choir, the echo of voices that no longer existed in the same way they once had. the rise and fall of sound, the way it used to vibrate in his bones, in his chest, in the deepest parts of him that he could no longer find.

misha didn’t know where those pieces had gone. he thought maybe they had been left in the wreckage, crushed beneath metal and ash, scattered across the tracks of where his old life ended and this new one began. maybe he was just what was left—a reconstruction of something that had once been whole.

noel’s warmth burned through misha’s clothes, through his skin, straight into his marrow. into his soul.

until a violent shudder ran through him, starting in his weakened right side and spreading outward, his muscles locking up before he could even whimper. his fingers, still clutching at noel’s hoodie, spasmed and went slack. his breath caught—sharp, choking—his body tensing, tensing, tensing...

“damn it, i knew this was going to happen. we need to get him upstairs, now.”

and noel swore the world stopped spinning, for just a moment. his heart stopped beating. his breathing stopped for longer than a simple hitch of breath. and it all came crashing down too suddenly. too soon. too fucking soon. he stiffened, hands going still and stiff in misha’s hair, before he tried to move, willed his legs to just carry him, begged his torso to stay intact for just a moment so that he could get misha to safety. that was all he needed. he would pay. he had nothing left to lose—if he ripped his organs open again, it would be for misha, and that would be infinitely more than enough. 

“how?! will it just shock him more if we move him? what do we do?” noel’s voice was shaky. hoarse. he wanted to scream, to just get misha up and go, but he couldn’t. he was too frail. and he hated it. he wanted to live a tragedy with misha, but he didn’t want this. the build up of suspense, the hardening of rock-hard exteriors, only the softening of hearts when truly necessary; it was all missing. there was nothing to build up to—reality had already hit, and it kept hitting, kept beating and beating and beating, letting its victims almost crawl out for mercy before dragging them in again. 

noel wanted that sweet, sweet mercy to last longer. for once in his life, noel realized he wasn’t craving tragedy. the eternal hungriness that sat in the pit of his stomach, clouding his thoughts and closing around his heart had finally been satiated, albeit by arsenic. burning and bitter, tearing, destroying. he tried his best to gather himself. “what can i do? please, just tell me what i can do. please. ”

noel held misha like he was made of porcelain, he held him like an unsung hymn. like peeling an apple and trying to keep the slices intact all the way around. it was the kind of softness that misha had never felt before, so new and so tender that it felt wrong. like he didn't deserve it, that he never had and that he never would.

karna took a deep, but shaky breath. "noel, there isn't anything that you can do. we have to get him back to his room, and i suppose i can bend the rules a bit to allow you to stay with him." she motioned towards the other nurses who had noticed the commotion, willing them to grab a stretcher to bring misha back up to his room. she knew that it was a stretch that he wouldn't be able to travel, even with assistance.

“…okay, fine. as long as i get to stay with him. please.” it was a battle, keeping his voice steady, but it’s one noel knee he could win, even if it was ongoing. he had fought and won it before, he could do it again, and again, and again, and again.

the worst fight, though, was focusing on karna in the hospital. now that the day had progressed, the halls were a lot more busy with rushing doctors scribbling on clipboards and completely disregarding any legs (or crutches) that happen to cross their paths. they were only looking for heads, and noel was keeping his down, just trying to get around fast. maybe that wouldn’t work. he managed to make it past his room, to the elevator, without attracting a ton of attention. mighty fine achievements, especially given how he felt like he was about to puke his guts out from the…everything. the entire hospital was a lot, maybe too much, but the thought of leaving misha overwhelmed everything else.

noel had to be there.

karna didn’t argue, even though she could have. should have, maybe. but the exhaustion in noel’s voice, the way his hands twitched with restraint, the way he looked like he was barely holding himself together. she knew better than to push him. she sighed, long and slow, rubbing her temple before giving a small, reluctant nod.

“fine. but if i say you leave, you leave. understood?”

***

misha woke up to the blazing light of heaven and the angels crying in his ears. too many hands on him. too many voices. too many bright lights. it was too much, too much, too much—he groaned, weakly pushing at the hands, but his arms wouldn’t cooperate. his body wouldn’t move the way he wanted it to. there were voices. familiar ones. but they weren’t the one he needed.

“noel,” he mumbled, voice thick, sluggish, wrong, but the hands didn’t stop. the voices didn’t quiet.

he squeezed his eyes shut. turned his face into the pillow.

“noel.”

his body ached. his head was splitting open. his muscles were sore and trembling. and then he felt it. warmth. a hand in his hair. another on his arm, grounding, steady. he leaned into it, weak and exhausted and barely even thinking. noel was here.

misha let out a long, shaky breath, eyes fluttering closed again. “…stay.”

noel was quiet, soft with his movements, as if cradling a glass pitcher. he slid his hand on misha’s arm to his back, touch feather-light, fingertips grazing along. “i’m here,” he whispered, rubbing misha’s back. rhythmically, calmly, a solid, grounding, up and down, up and down.

“it’s okay. i’m right here. i’m not leaving.” it hurt noel’s heart, the idea of even trying to leave misha’s side. he was exhausted anyways—his legs felt like they were just barely hanging onto him, dangling lazily, numbly, like a puppet’s—but even if he wasn’t, he’d stay right by misha’s side. it was a pull he couldn’t even try to ignore, especially after the isolation for weeks upon weeks. his stomach twisted as he realized that misha had been just as isolated, sitting in a basement, for years. noel could assume his adopters wouldn’t visit him here, either. noel sighed, hand coming to a stop and resting gently upon misha’s back. he was thinking too hard.

misha’s head was stuffed with cotton. his tongue tied and his body cold. misha shifted slightly under noel’s touch, exhaling a breath that sounded almost too heavy for his frame. his fingers curled weakly into the fabric of noel’s shirt, grasping, holding, like if he let go, he’d fall through the cracks of something he couldn’t name.

“sometimes… i just feel like… i am not here, in the way that i used to be,” misha murmured, his voice quiet, hoarse, tired. the words were raw in his mouth, burningly honest in a way that made his chest ache.

his whole life, people had come and gone. they left when it was too much. when he was too much. and noel—noel was soft with him, careful, like he was something breakable, but misha knew how this story went. he didn’t want noel to stay out of pity. he didn’t want noel to look at him and see something ruined.

but even as he said it, even as the words hung between them, misha pressed closer, his body betraying him, his exhaustion cracking through the walls he so carefully built.

“i don’t want to be alone again,” he admitted, barely above a whisper. “please hold me.” he said, as he patted a spot on the other side of the bed next to him.

Chapter Text

noel nodded, absentmindedly brushing some of misha’s hair out of his face with his thumb. 

would it be okay to say he agreed? would it be okay to say he felt the same? he knew a touch too hard could shatter misha, but could a wrong word have the same effect? he kept being careful. just in case. he didn’t want to scare misha away, even though he did seem pretty comfortable.

“are you sure i…” noel trailed off. why was he even asking this? he knew he was going to do it anyways. carefully, precisely, he lifted himself out of the chair he had been sitting in, wincing slightly as he swore he felt his muscles and bones shift around in his body, ever-so-slightly moving, grazing each other. it was uncomfortable, disgusting—but he would deal with it. he had worse problems, and, most importantly, he needed to be there for misha. 

“is this good?” noel eventually mumbled, laying himself down on the bed as carefully as possible. he hated that he couldn’t just flop down, like he used to. he missed those sweet, small liberties, the abilities he’d always taken for granted. “you know, i’m glad that i get to see you, mish,” noel whispered, afraid of saying the words too loud, afraid that if he did, the world would fall away and they’d be separated again.

“it’s fucking shitty that this happened our first day back together. but i don’t care—well, it’s not that i don’t care, i just…i’m prioritizing the ability to see you again. over…over pity, and stuff. you were kind of all i thought about while i was under hospital room arrest.” noel wrapped his arms back around misha, gathering the other boy into his arms, where he just seemed to naturally fit. it was the final piece to a puzzle, but whenever noel blinked, it came back to him that this wasn’t the final puzzle to solve. there was so much more to think about, so much more to do, so much—

the walls were not crumbling. not yet. mentally, noel painstakingly pushed the bricks, one by one, back into their proper places, because his mind leaving misha would be just like his body doing so. if he was there physically, why not be there mentally? it was always the thought that counted. his arms tightened slightly.

noel’s words were warm. like the beaming, distant beacons of light in odesa. when misha was a boy, he would sit in the house and look out towards the skyline- his vision wasn’t the best, so the lights blended and blurred together like dancing water or the light over heaven; a sweet stillness had come over him then: the warmth of the sun on his lips, his mother brushing his hair back… her kissing his head, knowing that he had his whole life ahead of him. 

