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The first thing Sal does when he wakes up is not move. It isn’t a conscious decision at first. It’s just the way his body settles, awake before his eyes open, mind already running ahead, checking, scanning, inventorying. The room is quiet in that early-morning way that feels almost suspended, like the world hasn’t quite committed to existing yet. Beside him, Brian is still asleep, breathing slow and even, one arm slung loosely across the mattress where Sal had been.
Sal keeps his hands curled against his chest.
Don’t touch anything yet.
The thought arrives clean and sharp, like it’s always been there waiting for him.
He opens his eyes. Ceiling. Familiar. Safe. No marks, no stains, no movement. He lets his gaze track slowly across it, left to right, right to left, once, twice, just enough to settle the tightness in his chest. Not fully gone, not ever fully gone, but quieter. Manageable. He exhales through his nose, slow and measured. If he does this right, the morning will go smoothly. If he does it right, nothing will feel off. If he does it right-
He pushes the thought down before it can finish.
Sal shifts carefully, inching out from under the covers. He avoids brushing against Brian’s arm, lifting the blanket just enough to slide free without contact. It takes longer this way. It always does. But it’s better than the alternative, the jolt of wrongness, the sudden certainty that something has already gone bad before the day has even begun.
His feet touch the floor. He waits. There’s a pause here, a held breath stretched thin across a few seconds that feel longer than they are. He presses his toes down, testing. Nothing spikes, nothing twists. The feeling settles into something he can ignore.
He stands. Behind him, Brian shifts slightly, murmuring something soft and unintelligible into the pillow. Sal freezes anyway, shoulders going rigid, like the sound itself might change something. Like movement might ripple outward and disrupt whatever fragile balance he’s managed to hold.
Brian stills again. Sal counts to four in his head. Once. Twice. It feels even enough.
The bathroom door is already open. He made sure of that last night, checked it twice, then a third time when it didn’t feel right. Open doors are easier. No handles. No unnecessary contact.
Still, he hesitates at the threshold. There’s always a moment. A line. Crossing it means the routine begins, and once it begins, it has to be finished properly. No interruptions. No mistakes. If something goes wrong, he’ll have to start again, and starting again is worse than anything, the crawling sense under his skin, the pressure building behind his ribs, the certainty that something is wrong wrong wrong and he is the only one who can fix it.
Sal flexes his fingers. Clean, safe, okay. The words settle into place, familiar as breath.
He steps inside.
The sink is where it always is. Of course it is. White porcelain, faint scratch near the drain, faucet angled slightly to the left. He catalogues it without thinking, eyes flicking over each detail in the same order as always.
Left edge. Right edge. Faucet. Drain.
Again.
Left. Right. Faucet. Drain.
It lines up. It matches. Nothing has changed.
Good. Sal reaches forward and turns the tap on.He uses his wrist, not his fingers. Less contact that way. The water runs for a few seconds before he brings his hands under it, another rule, another step. It has to be the right temperature, not too cold, not too warm. There’s a point where it feels neutral, where it doesn’t cling.
He waits for it. There.
He presses his hands together under the stream.
Once. Twice. Then he pulls back. Something twists in his chest. Not right.
Sal stills, water continuing to run between his fingers, dripping into the basin in uneven, arrhythmic taps. He replays the movement in his head, the angle, the pressure, the timing. Something about it sits wrong, like a note slightly off-key.
He swallows.
Again.
He resets, hands out, shake them once, twice, exactly twice, droplets flicking against the porcelain. He ignores where they land. He has to ignore where they land or he’ll get stuck on that too, and he doesn’t have time to get stuck on everything.
Clean, safe, okay.
He brings his hands back under the water.
Once. Twice. Better. Not perfect. Not right, not fully, but closer. Close enough that the pressure eases instead of tightening.
He exhales. Soap next.
By the time Sal is done, the sky outside has shifted from grey to pale blue.
He doesn’t notice it happening.
Time doesn’t move the same way inside the routine. It stretches, folds in on itself, gets caught in loops that feel endless until suddenly they aren’t. His hands are clean, actually clean, not just physically, but in the way that matters, the way that quiets the noise in his head. Mostly.
There’s still a faint itch at the edges. There’s always a faint itch. He dries his hands carefully, using the towel hanging on the right side of the rack. Only the right side. The left side is for later, for after, for when things are different. He presses each finger into the fabric, one at a time, counting without meaning to.