“так… is good.” misha nodded, feeling his eyes begin to well up. his whole body ached like he had been dragged through hell and all the way back. it had been going on for so long, though, that the dull pulse had become rhythmic, calculated… consistent. “я так втомився, мій поете... so tired.” he said under his breath. he was tired of being, of the harmonies of the hospital, of the families crying in the chapel. sometimes misha wandered and fell asleep in the room connected to it, and he would page through the bible there with written notes on passages and verses and sit down and cry. 

misha oftentimes fantasizes about a life with noel, against all advice to not start dreaming of a future, to not start reaching up and believing. a life where they sit bare-bodied by the open window and drink until they sloppily kiss and fall down on the bed. heat-softened days teeming with mundanity and things like warm showers together or the way that they say each others names, as if not even prayers could carry that much ardency or weight or love. 

misha holds noel like he’s the last thing under the sky and wonders if anything below heaven really matters. and he wonders what’s below and he wonders what’s above and he wonders if this is it. 

drowsily, misha mutters, “it just sort of… ends right above where the knee would be, and tapers off. my leg. мені шкода. cподіваюся, це... нічого не змінить.” he’s drowsy and doesn’t even know what he’s on about, but he’s afraid of noel’s reaction. his prosthetic is off now and near the bed-side table, but he’s under the covers hiding himself so that noel can’t see.

noel nodded slowly, trying to process why exactly misha was mentioning this. was he too uncomfortable with noel to show it? noel swallowed, hoping that was not the case. he wanted misha to always be comfortable with him. “mm-hmm…” noel settled on replying. he rubbed misha’s back softly, in slow, calming circles. up and around, soothing and loving and soft, gentle and nurturing. he wanted misha to be more than comfortable. he wanted misha to feel like he can tell him anything. he thought back to the days leading up to the accident. the exhausting days, the ones that seemed to drag on for years while they’re going, but feel like they’ve passed in the blink of an eye upon finishing. 

noel had been sitting in the choir room, watching clouds of dust dance their way through the light streaming through the windows before disappearing to rest on the old grand piano that father marcus used for exercises. noel had known that grand piano since he was old enough to say the word “piano”—even though it wasn’t his, it may as well have been with its significance. “are you ready? for the fair?” someone had leaned over and asked him. the memory was hazy in noel’s mind—the only clear parts from that time were the steady progressions of the piano, a calming up and down that washed over noel like a sun-warmed sea wave. “yeah, i’m excited.” noel had only truly been excited for the ferris wheel. he waited with bated breath for the big moment, the scene he replayed over and over in his mind of himself and misha, looking out over the fair from a shitty ferris wheel cart. noel still remembered how the sunset had looked. a watercolor painting that blended from a sunny yellow to a twilight purple, casting an ethereal golden haze over the buzzing fair. the sun had been right in his eyes, reflecting off of the barely noticeable fractals in the hazel seas. a notebook was in his hand, held lightly, as if its existence was just trivial. however, that notebook had been noel’s life.

it had been all of his stories. torn away within a matter of seconds. those few seconds were when the blank in his memory came. the part that had been ripped out, a discordant note in an otherwise beautiful harmony. cut, snipped clean. the transition from the dark of the evening fading into the fluorescence of hospital lights was the closest to clean noel could get. a sea of nothingness, until he spotted misha’s head above the waters, and pulled him out. together, they would be. they went beyond ‘til death do us part, and noel knew that. it was interesting to think about, how his love for the drowsy boy before him transcended what he thought possible. he’d practically died, torn organs, destroyed his legs, but had kept on loving the entire way. it was…domestic. nowhere near close to the bad love noel had always begged for. he didn’t want that with misha. he wanted misha to have something good, a light in the dark. a light that shone bright, but not bright enough to expose things it wasn’t supposed to reach. noel was doing that pretty well, he thought.

misha nodded off to the love in noel’s soft hands along his back, remembering that the crack in everything is how the light gets in, and that the only way out is through. he thought that maybe something would come of this- the accident. misha always imagined himself being killed on the streets or killing himself in the cold concrete basement he found himself trapped in and forced to call a home or drinking too much alcohol and collapsing and never waking up. and maybe, just maybe, now it would be different, and him and noel would find a cottage or an apartment (he doesn’t mind!) and tangle up with the sun and the sheets in the morning. and the larks would sing and they would walk in the dewey grass and hold on like dear life. 

he rubbed the tip of his tongue in between the gap of his teeth, a nervous habit he had picked up as a child. his mother always told him that the gap would go away, but it never did. still a mark, a herald, of who misha was as a child. (he still is a child, isn’t he? he isn’t a man yet, he knows that. no matter how much he likes to pretend otherwise.)

his phone buzzed on the bedside table, rattling misha’s water bottle and untouched tray of cold breakfast. “mh… поет… я тебе кохаю.” he mumbled under his breath, hitting the pain pump under his arm. he sighed as more of the pain medicine entered his body, and reached over for his phone.

he scrolled through the messages from talya, again… finally mustering up the courage to reply. finally. but it was probably because he was tired and loopy and just had a seizure and couldn’t think anything through. 

‘Таля. аварія була погана, але зі мною все гаразд. я вдарилася головою, мені зробили операцію на мозку. ногу розтрощило, довелося ампутувати. я все ще в лікарні. я тебе кохаю.’ ( Talia. the accident was bad, but I'm okay. i hit my head and had brain surgery. my leg was crushed and had to be amputated. i'm still in the hospital. i love you. )

Таля: Добре, люба моя. Я рада, що в тебе все гаразд. Дякую, що відповіла. Бережи себе. (alright my love. I’m glad you’re ok. Thanks for responding to me. Take care of yourself.)

MYSHKA!: Ти не заперечуєш? Це нічого не змінить? (you won’t mind? it won’t change anything?)

MYSHKA! : Мені шкода, мені так біса шкода. (i’m sorry, i’m so fucking sorry.)

Таля: це нічого не змінює. Я дуже тебе люблю, я просто радий бачити, що з тобою все гаразд. (it doesn’t change anything. I love you dearly, I’m just happy to see you’re ok)

MYSHKA! : я не зможу... займатися пристрасною любов'ю всю ніч так само. більше. у мене мігрень, у мене судоми.... я не відповів, тому що мені так боліла голова, дивлячись на телефон, що я плакав.

(i wont be able to...make all night passionate love in the same way. anymore. i have migraines, i have seizures.... i hadnt replied because it hurt my head so bad to look at my phone that i would cry.)

Таля: Я розумію. Я люблю тебе завжди і назавжди. Незважаючи ні на що. Я рада, що ти жива. Коли я вперше почула про аварію, я так злякалася за тебе. ( I understand. I love you always and forever. No matter what. I’m glad you’re alive. When I first heard about the crash, I got so scared for you. )

MYSHKA!: Мені так шкода, Таля. ти цього не заслуговуєш. ти не заслуговуєш цього безладу від мене. ( I'm so sorry, Talia. you don't deserve this. you don't deserve this mess of me. )

MYSHKA! : я так втомився. я просто хочу додому. і я не маю на увазі той підвал. я маю на увазі україну. ( i am so tired i just want to go home and I don't mean that basement. I mean Ukraine. )

Таля: Мій любий Міше. Я б зробив для тебе все. Не говори про себе так, добре? Я побачу тебе швидше, ніж ти думаєш, обіцяю. (my darling misha. I would do anything for you. Don’t talk about yourself that way, ok? I’ll see you sooner than u think, I promise)

MYSHKA! : це добре, якщо ти хочеш залишити мене. я багато втратив, я багато змінився. я не можу говорити, як раніше, ходити чи їсти або. ( its okay if you want to leave me. ive lost a lot, ive changed a lot. i cant talk like i used to or walk or eat or )

Таля: Я б ніколи не хотів тебе покинути. Гаразд? Я так сильно тебе кохаю. Я хочу одружитися з тобою, і я знаю, що це ніколи не зміниться. ( i would never want to leave you. Ok? I love you so much. I want to marry you, and i know that will never change. )

MYSHKA! : мені тут справді нудно. я сумую за дзвінками з тобою. я люблю тебе будь ласка, подзвони мені, коли зможеш. я з поетом. ( i am really bored here. i miss calling with you. i love you. please call me when you can. i am with poet. )

Таля: я буду. я тебе так сильно люблю скажи Ноелю, що я привіт (I will. I love you so much. tell noel i say hi.)

Таля: Можеш дати йому мій номер, якщо це допоможе нам легше спілкуватися, бо тобі зараз важко дивитися в телефон. (you can give him my number, if that would help to communicate easier, since looking at your phone is hard for you right now)

MYSHKA! : добре, це гарна ідея. я зроблю це. ( okay, that’s a good idea. i’ll do that. )

***

Таля: Hello, this is Talya, Misha gave me your number

noel has been sitting in the state between sleep and awareness, curled up in the narrow crack that separated the states of consciousness. he hasn’t known sleep recently—it would come to him, yes, but he would never feel the aftereffects. no matter what, he was always tired. an inky black dreamless void provided essentially nothing to him. it just felt like being drugged. his eyes slowly open when he feels the buzz of his phone next to him. he groans internally, thinking it must be his stupid fucking mother again… noel’s eyes widen as he reads the notification. it’s misha’s fiancée. 

noel: hello nkce to meet you

it’s embarrassing how all he can get out is a ‘hello’, but noel doesn’t know what else to say. he didn’t even know what talya thought of him—plus, his hands didn’t really work properly anyways. it’s a miracle he could even type that.