One. Two. Three. Four. Again.
When he’s done, he adjusts the towel so it hangs evenly.
Left corner. Right corner. Even. Okay.
When Sal steps back into the bedroom, Brian is awake. He’s propped up on one elbow, hair a mess, eyes still heavy with sleep but focused enough to track Sal as he moves. There’s a soft smile tugging at his mouth, easy and unguarded in a way that makes something in Sal’s chest ache.
“Hey,” Brian murmurs.
Sal pauses just inside the doorway. There’s a flicker of hesitation, brief, almost invisible, but sharp. Brian’s been in the bed. The bed has been touched. The sheets have shifted, warmed, altered in ways Sal hasn’t accounted for yet.
It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s-
“Hey,” he echoes, forcing his voice steady.
Brian pushes himself up a little more, reaching out instinctively, fingers brushing the space where Sal had been lying earlier. “You were gone a while. Everything okay?”
Sal nods too quickly. “Yeah. Just- couldn’t sleep.”
It’s not exactly a lie. It just isn’t the whole truth.
Brian studies him for a second, like he might push further, but then he just hums and shifts over, patting the mattress. “C’mere.”
The invitation hangs there. Sal’s stomach tightens.
The bed. Brian’s hands. Outside air from yesterday still clinging to fabric, to skin, to everything Sal hasn’t reset yet. He takes a step forward anyway. Because this part matters too. Because Brian matters. Because he can’t always- don’t think about it.
He sits on the very edge of the bed, careful, controlled. The mattress dips under his weight, and immediately his brain starts cataloguing again, where the pressure shifts, how the fabric pulls, what might have transferred from one surface to another.
Brian doesn’t seem to notice. He just leans in, presses a quick kiss to Sal’s shoulder. It’s warm. Familiar. And wrong.
The thought hits fast and sharp, a spike of something cold threading through Sal’s chest. His muscles tense before he can stop them, a reflex he hates, hates, hates-
Brian pulls back slightly. “Hey. You good?”
Sal forces himself to relax, inch by inch.
“Yeah,” he says, softer this time. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Clean, safe, okay. The words feel thinner now. Less convincing.
Brian’s hand settles against his arm, thumb brushing absently back and forth. It’s a small thing. Gentle. Grounding, for most people.
Sal focuses on it anyway. On the exact spot of contact. On the way it lingers. On everything it might mean. He swallows. Doesn’t pull away.
Later, when they leave the apartment, Sal makes sure to walk on Brian’s left. It’s not something he explains. It’s just easier that way. The sidewalk feels different depending on which side you’re on, different angles, different spacing, different proximity to everything that lines the street. Shop windows. Benches. Railings.
Railings. The word lands before the sight does.
Sal’s gaze catches on them anyway, drawn in that awful, magnetic way he can never quite resist. Metal bars running along the edge of the pavement, evenly spaced, dull silver catching the morning light.
His chest tightens. Don’t. Too late.
The image flashes, sudden and violent and entirely uninvited, sharp angles, missteps, bodies moving the wrong way at the wrong time. Impact. The sickening certainty of something going through where it shouldn’t.
Sal jerks his gaze away. His breath stutters.
No no no no- Clean, safe, okay.
The mantra comes fast now, overlapping itself, tripping over the rising noise in his head. He fixes his eyes on the ground instead, on the pattern of cracks in the pavement, stepping carefully to avoid the lines, then correcting himself because that’s another thing, another loop-
Stop. He presses his fingers into his palm. Once. Twice. Four times. Even.
Brian says something beside him, something light, casual, but Sal doesn’t catch it. The words blur together, drowned out by the static building behind his eyes. The railings are still there. Even when he’s not looking. Especially when he’s not looking.
“What?” Brian nudges him gently. “You spaced out on me.”
Sal blinks, forcing himself back.
“Sorry,” he mutters. “Just tired.”
Brian gives him a look, concerned, but not pushing. “We can head back if you want.”
The offer is immediate. Easy. Sal shakes his head. If they go back now, it’ll feel like losing. Like confirming something he doesn’t want to be true.
“I’m okay,” he says.
It’s convincing. They keep walking. Sal doesn’t look at the railings again. But he feels them anyway, every step, every breath, a presence just at the edge of everything, waiting, watching, wrong.