Таля: you are the poet, right? Misha speaks very highly of you

noel’s cheeks flush, and he can’t help but smile just a little.

noel: aw. yrah thst is me

Таля: I thought so. anyway, reason I contacted you is since Misha said he might not be at his phone that often for health reasons, so I wanted to Make sure he’s doing alright. Also, I’ve been wanting to meet you for a bit!

noel: yrs he’s wiht me rn and he’d doing okau. sorry ffr my typing i hsve shakt fingers. nd me too

Таля: understandable . Would a call be easier ?

noel: if you wan totj

***

noel takes a deep breath. he clicks answer , swallowing nervously. he really doesn’t want talya to dislike him—after all, if he was to live out any one of his fantasies with misha, she’d kind of have to. plus, she seemed nice enough, like someone you would want to have around. he doesn’t speak first—too nervous.

“hello?” talya called out, but she was quiet. she really wanted to make a good impression on noel. he was important to misha, which makes him important to her too by default. 

“hey.” noel’s voice is raspy. exhausted, too—it clearly hadn’t been used often up until today. he had done a lot, a lot more than he expected to in 24 hours. “um…again, nice to meet you.”

“you all are safe? that is very good.”

“yeah. just…recovering.”

“that is understandable. what matters is that you’re all alive. take care of yourselves and each other."

noel sighs shakily, glancing over at a sleeping misha before continuing. “yeah, i’m…i’m trying.”

mishas stomach twisted, eyes still heavy with sleep. he opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out at first. 

his brain worked too slow, his tongue too thick in his mouth. speech therapy helped, but not enough. he still had to focus, to fight for his words.

 "...talya." his voice was hoarse and timid, but it was enough. “я так давно не чув твого голосу. (i haven’t heard your voice in so long) it has been… forever.”

noel holds the phone just a bit closer to misha, hoping that will make his groggy voice come through easier. he swallows, leaning back slightly to think of that interaction with talya. she didn’t seem to hate him—that was good, at the very least. 

still, there could’ve been more out of that, a headstart in the formation of a bond he wanted to create and keep, an affirmation that some things can still go the way he wants them to. (the doubt that this will ever happen creeps into him more and more by the second.) 

noel wanted to say more. no, he needed to say more—had to build up some sort of familiarity with talya. yet, the words didn’t make it to his brain, let alone out his mouth. it’s frustrating—what kind of poet is one without his way of words? a shake of the head and a sigh, and he’s back. the spiraling was really something noel had to work on. “misha, we’ve been texting each other,” he explains, awkwardly. “she’s very nice.”

talya piped up from the other line: “noel seems very cool, i get why you speak so highly of him… it’s good to hear your voice again, too.”

mishas head still feels like it’s stuffed with cotton, and it’s odd to think that both of his loves are chatting it up, remembering when he wanted to conceal them from each other. he never understood why he did that. 

misha blinks sluggishly, the words taking a moment longer than they should to register.

his head feels heavy, and his body aches in ways that are both familiar and unbearably frustrating. his fingers twitch slightly in noel's grasp, but he can't seem to will them into anything more purposeful.

he wants to be happy about this, but he can't stop thinking about all the time that's been lost-about how much has changed, how much he's changed. what if she doesn't see him as the misha she once knew? what if there's nothing left to build on?

his voice is hoarse when he finally speaks, quiet and strained, like it takes every ounce of effort just to push the words out. “talya…” 

his words are soft and ripe with something desperate— like a plea or a prayer for salvation. he notices, and appreciates, noel’s simplified explanation. everything is still clouded with haze and muddled by fog in his mind. and his head hurts, but the two voices are able to pull him out of that fog, if only for a second. 

“i love… you both.. so much. i don’t… i don’t know what to say. i have the words… in my head… but they won’t come out. я ненавиджу це. я ненавиджу себе. ( i hate it. i hate myself.)”

“misha, i love you so much.” she said, as soft as possible. as if speaking to a wounded deer or a crying child or a grieving mother.

misha knows that there are things that talya knows about him that noel doesn’t, and things that noel knows that talya doesn’t. his breath hitches in his chest as nausea and bile builds up in his chest. he hasn’t eaten anything in weeks, even though that was the deal. they would remove the feeding tube only if he ate by mouth, but he had broken that promise; the ache in his stomach is only tamed by the sickness and the storm building inside of it. 

“talya… talya… я тебе кохаю… і поет.” (i love you and poet) the words feel foreign on his lips, even though they’re in his native tounge. it’s just that it takes so much out of him to admit it. 

“i don’ feel good…” he says under his breath, mostly looking towards noel when he says it, because what could talya do about it?

the girl on the other side heard misha’s words and nodded.

“i thought as much. If you want to date both of us, that is an option.” 

then, she added “take care of him, alright noel? stay safe, both of you.”

noel swallows, mind racing trying to think of things to do. he’s not supposed to fuck anything up, or do anything that isn’t ordered by a doctor, but then again, no doctor told him to hop into the hospital bed with misha, so he already is breaking that mental rule. 

“yes, i’ll…i’ll take care of him,” noel replies, glancing down at misha with wide, concerned eyes. “i love him.” well, everyone else was admitting their love—why was the most romantic boy in town last to do it? romance. a real life romance. a quiet, domestic, loving one, that took place in a modern, loving environment and not on the dirty streets. maybe noel did indeed want that, more than pre-accident him had realized.

“misha. do you need water?” he whispers, carefully, quietly. he knows that it’s probably food misha needs—he hasn’t seen him eat at all, and, especially when this badly injured, misha needs to eat. noel knows that much, with how much they fed him through that tube after his surgery. he barely remembers the hazy, drug-filled days before, drifting in and out of a blurry portrait of consciousness, but he does remember the hunger, an ugly ache that seared its way straight through the fabric wall the painkillers had set up inside of him, ripping through his body with the force of a wildfire. it was torture in its finest.

 “…or is it food? you have to eat, or at least drink something.”

misha barely stirs, his body heavy against noel's, exhaustion weighing him down like chains. the words make it to his ears, but they feel distant, floating somewhere just beyond his reach. his head lolls slightly against noel's shoulder, his breaths slow and uneven.

"...not hungry," he mumbles, though his voice is barely more than a breath, slurred and weak. he knows it's not a good enough answer-noel won't accept it, and misha doesn't really blame him. but the thought of food, of anything sitting in his stomach right now, makes him feel even sicker.

still, noel sounds worried. is worried. he always is. misha exhales shakily, his fingers twitching where they're curled weakly into noel's hoodie.

"don't... wanna eat," he mutters, his voice hoarse, barely there. he knows that's the wrong answer, but it's the only one he can give. his stomach lurches just thinking about it. "water, maybe."

misha realizes that they’re still on the line with talya, and that she’s most likely listening to this entire exchange, but misha doesn’t care. he’s done hiding, he’s done concealing himself from her. he knows, he can see it, he can feel it. she loves him unconditionally, even when he is a dog with a bird at her door. 

and she crackles through the line with a “i’ve got to go to school, honey, okay? i love you and i will talk to you later.” and hangs up.

noel's voice filters in through the haze-soft, pleading, calling him back like a prayer whispered in the quiet of a cathedral. love, devotion. a vow made in a hospital bed instead of before an altar.

he swallows, throat dry as dust. he knows he should answer, should give noel something, anything-but words feel too heavy, too burdensome for his tongue. even now, after all that has been taken from him, he cannot bear the weight of his own voice.

the hunger gnaws at him, but so does the bile. a beast coiled in his gut, waiting. his body is a ruin, but even ruins must be tended to. even a dying thing must be fed.

he doesn't have the strength to say it properly, to shape the words into the kind of poetry noel deserves-but maybe this is its own kind of prayer, this desperate need, this aching want. he does not need god, but he needs noel.

“…misha,” noel sighs, trying not to let his disappointment seep through. he knows this is going to be a hard process, but it still hurts him seeing misha refuse what he needs. “i know it’s hard. i know. but you have to try, or else you’ll just feel worse. i’ll be right here, and when she’s back from school, talya will be too.” 

despite himself, he sighs, knowing that water is better than nothing for misha. “but for now, you can have water. at some point soon, though, you really need to eat, okay?” 

noel had never wished he could read misha’s thoughts more. until this point, the concern had been a lot, but not enough to overwhelm him. but now, noel, suddenly the worrier, is starting to crack, because not knowing what to do is the worst damn weapon the universe could ever use against him. he doesn’t know what to do. he doesn’t know what to do. it’s terrifying, not being able to fix these problems. noel was self-reliant, maybe to a bit of a fault, before the accident. but now, he has to rely on other people, he has to feel their support or he might as well give out, and it’s just as scary as feeling that front axle snap. 

he feels something stir in his throat just thinking about it, sour and acidic, battery acid creeping up into his mouth. noel can’t take his attention off of misha, he remembers. that can end in every possible catastrophic way, in ways he doesn’t even want to think about. when he was younger, all he used to do in these situations was pray. sitting underneath stained glass windows, hands clasped, hoping for some unseen force to help him, just like how his parents taught him.

noel then realized soon enough that he was supposed to help himself, and himself only. he had taught himself every lesson about how the world could never be fair to him, would never be fair to him, no matter how hard he tried. fair wasn’t a concept to him anymore. it was live or die, survive by the skin of your teeth or rot alone. that was what he told himself, and that was what he wrote about. maybe he dramatized it, just a little bit. 

he doesn’t really believe that anymore, he’s found. with misha in his arms and talya affirming the both of them, there’s something to believe in, a truth that he can rely on others, and help them just the same. his heart rate starts to slow, ever-so-slightly. he’s grounded. he’s grounded. things are out of his control, horrifyingly so, but he has to make due with what he has. he’s done it before, he can do it again. who says he can’t pass this test?

misha shook his head, a stray tear rolling down his cheek when the line disconnected from talya. hearing her voice had awakened something in misha, something that had been buried since the accident. the thing that marked misha, well, as misha.... his emotions, heavy and thick with weight like rain water or the tears of the angels. "poet. i said i am not hungry... i cannot..."

the boy rasped. more... defeated than anything. he wasn't angry; he didn't know how to be anymore.  he listens, barely, to noel’s voice, the way it wavers and steadies all at once, the way he tries—always tries, even when misha is nothing but dead weight in his arms.

he knows he should try too. knows that he should listen, should eat, should stop making this harder than it has to be. but the thought of food makes his stomach churn, and everything feels like too much, too heavy. he feels like a cathedral on fire, a blur of ash and smoke, like a psalm forgotten mid-prayer.

still, noel stays.

misha swallows against the lump in his throat. his voice comes out hoarse, brittle.

"you don’t—" He exhales sharply, steadied by the nasal cannula in his nose, blinking against the burn behind his eyes. his own mind ravages against him, twisting thoughts into knots he can’t untangle. "you don’t have to fix me, noel."

the words feel like sacrilege, like defiling something sacred. the words are a sin; he doesn’t want to hurt noel—god, he never wanted to hurt noel—but he sees it in his face, the fear, the way he holds misha like something fragile, like something he can put back together if he just tries hard enough

"i—" his breath hitches, and he squeezes his eyes shut. the weight of it all sits heavy in his chest. "i know you want to help, poet. but i do not—" he bites the inside of his cheek, shaking his head weakly. "i do not know what i need. and if i did know, i cannot stand it." 

that’s the worst part.

the misha that noel loved—the sharp-tongued, unbreakable, fire-forged boy is slipping further and further away. misha doesn’t know what’s left of himself anymore, if he ever did.

noel’s heart drops into his stomach. he can feel it tear through him, his own fragility. deep down, he had known since awakening that this would have to happen, that misha would catch on, that it would hurt him, somewhat. noel knows that he has been waiting, building up, just to let misha down like this. he swallows.

 “it’s not that i want to fix you—” the lie cracks his voice, splitting open to reveal the utter nothing found in its dark shell. he’s shitty for this, and it’s proved by the way he can almost feel the maggots squirming in his rotten ideals. his daydreams, hazy moments with misha, a version of misha that he wants to get back, but can’t. “it’s not. i just—i just felt bad. i always did, after—after the whole warehouse-collective-dream-shit. the entire thing with…essentially everything in your life, it made me feel like, what i was saying, about wanting tragedy, it was all wrong, i was wrong. i needed to make it up to you.” the words make him sick to his stomach. it’s not until they’re pouring out like he’s puking his fucking guts that he realizes how wrong this sounds, how bad this sounds. like it’s just pity that he feels for misha, even though it’s not , he swears on the new life he’s built out of scraps from a ruined one that it’s not. but how is he supposed to say that? how is noel supposed to express that he wants to be in control of something, to hold onto something that isn’t just a ball of smoke, dissipating through his fingers? how is he supposed to say that he at least felt something taking care of misha, knowing he had an impact? 

it’s selfish. rooted deep into the crevices of his bones, the healing areas in his intestines, winding between veins and the blood they pump. selfishness. 

“i’m sorry. i’m sorry. it’s not you, it’s not. just because all of this happened, it—it doesn’t change that i still see you as the same person. you’re still misha.” what else does misha need? reliance on noel, it can’t possibly be enough. reliance, that is the impossible rift between them. 

noel doesn’t want it to be there. he wants, needs , to close it up, to sew a patch over it, so get rid of it. maybe misha isn’t the same anymore. maybe noel has to confront that. no, it’s not a maybe, he does need to confront that, no matter how much he wants to cling onto the ghost of the old misha, it’s dissipating, melting away. it can’t be forever. noel doesn’t feel like anything can be. the way everything is finite, no matter how much he runs away, always has scared him. he always knew before now that he’d have to face it head-on, and that no one was coming to help him, but he never thought it would be like this. 

he’s stomping out the kindling before it can graduate into a flame. burning the body before it can rot. noel is making sure that he resets his mind, trying his best to keep himself from letting the selfishness wriggle its way into his mind. “i’m sorry. i’m not trying to fix you.”

misha doesn’t respond at first. he sets down his phone on his lap, his fingers twitch where they rest against his leg, his breath shaky. there’s a lump forming in his throat, tight and unbearable, and he’s staring at the linoleum floor and focusing on the beeping of the monitors as noel’s words settle into his skin like salt in an open wound.

it’s not anger. it’s something heavier, something he can’t even name. he doesn't think that he can feel anger anymore. he doesn't think that he can feel anything. he watches the iv drip drip drip into his veins, like the truth, with the same consistency as the rolling fields and trees and the railroad tracks in uranium. his lip trembles, and his whole body feels like it’s folding in on itself, like he’s collapsing under the weight of something much bigger than either of them. he feels a buzz in his belly, like a bee's hive was broke open and sucked of its honey. 

misha finally lets out a shuddering breath and drops his hands. “you felt bad?” his voice wavers, not with rage but with something brittle, something close to grief. “you felt bad about my life?”

“noel.” his voice wavers, and that frustrates him even more. his eyes are burning. his chest aches. he swallows, trying to gather himself. “i know that a lot of shit has happened to me... but that does not mean my life is worth any less. it does not mean i’m any less.” 

he presses his fingers into his temples, exhaling shakily. “i’m still here. i’m still a person. i still have a future, i think, even if it’s—” he gestures vaguely to himself, to everything, frustration bleeding into the movement. "i know that i'm not easy to love anymore. but noel... Ісус трахає Христа!" (jesus fucking christ)

his throat feels tight. he tries to blink back the tears, but they slip through anyway, hot and unwelcome. it’s been so long since he cried like *this*—out of frustration, out of exhaustion, out of something he can’t even fully articulate.

he thinks about the orthodox church in odesa where his mother used to take him. the towering domes, the flickering candlelight, the way the hymns echoed against ancient walls. He thinks about kneeling beside her, his small hands clasped together, whispering prayers in a language that felt like home. a language that was and is his home.

he thinks about how that church isn’t there anymore.

how the war swallowed it whole. how talya is still stuck in it, still breathing in the smoke, still watching buildings crumble around her. how he got out, and she didn’t.

misha wipes at his face angrily, but the tears keep coming. “i cannot be your project, noel.” his voice cracks. “i cannot be the thing that makes you feel like you have a purpose. because i am not—not just my suffering.”

misha doesn't even know what hes on about, and he doesn't even know if he even believes what he's saying himself. these are the things that he's been told over and over by other people and therapists. and he had never believed it or said it before now.

noel’s mouth doesn’t even open, yet it gets dry quick. too dry to swallow, too dry to think, to breathe. selfishness. he’s seen it as an intruder. maybe, instead, it is a housemate—one that he has to sit by and listen to as its words pry at him, picking under skin, exposing the bone beneath with a cloying “is this all you have? you should take more.” maybe all he has is this. a twisted worldview, an internal battle that rages on for far too long. he can’t pick out what’s wrong, though—everything is wrong, that’s why he said what he said. “sorry” can’t suck all of those words right back into his soul, “i didn’t mean it” can’t lock them all away, especially if that’s a lie. he did mean it, and hiding that would tear him apart vein by vein. 

“that’s…okay. that’s true.” it’s awkward. the words tumble out of noel, more raspy than usual. he doesn’t know what to say. it’s horrible. the pity won’t force its way out of him. it lingers, like a beast in the shadows stalking an innocent, waiting to strike with huge steel claws. maybe it will stay there, eating away at his heart until only the apathy he’d always longed for remained. the desire to be alone, troubled. the desire he got rid of. a desire he got rid of in favor of reducing misha’s life to its tragedy. a selfish desire that he let fester and get more and more poisonous until it bloomed into something new the second he tried to exterminate it. one that attacked everything around it while covering noel’s eyes with rose-tinted glasses. those glasses should have shattered the minute the rollercoaster crashed. 

noel wants to reach into the gaping hole in his stomach and pull all of the pity and hurt and need to do something for misha out, watch as it disintegrates before him, then throw it to the very worms of stress eating up every other corner of him. maybe, then, they will be fed.