Clean, safe, okay. He repeats it until the words lose meaning. Until they’re just sounds. Until they’re all he has.
They don’t turn back. Sal keeps walking because stopping would be worse. Stopping would mean thinking, and thinking would mean seeing it again, and he already saw it once, too clearly, too fast, like it had been waiting for him the second he stepped outside. The railings stretch alongside the pavement, unbroken, evenly spaced, harmless in the way everything harmless always is right up until it isn’t.
He keeps his eyes down. Cracks in the concrete. Dark lines spidering out, intersecting at uneven angles. Step over the long ones. Don’t step on the intersections. No, wait, that’s-
His foot hovers mid-step. Wrong. If he avoids them now, it becomes a thing. A rule. Another rule. His chest tightens. Just walk. Just walk normally. He forces his foot down, directly on the line this time, pressing a little harder than necessary like he can cancel out the hesitation. His skin prickles.
Clean, safe, okay. The words come too fast, tumbling over each other. He matches them to his steps, one word per footfall, steady, controlled, contained.
“Sal?” Brian’s voice cuts in, gentle but closer now. Too close. Sal hadn’t noticed him drifting nearer, hadn’t noticed the way his shoulder almost brushed against his.
Sal shifts half a step away without thinking. Not obvious. Not obvious. Keep it normal.
“Yeah?” His voice sounds thin, even to himself.
“You’re doing that thing again.” Brian tilts his head slightly, studying him. “You’re like…marching.”
Sal hadn’t noticed that either. He stops. Immediately, something lurches in his chest.
No no- don’t stop mid-pattern-
He takes two quick steps forward to even it out. Then two more, just in case. His breath catches.
Brian’s brow furrows. “Hey,”
“I’m fine,” Sal says quickly, too quickly. “I just missed a step.” That doesn’t make sense. He knows it doesn’t make sense. Brian knows it doesn’t make sense.
But Brian just watches him for a second longer, then nods slowly, like he’s choosing not to push. “Okay.”
They reach the corner. There’s a crossing. And more railings. Sal sees them before they even stop walking.
Metal bars lining the edge of the curb, guiding foot traffic toward the crossing point. They’re closer here. Taller. The tops rounded but still wrong, still sharp in the way that matters, in the way his brain insists on interpreting them no matter what they actually are.
His stomach drops. Don’t look. He looks anyway. It’s not a choice. It never feels like a choice. His gaze snags on the nearest pole, follows the line of it down to where it’s bolted into the ground, then back up again, faster this time, like tracing it will make it make sense.
It doesn’t. The thought hits. Fast. Violent. A misstep. A stumble forward. Momentum in the wrong direction. The body doesn’t stop in time-
Through.
Sal sucks in a sharp breath. No. No no no no-
He jerks his head to the side so hard his neck twinges, vision blurring for a second as he forces his focus anywhere else, cars passing, people waiting, the flicker of the pedestrian light counting down in red numbers.
Too late. The image replays. Clearer this time. Closer. He presses his nails into his palm. Hard.
Clean, safe, okay. Clean, safe, okay. Clean-
The words overlap, faster and faster, losing rhythm. That’s bad. He needs the rhythm. Without it, they don’t stick, they don’t cancel anything out, they just bounce around uselessly while everything else gets louder.
“Sal.” Brian’s hand lands on his shoulder. Everything stops. Not the thoughts. Never the thoughts. But everything else. Sal freezes.
The contact burns. Not physically, Brian’s hand is warm, familiar, safe in every normal sense of the word, but it lands wrong in the middle of everything else happening, like an interruption in a sentence he hasn’t finished yet.
He can’t move. If he moves now, it’ll lock it in. The thought, the image, the wrongness of it, moving will confirm it somehow, make it real in a way he can’t undo.
Brian’s thumb brushes lightly against his shoulder. “Hey, you okay? You look-”
“Don’t,” Sal blurts. Too loud. Too sharp.
Brian’s hand stills immediately, then pulls back. “Okay. Okay, sorry.”
The absence of contact is just as bad.
Sal’s heart is beating too fast now, uneven, knocking against his ribs in a way that makes everything feel off-balance. The crossing light changes, green man flickering on, but Sal doesn’t move. He can’t. The railings are right there. Closer now.