Chapter Text

in the moment right before, the angriest boy in town had felt like the most loved boy in town. he had felt something like he had never felt before, like angel wings and rosebuds blossoming from his ribs and setting his soul and all of his love agape. 

there was no shyness about noel; like a false god or a funeral song. but this is what happens when you hold on too tight to something that isn't yours. something that never was; something that never will be yours to keep.  Яке гірке, яке гірке вино! ( and we… are what? just two colliding people. how bitter, oh, how bitter is the wine! but we must drink. it is a useful habit. it, too, was made for us before our time.. to our meeting! our separation! )

misha has never seen noel like this... never heard the resistance, the defeat in his voice. but he also had never known about his inclination towards, as he called it, 'tragedy'... and he was okay with it until noel started dragging him into it. misha didn't understand what had torn him up so much over it. maybe it was the fact that noel recognizing that misha’s life was tragic, it meant admitting that his life was tragic. it meant admitting that so much trauma and pain and heartache had been thrust upon a man (a boy) with so few years to his name. so few years that his heart had been beating and his blood had been pumping, and through that was pain and sickness and war and tears. but misha kept going. had to keep going. for his mother. for his people. for his ancestors who couldn't. he had gotten out. he had gotten out and he didn't deserve to be the one to get out; his people were being killed again and he was here complaining about being loved. to be loved is to be seen, and maybe noel recognizing misha’s pain was a form of that, too. 

he had been told stories growing up by his babushya about the holodomor. about searching for grain in the blood-soaked fields of soviet controlled ukraine. about her own mothers tears through the blue tinted window and the laced drapes. so, misha guessed that tragedy was in his blood. that pain was in his blood and in the blue and gold dye of the national flag, too. like the golden domes of the cathedral gleaming under a sun that felt too far away, and at night the stars that felt even further. like the quiet solemnity of kneeling on a hard wooden pew, listening to his mother whisper prayers in a language older than her own bones. like the halo around her brown curls.

the room is dim now, the only light filtering in through the slates of the blinds, casting striped shadows across the walls. his head tilts back, gaze settling on the ceiling. he used to believe in something. he used to pray. there was a time, long ago, when he thought there was a purpose to suffering, a meaning behind every ache and every wound. that suffering was meant to be endured. a trial. a test.

now, he doesn’t know what to believe.

his stomach lurches violently, and a strangled noise catches in his throat. he forces himself forward, his vision going white-hot at the edges, fingers gripping the thin hospital sheets so hard his knuckles turn bone-white.

his vision flickers, and for a second, he swears he sees something else entirely. the golden domes of st. michael’s cathedral, the blue and gold catching the light of a kyiv sunrise. the echoes of bells ringing in his ears, a distant hymn barely remembered. he thinks of talya’s hand gripping his as they stand beneath the high ceilings, staring up at the saints painted in oil and gold leaf.

now, she is there, and he is here. and kyiv is burning, and all that he can feel is the burn in his throat and the cherry pit in his stomach.

he hears the door click open and the chatter outside in the hallway, and he holds his breath before his body betrays him. wrenching violently, empty and useless, nothing but bile and air forcing its way up. he heaves, his whole frame shaking with the effort, a low, pained sound escaping his throat and falling through his sinful lips.

karna finds his back, his own brown curls damp with sweat as he dry-heaves. karna rubs his back with a firm, steady hand, glaring towards noel.

it’s humiliating. it’s painful. he’s starving and he's doing it to himself... but he can't think of eating. and he hates himself for it. he hates himself for it because he had always been told as a child to eat everything that he was given and to sit and be quiet and to be grateful. and to eat even when he wasn't hungry because his grandmother had never known when her next meal would be in the famine. and then she raised his mother with that mentality and she raised him with that mentality. 

when it’s over, he sags against the bed, eyes bleary, breath shallow. karna doesn’t let go of him immediately. she waits, watches, then finally speaks.

“you haven’t been eating.”

it’s not a question.

misha lets out a weak, bitter laugh, his voice hoarse. “didn’t feel like it.”

karna exhales sharply, but there’s no anger in it. just something tired, something knowing. “that’s not an option for you.”

he swallows against the dryness in his throat, trying to will away the sickness, the exhaustion, the shame clawing at his ribs. you haven’t been eating. it wasn’t a question. because of course she knows. because of course it’s obvious.

because of course it’s happening again.

his fingers tighten into fists in his lap, nails pressing into the raw skin of his palms. he’s hungry—he’s always hungry—but it’s easier to ignore it, easier to let the hunger sit there, gnawing at his insides like a rabid dog. hunger is an old friend, familiar and unrelenting. and sometimes, it feels like the only thing he has left.

the genocide is burned into his bones, a wound passed down through generations, written into his blood and his flesh and his bones. he grew up on stories of the starving, of entire villages wiped out by hunger. stories of his grandmother, who lost everyone and barely survived, of neighbors who turned to eating grass, of children who went to sleep and never woke up.

hunger was suffering. hunger was death.

and yet, here he is, starving himself on purpose.

he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, breath hitching. his grandmother used to tell him, we survived. that means you must live. and he is spitting on that survival, wasting what they fought so hard to keep.

he remembers the first time he ever went without eating on purpose. he was fifteen, alone in canada, missing home and his mother who was his home so much that it made him sick. he didn’t mean to start skipping meals at first; he just forgot, too caught up in missing his mother’s food, in the guilt of being warm and full while war raged back home. and then, one day, he realized he liked the feeling of hunger. it felt right, somehow. like he was punishing himself for the things he couldn’t control.

and now, after the accident, after everything. he’s back here again. weak and starving and disgusting. he clenches his jaw.

we survived. that means you must live.

noel can’t look at misha anymore. what’s radiating off of him, it’s almost opaque, shielding the side of misha noel had been too blind to see. no—it wasn’t just a side of him. it was him. the worms in his gut flex again. he wants to leave. “karna, you…you can take me out, if he needs it. no…no distractions and all.” the words don’t feel right in his mouth, spilling out like misshapen spikes, through his cheeks and tongue. 

earlier, he hadn’t planned on leaving this soon. now, it was clear he kind of had to—every sign pointed to it. without further questions, save for a cough or two that the uncertain side of noel urged out, he lifts himself up and off the bed, into the freezing metal crutches, their chill burning like a brand into his formerly warm skin. the sharp, fiery tongue of the cold metal spreads like wildfire throughout his nerves, striking each and every one like a knife. no time to talk with misha.

noel could only grunt, thankful that the sun wasn’t in his eyes as it usually was when he slipped into these in the morning. the slow ripping feeling in his legs is particularly painful anyways, and misha is fine with his phone. he just has to get back to his room, or the blaze of pure, unbridled guilt will destroy him. there is no time to talk with misha.

“i can get back to my own room, if that’s more convenient. i know how to work these.”

the anger had burned out long ago, leaving a hollow ache between mishas still-broken ribs. he held his breath and looked karna in the eyes, shaking his head as his own eyes began to fill with burning tears. misha knew what she was going to say. knew what she was starting on about... they would have to put the feeding tube back in. and even though he was upset with noel. he couldn't be alone for that. not when he didn't have anybody else.

"no..no..." misha rasped, pulling back at noel. like all the times that misha just wanted a hug, like the time that misha wanted to hold hands with noel but misha’s hands were wet because he hated using the dryers in the bathroom and noel pulled his own hands away because he hated how misha’s wet hands felt. and misha felt some form of betrayal that day and a hole forming in his heart. it wasn't like noel didn't have a point, it wasn't like misha wasn't being forceful and touchy... but he just wanted, he just needed somebody.

"no..noel.. stay. i am- i am sorry. i am so fucking sorry. okay? i am sorry."

“come on, misha,” noel sighs, turning halfway to face misha. he’s never been a good negotiator, no matter how hard he’d like to believe he is. “you have to focus on eating.” 

it’s stupid. it’s petty. maybe he shouldn’t be leaving misha. in some other world, they could just agree, and noel could leap back into misha’s arms and tell him he loves him, and it would be fine. noel swallows. that wasn’t what he’d always asked for. he had wanted this war with himself, wanted this horrific event to play out into a bad love story. noel had asked for something poetic, something symbolic, and maybe it was, in its own grotesque way. the way his and misha’s bodies seemed to bend backwards to avoid everything their minds wanted. the ways tragedy truly did tear them inside out, forcing them to look into themselves and each other to stitch the holes back together, to prevent more guts and blood from spilling. it’s going to spill anyway. 

“i need to go anyway, for—for my own stuff. you don’t have to be sorry, what i said was shitty. just…” he doesn’t know. he doesn’t know how to justify any of this. 

(because there is no justifying it, perhaps?)

misha’s breath is ragged, sharp, like he’s choking on something he can’t cough up. he grips noel’s wrist with trembling fingers, like if he just holds on tight enough, noel won’t leave.

“no,” he gasps, shaking his head. his voice is rough, desperate. “no, please, don’t go.”

misha swallows hard, eyes blown wide, panic carving lines into his face. his grip is weak, unsteady, but it’s everything he has left. “please,” he whispers. “just—just stay. please.”

karna invites a few other nurses to step in, holding the supplies, taking one look at misha and then at noel, her expression unreadable. “mykhio,” she says, voice even. “we need to put your feeding tube back in.”

misha makes a soft, broken sound and curls inward, hands shaking violently in his lap. and misha still clings to him, shaking, silent tears slipping down his face.

“misha, i-”

noel knows he can’t protest anymore. misha’s grip on him isn’t super tight, but it’s enough to hold him back. it’s like something is sucking him in, holding him close, binding him to it no matter what. he sighs. 

his hand turns to hold misha’s, and he wobbles slightly on the crutches, ending up collapsing with a sharp hiss into a nearby chair. the crutches clatter, but he tries to keep his grip on misha. 

“okay, okay. shh, shh…i’ll stay. i’ll stay.” 

something wrenches in noel’s gut at the sight of misha so small and vulnerable again. he scoots closer, trying to ignore the screaming, tearing protest in his burning legs. leaving misha is still in the question. it still lingers not exactly towards the back of his mind, but rather, it sits on the sidelines, watching with large, patient eyes. waiting eyes that bore past noel’s, threatening to cloud up his vision again. 

he sniffles, takes a breath, steels himself. he’s okay. he has to make up for it, focus on misha. he has to prove misha isn’t just his project, not anymore.

the room is quiet, softly humming with the couple nurses preparing and mishas soft whimpers. misha smiles a soft smile and takes a breath of resignation. there is no need for words— just the silent understanding of what this will mean for misha. this feels like giving up. but he’s too tired to fight it, anyway. 

one nurse adjusts the sterile gloves, another checks the equipment, and the third looks at misha, her face a mask of professional concern. she speaks softly but firmly, "misha, we're going to get this done quickly. i know it's uncomfortable, but you need this. you've been without nutrition for too long."

misha barely nods, his eyes wide and glossy, looking somewhere past noel. his jaw clenches as the nurses prepare the tube, and it's then that misha realizes that he is completely at the mercy of someone else, completely exposed in ways he's never had to be before.

the nurse taps misha's shoulder gently, her voice still soft, "i'm going to insert the tube now, okay? you're going to feel some pressure." she hands him his water bottle and tells him to drink so it goes down easier.

misha doesn't respond; he just grips noel's hand harder, and there is so much tension in misha's body, how rigid he's become. it's not just physical pain he's bracing for; it's the complete helplessness that comes with it.

there's a sudden intake of breath from misha as the nurse begins, and the heat in the room grows. the tube slides in, and misha lets out a soft whimper, a sound that cuts through the sterile air like a knife. it's not a cry of pain; it's something worse-a small, childlike sound, as if he's lost control of himself completely. one of them tapes the tube onto his cheek with blue medical tape and they drape it behind his ear.

“we’re all done, honey. you did a great job, okay?” karna says under her breath. the sun is beginning to set outside and the birds are quieting in their song. 

misha doesn't respond immediately. he just curls in on himself, face flushed with humiliation and exhaustion, as if the weight of the whole world is on his shoulders. the moment the nurses leave, misha collapses into noel's arms.

his chest heaves with sobs, misha mumbles something in ukrainian, the words soft and jagged, like they're pieces of a broken puzzle. “боляче. я не можу робити це довго. це все моя вина. моя дурна вина.” (it hurts. i can’t do this for much longer. it’s all my fault. my stupid fault.)

noel watches the tube be inserted with wide, anxious doe eyes, brow furrowing slightly. he had to go through the exact same thing, so he should have gotten used to the tube, but seeing it always made him flinch slightly. 

he’s at least glad he can be there, tell misha he understands the discomfort, the avoidance. misha’s hand feels cold in his, but he keeps squeezing back anyways, desperately trying to warm him back up. it’s all he can do, it’s all he can do. noel’s completely powerless despite the fact that misha’s breaking down before him and it’s all he can do. 

noel hasn’t been to church since he was fourteen. now, what he wouldn’t give to be in the pews, breathing a prayer for his loved one to just be okay. or, maybe, a prayer for forgiveness. 

there is the cold silence, the gentle sniffles. then, there is the warm weight on his chest. it’s like the crisp summer air, sweet as honey, the warmth misha provides. noel’s arms wrap around misha upon pure instinct, hands sliding across his back like rays of sunlight over a dark, polished floor. the crack in the wall of a room stuffed to the brim with inky ebony, slicing away any stray tendrils of black that try to push their way out. 

“misha. please, misha, just—just breathe with me, okay?” noel whispers, trying to keep his cool, holding back the lump forcing its way up his throat as it begs him to just cry with misha. it’s taking him everything in his memory to recall what his mother would tell him whenever he got hurt, back when their house and their relationship and everything was normal. normal. it was like trying to run into a mirage, an illusion of hope in the middle of a desert; gasping and panting and running out of breath before stumbling facefirst into more dry sand that filled your mouth, eyes, and nostrils. all for something out of reach. 

“you did good. misha, you did so well. i know it’s hard, it’s so, so hard. you did it, and i’m proud. i was wrong earlier, misha. i was wrong. you’re strong.”

for once, it’s not a lie, and he manages words without the acid scorching his throat. 

noel takes a shaky breath, holding misha just a bit tighter, to check that he’s still there. he knows there’s shit to work out, but right now, he’ll just do whatever misha needs.

misha’s mother had said to always trust in god; that he would guide him. he was named after st. michael- mykhio kyrylovych bachynskyi. the name ‘misha’ came later… in some of his earliest memories, he was called ‘myshka’ — little mouse. or ‘mishenka’ — who is like god?

the archangel michael, who battled with lucifer and cast him away from heaven. after the accident, after leaving ukraine… misha had no wings left. his halo was debris and smoke and ash. it was the memories of the light left over, the light that he could now only find inside of himself. he held it in his heart. he tried to spread it to everyone he met, but he knew he didn’t always succeed.

the sky is silver outside now, and the lights are dim in the hospital room. it would hurt misha’s head too much to turn on the TV, and he’s still sobbing into noel’s hoodie, slobbering everywhere. for probably the 3rd time today. 

misha curls in on himself, like the junebugs he used to pick up as a kid and bring into the house and call his pet. the tube feels cold in his throat, like it’s suffocating him, pressing in on and ruining- changing- everything he’s ever known. misha feels so small, so fragile, like a child desperately clinging to something he can’t name. 

“i am not, i am not strong… poet… you see me like this,” misha gasps, his words barely escaping, “and i don’t know what’s left. i don’t know who i am anymore.”

misha’s eyes are closed now, and he runs through his entire life in his head, trying to find the moment that he fucked up. trying to find the moment in which he set this all in motion — the reason why this was all happening to him, why he deserved it. through the stillness of the room, misha tried to swim in- to bask in- the light of his memories, but all that he found was the beeping of machines and noel’s warmth. 

god, do you hear me? please.

if i can’t be whole, then let me at least be worthy.

misha clutches at the bed, his body trembling with the weight of it all, feeling himself slipping further away from everything he once was. he’s so tired, so worn down, and as the room falls silent again, his voice is nothing more than a broken whisper, a desperate prayer to the empty air. “i need you to stay. please..” 

misha admits under his breath, and it feels like confession. he needs noel to stay or he doesn’t know what he will do with himself— he needs noel to stay or he’s afraid that he’ll find a way to hurt himself.

“i want to go outside. please… tonight. or tomorrow. please.”

noel can almost feel ash sliding between his fingers, smoldering bits of dust and dirt rolling down misha’s back and carrying away in the hospital air. the remnants of a halo, tattered and destroyed, bits of former beauty that caught fire and drifted away. he’ll meld it back together. no matter what, he will. he’ll take wings, torn brutally off one’s back, and reattach them, feather by stained feather, and encourage them to fly until they can beat to the gentle lull of the waves crashing into the shore as they once did. 

the shaking boy in his arms, noel knows, he cannot fix. there’s no “fixing” here, no remakes, no retries. there is only the ashen shell of an angel, its new life waiting to burst out in a ray of sun. noel knows that’s it, that has to be it. 

“misha…” he murmurs, trying to get a good look at misha’s tearstained face. 

how can he tell this boy before him he’s stronger than noel ever was, or will be? 

“misha, you are. you are so strong. if you weren’t, you wouldn’t—god, this is corny, but you wouldn’t even be here right now. you wouldn’t be alive. you wouldn’t be opening up to me even a little, that’s for sure.” reaching for a hand sticking out of the murky waters, pulling. 