If he steps forward, he’ll be within arm’s reach. Within falling distance. The thought surges again, worse this time because he’s already tried to stop it once and failed. You could trip. You could slip. Someone could bump into you-
Stop. He squeezes his eyes shut. Bad idea. Now the image isn’t anchored to anything real. It’s just there, floating, vivid and uncontained. He opens his eyes again immediately. “Sal, we need to cross.” Brian’s voice is softer now, careful. “Come on.”
Sal shakes his head. A small movement, barely there, but it feels like a rupture.
“I can’t,” he says, and he hates how true it sounds.
Brian glances at the crossing, then back at him. People are already moving past them, stepping around, giving them space without really looking. “What do you mean you can’t?”
Sal doesn’t know how to answer that. He can cross. Physically, there’s nothing stopping him. His legs work. The path is clear. The railings aren’t even directly in the way, they’re off to the side, easy to avoid if you just walk straight.
But that’s the problem. If he walks straight, he’s not accounting for them. Not controlling for them. Not-
The light starts flashing. Time is running out. Pressure builds, sharp and immediate. He has to move. But he has to do it right.
Sal takes a step forward. Then another, angled slightly away from the railings. Too obvious. He corrects, shifts back the other way, trying to make it look natural, like he’s not actively calculating the exact distance between himself and every vertical piece of metal within reach.
His steps fall into a pattern. Left foot slightly longer than right. Right foot shorter, controlled.
Don’t get too close.
Don’t drift.
Don’t trip.
He repeats it with every step, syncing it to the rhythm of his body. It helps. A little. Not enough, but enough to keep moving.
Halfway across, someone brushes past him. Just a shoulder. Accidental. Normal. Sal flinches so hard he almost does stumble.
The thought explodes.
There, see? That’s how it happens-
His foot lands wrong. Panic spikes. He takes two quick corrective steps, then two more to even it out, then one more because it still doesn’t feel right-
“Sal- slow down,” Brian says, trying to keep up.
Sal doesn’t answer. He can’t stop until it’s even.
Four steps. Eight. Sixteen. It doesn’t matter what number, just that it feels complete. By the time they reach the other side, Sal’s breathing is ragged.
He keeps walking. Has to keep walking.If he stops now, everything he just did will collapse in on itself, unravel into something worse.
“Hey.” Brian catches up, moving in front of him this time, gently blocking his path. “Stop for a second. Please.”
Sal halts. Too abruptly. His chest tightens again.
Brian’s expression is different now. Not just concerned, worried. Careful in a way that makes Sal’s stomach twist.
“You’re not fine,” Brian says quietly.
Sal looks past him. There are more railings further down the street. He swallows.
“I just- ” His voice falters. He starts over. “I just need a minute.”
Brian nods immediately. “Okay. Yeah. Take a minute.”
Sal presses his hands together, fingers interlacing, then tightening until his knuckles ache. He focuses on the pressure, on the symmetry of it- left hand, right hand, equal force, equal contact. The thoughts are still there. They don’t go away. They never go away completely. But they dull, just slightly, like turning down the volume on something that never fully stops playing.
Clean, safe, okay.
He repeats it again. Slower this time. More deliberate. Brian stays where he is, not touching, not interrupting. Just there. Sal doesn’t look at the railings again. But he knows exactly where they are. And that’s enough to keep the edge of panic sharp, waiting, ready to spike again the second he lets his guard down.
They don’t stay out much longer.
Sal insists he’s fine, says it in that flat, practiced way that means drop it, and Brian, after a second, does. They turn back earlier than planned, conversation thinning into something quiet and functional. The walk back is worse, in a way, because Sal knows what’s out there now. Knows where the railings are. Knows how close he came to-
He keeps his eyes down the entire time. Counts his steps. Doesn’t let himself look.
The moment the apartment door closes behind them, something in Sal’s chest snaps.
Not relief. Not really. Just a different kind of pressure. Inside is supposed to be safe. Inside is controlled. Inside is his.
And yet, when his hand is still on the door handle. He freezes. The metal is cool under his palm. Wrong. He hadn’t accounted for that. He hadn’t done anything about that. He just walked in and touched it, after everything outside, after the railings, after the crossing, after-
His stomach lurches. No. No, that’s-
He lets go of the handle like it burned him. Too late.
“Hey,” Brian says from behind him, toeing off his shoes. “You okay?”
Sal nods. Doesn’t turn around.
“I’m just gonna wash my hands,” he says, already moving.
It sounds normal.
It isn’t.