“i’m not leaving. and i mean it this time.” his hand creeps to the back of misha’s head, fingers gently messing with the baby-soft curls at the base of misha’s neck. noel’s fingers trace deftly over the skin there, silky yet scarred, but never rough. “if we can, i’ll try and make it work.”

the hazy, flickering light from the city and the hospital outside beam through the window, the red and the blue and the yellow dance and swim on noel’s face as misha looks up towards him. misha squeezes as tight as he can, holds on for dear life, as much as noel’s injuries allow him. like if he lets go or lets looser, noel will fall away. like the world will stop and the years will end in their wake if he lets go. 

the boy finds himself empty of love. but he remembers that humans are 70 percent water. the lakes and oceans inside of him rumble and wave with salt and hope and love and light. misha thinks that canada is a place where sadness makes sense. where the frozen lakes and the dim skies and the snow and stalled sea are a home and a haven. families settle down here, and they never leave. misha thinks that maybe it isn’t so bad. that maybe he can do the same with noel. when they’re older. maybe.

“i am not strong, poet. weak. weak. stupid.” he shakes his head, the pounding in his skull returning with a vengeance. but the warmth of noel’s body, his hands around him. it helps, somehow.

the hairs on misha’s arms stand up and the skin on his back tingles, and a wave of calm washes over him. he knows that he isn’t easy to love, but noel loves him like a breeze. with the same kind of brevity, the same kind of certainty that can only come with a harsh wind. with a storm and lightning and pounding rain and thunder. 

“please… please don’t leave me, поет. i am so sorry for everything that i’ve ever done. i am sorry for pretending that everything was fine when it wasn’t. i am sorry for hiding so much from you. i am sorry for not caring to know you before all of his happened. i love you. i think. i think that i can love two people the same. i think.” 

misha nods, two sniffling breaths coming out of him. he desperately needs a shower, but his exhaustion is bone-deep.

“i want to feel the sun on my face again. i think it will help. please.”

noel’s eyes widen a fraction, feather-light hands drifting up to either side of misha’s face. he gently rubs his thumbs in soothing circles, tracing the little milky ways of freckles that he’s mapped out on misha’s face.

“misha, you’re not.”

he says it with a sort of firmness, affirming himself that he can do this just as much as he’s comforting misha.

“i love you too. so much. so much. i…i owe you an apology too. what i said, what i did, how i treated you…that wasn’t okay. you had every right to be upset, and i shouldn’t have just tried to up and leave. and…yes, i think you can love two people all the same.”

a soft smile falls on noel’s pale, chapped lips. it’s small, tired, but it’s there. he loves misha. he loves him with all of the fire in his heart, with all of the nonstop words flooding through his brain every second, with all of the life packed into his sleepy hazel eyes. it’s there, and maybe he’s been pushing it down, or putting it on too much of a pedestal, but it’s love.

“i promise, i’ll take you outside. we can find a nice grassy spot, maybe by the lake, and just…talk.”

it would be beautiful. sitting with misha, hands clasped, in a field of soft grass and daises that sprouted from the green like the little stars you could pick out from aurora borealis. the sun would shine down onto their faces, highlighting carefree smiles and wide, glistening eyes, ears that perked to listen to the whistle of the whippoorwill that frequented a patch of trees nearby. the water would shine under its icy sheen, the sun’s light bouncing off of it to create a glistening opalescent glow. the two would tangle up in hugs, laughing and whispering as the almost untouched vegetation provided a soft bed underneath them, and they could fall asleep, the stars slowly peeking over the horizon to catch a glimpse of their unconscious forms.

“i swear on it.”

misha exhales, a slow, shuddering breath, and lets his eyes slip shut. the weight of exhaustion pulls at him, thick and inescapable, dragging him down like heavy silt in a riverbed. he sinks into it, into noel’s warmth, into the way his fingers trace over his cheeks, gentle as candlelight flickering against old cathedral walls.

it’s comforting, in its own way. a different kind of comforting. it’s human—fragile and desperate, the kind of comfort that says stay, stay, stay, even when the world is cruel. even when everything hurts.

but it isn’t the comfort of home.

it isn’t the warmth of his mother’s hands cupping his face, whispering soft колискові as she smoothed back his hair. it isn’t the low hum of a prayer under his grandmother’s breath, the scent of incense clinging to her shawl. it isn’t the voices of a choir echoing off the domed ceiling of a church, the golden iconostasis gleaming in the candlelight, saints watching over him with solemn, knowing eyes.

it isn’t that. and nothing ever will be.

he curls in closer, pressing his forehead to noel’s chest, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing. there’s a peace in it, a lull, something that tells him he doesn’t have to fight for now. he lets it lull him, lets the weight in his chest ease just enough to let him slip away.

his lips move without thinking, barely above a whisper.

“господи, дай мені сили…”

misha stares at the ceiling, tracing the cracks with tired eyes. he should be asleep. he was asleep. but now, with the weight of everything pressing against his chest, he can’t even close his eyes without feeling like he’s suffocating.

“noel.” his voice is hoarse, barely more than a whisper. his fingers twitch against the sheets. he swallows hard, trying to keep himself steady. “i don’t—i don’t deserve you.”

he means it. he doesn’t know why noel is still here, why he’s always here, why he keeps looking at him like he’s something good, something worth it. misha is a wreck. he’s been a wreck for a long time, but now it’s worse. now he can’t even pretend to be okay.

“and i don’t understand,” he says, voice cracking on the last word. “i don’t understand why—why this happened to us.” his fingers curl into fists. “why the accident. why any of this. why we—why i survived. i should have just—”

he cuts himself off, breath catching in his throat. the urge slams into him like a wave, cold and unrelenting. he wants a drink. god, he wants a drink.

his stomach twists, and his hands shake. he tries to ignore it, but it’s there, gnawing at him, whispering in the back of his head. just one. just a sip. it would help. it would make everything easier, take the edge off, smooth out the jagged, unbearable reality of this moment.

“i—” his voice is unsteady. he presses his knuckles to his temple, trying to will it away. “i just—i just want to feel normal again.”

but he doesn’t even know what normal is anymore. maybe he never did.

noel, the aspiring poet, always running in circled around every word that flits through his brain, is at a loss for words once more.

how ironic can it be? one’s way with words, their talent, scraped away.

he swallows. takes a deep breath, steels himself, and tries to think of how to even respond to this. he can’t just say “no, you do deserve me?” and leave it at that. “you deserve even better” takes away the point.

the next set of words cuts deep. noel is terrified it’ll expose tender flesh, flesh that shouldn’t be touched, that should have been left alone ever since the accident. pink and disgusting, it’s like a button to be pressed anyways. it’ll reveal itself, no matter what.

“maybe you don’t deserve me, but you deserve all that’s good, misha,” he blurts, almost lunging forward to launch into a pacing rant, but he’s long lost that ability. “i—i don’t understand why this happened to us either.”

maybe he does. noel wonders a lot if it was truly fate, or if it was supposed to go another way when that rickety cart teetered on the edge of the drop.

perhaps, in some alternate universe, it wasn’t them. it wasn’t some random children who didn’t know how to grapple with their own lives, let alone the cold water splash of death. or, well, near-death. the acceptance of it was settling in their throats like slimy bile during that crazy dream, but it was all drugs anyways—it had to be.

nothing like that can truly happen. enough has for noel to realize that. 

“i get it. i get it. i get wanting to feel normal, to feel—to feel like something, something besides dead weight to everyone around you. all i can really tell you is that you’re not, and that i know it’s hard, but i wish you’d believe me about that. about your worth. because it’s more than you know.”

misha's breath is shaky but slowing, and so are his heart monitors along with it. misha holds onto noel like a storm shelter and prays to god or whoever will listen thanking them that one noel gruber exists. just earlier, misha had been choking on air; hands clawing at nothing. but noel’s heart beat is steady like the tide, like the bubbling waters of the coast and the warm sand beneath his feet, like the rhythm of a prayer murmuring low. *for we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones.*

misha thinks back to a song they sang in choir. *i believe in the sun, even when it is not shining. i believe in god even when he is silent.* and the echoing of the voices and the chords that rattled his bones. he thinks that he finally understands the text and what it meant. he had been trying to ignore it, then.

the warmth of noel is like a flickering candle, and it’s strange how something so small- just the press of another broken body against his- can quiet the thunderstorm, the war in misha's mind. but misha is not whole, and he is not worthy. he is not worthy in the way that noel is and he is not worthy of his or His love. he is too ashamed to call out for mercy, and too far gone to deserve it. 

noel’s fingers trace idle patterns against his back, grounding him, tethering him to something tangible. misha presses closer, as if he could disappear into him, as if proximity alone could save him from himself. but he knows better. the world is still cracked down the middle. his body still betrays him. his mind still stumbles over thoughts like uneven cobblestones. the weight of the accident still clings to him like damp cloth, heavy, suffocating. 

“i’m not… who i was supposed to be. i should have been strong. my family. my country. we survive. we always survive.”

“my baba used to tell me stories… about the famine, about the soviets. they had nothing, and they still found a way to live. they were starving, dying—but they never gave up. and now… now i can’t even eat without a tube down my throat.”

“i’m supposed to carry them with me. their suffering… their strength. but i can’t. i don’t— i don’t know how to live with all this… all this emptiness. i feel so sick.”

noel sighs, resting both hands solidly on misha’s back. it’s that time of the night, the hour when the ache creeps between his bones, pounded yet muffled by pain meds and his pure resistance.

the truth is, his heart hurts worse, seeing misha like this. he wants to do something, to prove that misha is his sun and moon, providing him with every crack of daylight that works into the dark corners of his new life. his everything, the only being that isn’t something noel feels like he’s made up.

how can he even compare misha’s bravery to that? how can he say, “you are just as brave, just as much of a warrior, and it’s different, it’s different.” 

where words are supposed to come, there is dryness on his tongue, down his throat, rough and weighted like sand. no, gravel. sharp rocks cut jagged lines down his throat, begging him to say something, or keep hurting.

noel stares down at misha for a moment, the angel fallen from grace for things out of even his divine control. his mind’s eye scans over the pledge he made to stand by him, to create new tapestries from the ashes of the ones torn away, to meld stained glass windows back into place, just to watch their multicolored light shine down behind misha. the light, casting halos and wings and other fantastic things.

“you haven’t *given up*,” he starts. it’s weak, but it’s something. “you’re surviving. you survived still. you aren’t supposed to be able to heal so fast; they didn’t heal like that. it may be a different kind of endurance, but…but it’s still endurance.” 

“any day, you can decide you’re just done, and—“ he swallows. “and do something awful. but you don’t. that’s resilience, and i don’t know about you, but i have a ton of respect for that. i can’t even formulate all of it, but—the point is, you’re still here. emptiness can be filled, if you find the right things.”

noel takes a deep breath. it shudders, quivering under the weight of every dragging hour from the last few weeks.

misha shifts slightly, the faintest movement, as noel’s hands rest solidly on his back. the weight of his words feels like a constant echo in the room, and misha lets out a long, slow breath, his body taut as though trying to hold something back.

“i- i am not brave, noel,” misha murmurs, his voice rough like a prayer whispered too many times in the dark, yet there is a quiet reverence in it, his accent soft and still. “i’ve just been given so much shit that i have had to learn how to deal with. i do not think that deserves commendment.” 

his fingers, still weak and uncooperative, twitch near the crucifix hanging by his bed, the only thing that he had in the room. it’s small, simple—just like his home back in ukraine. he traces the edge of it with his eyes, his hand trembling as if trying to connect, to find strength in the symbols that have always surrounded him.

misha was born from blood and soil, from the hard earth that refused to give in, even in winter. his people have always known hardship, and their strength had always been measured by how they endure, even when the world tells them that they should fall. like the fireweed that grows back after the snow melts—it survives. misha is the fireweed. talya is the fireweed. 

his breath comes out in a short, shaky sigh, and he grips the blanket beneath his fingers, trying to steady himself. the room feels colder now, quieter. the hallway outside is calmer now, and the lights through the window flicker out as the stars pop up to shine. 

since the accident and many times before… misha has wanted to give up. he’s looked at the golden bottles of pills and held a full bottle of vodka and wondered what would happen if he did it. he used to drive his car 100 miles an hour on the freeway and take his hands off the wheel just to feel something. it isn’t that misha had ever wanted to die, it’s just that he didn’t care if he did or not. he wonders if that’s worse, somehow.  but misha knew that he couldn’t give up. because his mother sent him here to have a better life, because he knew the souls of his people have walked this path before. the saints in their halos, the martyrs, they knew suffering. but they endured. they did not falter in the face of darkness, even when the light seemed so, so far away.

misha’s gaze moves to noel, to his weary eyes, still full of hope despite the heaviness that clings to the room. he can feel the weight of noel’s hands on him, a warmth and a promise.

“i am not afraid of the dark,” misha whispers. his struggle is his own, but deep down, he knows that he doesn’t walk it alone. noel, talya… their unwavering love, their faith. it is the light that guides him. the oil that keeps the flame burning even through the treacherous winds and darkness.

misha sighs, his heart aching but filled with something else, something deeper—something akin to peace, a strange, hard-earned peace.

“i’m tired… and i think i am going to go to bed now, okay?” misha sighs, still sniffling softly. “but i love you. and thank you for staying… even when i knew that you were about to leave.”

his voice falters only slightly at the end, but he feels something stir within him—strength, however fleeting it may seem. he may not be an angel, nor a saint, but he is, and always will be, a soldier of the light.

misha leans back, his head resting against noel’s chest, the words he couldn’t say, the weight of all he had carried, settling in his heart. just the simple, unwavering truth that, somehow, noel was his sun and moon. the light that guided him. the fireweed that would always rise, no matter the cold.

noel’s grip tightens, then loosens, as he just sits and listens to misha. a light rain starts to fall outside, its staccato beat against the hospital window providing some semblance of the white noise noel’s brain can function better with. the pitter-patter is somewhat soothing, the calm in the eye of the storm. a storm, noel remembers, has to move on at some point.

his chest inflates with a deep breath—no, too sharp to be deep. a breath— as if he is about to spiral into another meaningless rant, but he knows that misha’s brain is too fogged to hear him.

the idea that he may not be hearing misha the same way either pierces through noel’s thoughts like an arrow through fog.

no, that can’t be true. a semblance of understanding is still able to peek through, despite the dark drapes between every corner of noel’s mind, severing his thoughts from the rest of the world. other parts of his brain, even, seem to just shut off occasionally. 

however, the walls he keeps up around things he wants to keep down are starting to tilt, and it creates a sinking feeling, deep in his stomach.

“i love you too, misha. sleep well.”

it’ll get better tomorrow.

noel can’t even bring himself to say it without his lip trembling. in all honesty, it’s a miracle he hasn't cried—noel had never been a big crier, but recently, as everything flooded back into his mind, emotions had been strong as tidal waves. not as powerful as misha’s, but still enough to rock his mind and soul. a ship in a raging ocean, stranded, searching for a lighthouse that might not even exist.

he stays awake a little longer, eyes half-lidded with exhaustion as he stares rather blankly at the machinery in misha’s hospital room. it’s interesting how it all comes together, how these blinking lights and beeping monitors can provide life to someone.

then again, is it life? is it living, or is it survival? is the constant guilt, the need to force things out, the need for so much change, is it living? is it the same as how it was before the accident, the same as kneeling down on old carpets with family and reading from a book, pages yellowed from time? is it the same as arguing with ocean over petty one-off statements on the way to school, as dawn cracks over the horizon? is it the same as sitting at your desk and writing about who you want to be, even though your perception of self is twisted beyond recognition? a shattered portrait, an ink-stained piece of artwork, a water-damaged photograph. 

noel still doesn’t know how he’s supposed to get better about that. how is he supposed to help misha, when he hardly helps himself? he’s been told often that there has to be something wrong with him, wishing for all that tragedy. and maybe it was true then. but it’s certainly true now. he’s like some sort of monster from those black-and-white horror flicks, guts hanging out of his body and covered in surgery scars. it still freaks his mom out that his intestines poke out from his sides, even though all it’s for is to make things easier. it has to look hard to be so easy.

uneasy, he shifts. the dark is finally starting to creep past the corners of his vision, lights dancing behind his eyelids like they always seem to now.

“goodnight, misha. it’ll get better tomorrow.”

as noel drifts off, the optimism hanging in his mind sways in and out of focus. with his last bits of consciousness, he prays for it to stay with him.

as he drifts off to sleep, misha thinks back to the version of himself before the crash. before the scar on his skull, before the metal and the doctors and the pieces of him that he will never get back. before his leg, crushed and severed on the tracks and the ride in the ambulance, the fair lights and the sirens and the red and blue blurring together with the smell of cotton candy and his own vomit. before he saw noel hanging open, blood pouring from his mouth being pushed into another ambulance next to him. 

mishas muscle spasms are worse at night, his fingers and his right arm twitch in his sleep against noel’s fragile torso. but worse than the physical pain is the way that it lingers. the fact that this is their life now. the fact gnawing at misha like moths chewing through linen. but misha knows, that just like the ashen, tattered and burnt buildings of his country. they will build it up to be new again, just like they did when they built it in the first place with aching hands and knees.

he closes his eyes and pretends that he is still back home, kneeling in the church with his mother, her voice low and steady as she reads from psalms. the way that the candlelight flickered against the icons of saints, the incense in the air, the way that the words tasted in his mouth as he whispered them back to her. 

misha wants to believe noel’s utterance: it will get better tomorrow, but belief is a thing that has never come easy to misha. hope has always been the hardest thing to hold on to. but he slips away against the beeping of machines… the noises, the lights aren’t the candle light of the church. they aren’t the buzzing, flickering light of home, but they are something. the light is something. it is keeping him alive, it is keeping him steady and warm and whole. misha thinks that he’s gotten more care in this hospital for a month than he has in his 4 years in canada before this combined. 

misha remembers that… before the accident. his citizenship hadn’t been finalized. and there was a chance that he would’ve had to go fight for his country. 

misha folds his hands behind noel’s back and prays. god, i do not ask for this new life to be the same. all i ask is that i am not alone in it.