The bathroom feels smaller than it did this morning. The walls closer. The air heavier. Sal turns the tap on too fast this time, water splashing against the basin before he adjusts it. He doesn’t pause at the threshold. Doesn’t check the edges of the sink. Doesn’t ground himself in the details. He goes straight to it.
Hands under water.
Soap.
Rub.
Once. Twice. Three-
Wrong.
The number hits him before the motion finishes. Three is wrong. It has to be even. He jerks his hands back, breath catching, then immediately shoves them under the stream again like he can overwrite what just happened.
Four. He presses his palms together harder this time, scrubbing faster, more deliberate.
Four.
Eight.
Sixteen.
The numbers stack in his head, building structure where everything else feels unstable. He clings to them, to the rhythm, to the repetition that makes sense even when nothing else does.
Clean, safe, okay. The words slot in between the counts.
Four- clean.
Eight- safe.
Sixteen- okay.
Again. Again. Again. The water is too hot now. He doesn’t fix it.
By the time he rinses, his hands are starting to sting. He watches the soap swirl down the drain, white foam thinning into nothing. That part is always important. Watching it go. Making sure it goes.
If it doesn’t go, it stays. If it stays- No.
He leans closer, eyes tracking every last trace until the water runs clear. Okay.
He reaches for the towel.
His fingers hover just above the fabric, something feels off. He frowns slightly, scanning it, left corner, right corner, the way it hangs, the fold near the middle. It looks the same as it did this morning. It is the same. But it doesn’t feel the same. His chest tightens.
Did he touch it wrong earlier? Did something transfer? Sal pulls his hand back. He can’t use it. Not like this.
He grabs the other side instead, the side he hadn’t planned to use yet, and dries his hands quickly, unevenly. The motion feels rushed, incomplete. Wrong.
He stills. The wrongness settles in his chest, heavy and immediate. He exhales slowly. Okay. Fix it.
He turns back to the sink.
The second wash is longer. More precise.
He resets everything, angle of the faucet, position of his hands, the exact amount of soap. He starts from the beginning, slower this time, deliberate, careful not to miss anything.
If he does it right, it’ll fix it. It has to fix it. Because if it doesn’t-
His throat tightens. He scrubs. Fingers. Palms. Between each knuckle. Four times. Eight. Sixteen.
He loses track at twenty-four and starts over. Better to restart than to risk it.
Clean, safe, okay. The mantra is quieter now, but steadier. Threaded through each movement, each repetition. His hands move automatically, muscle memory taking over where conscious thought starts to fray. The sequence is familiar. Predictable. He knows exactly what comes next, exactly how it should feel when it’s done.
Except, halfway through rinsing, something slips.
A thought. Not even a clear one. Just a flicker, metal, impact, the echo of earlier. Sal’s breath stutters.
No. No, not now. Not here. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second, then immediately opens them again, panic spiking. He didn’t finish the rinse. He didn’t finish the rinse properly. His chest constricts. He has to start over.
“Sal?” Brian’s voice comes from the other side of the door. Too close. Sal flinches.
“Yeah,” he calls back, trying to keep his voice even.
There’s a pause.
“You’ve been in there a while.”
Time stutters.
Sal glances at the mirror without meaning to, catching a glimpse of himself, damp hair at his temples, hands red and glistening under the water.
How long has it been?
It doesn’t matter.
“I’m almost done,” he says.
He isn’t.
The third wash is harder. Not physically. Mentally. Because now there’s pressure. Now there’s awareness. Now there’s the knowledge that someone is waiting, that time is passing in a way he can’t fully ignore anymore.
His hands shake slightly as he reaches for the soap again. Don’t mess it up. Don’t think about it. Just do it right.
Four.
Eight.
Sixteen.
He presses his palms together, harder, faster, like force can make it stick this time, like intensity can override the creeping doubt already forming at the edges.
Clean, safe, okay. The words feel thinner now.
Less solid. He rinses. Watches the water. Watches it go. It looks clear. It is clear. But-
His stomach twists. But is it enough? What if he missed something? What if the thought- No. Stop. He grips the edge of the sink. Hard. His knuckles whiten.
“If I don’t do this properly,” he whispers under his breath, voice barely audible over the running water, “something bad will happen.”
The words sit there. Heavy. Certain. He swallows. Starts again.
There’s a knock this time. Soft.
“Sal,” Brian says, quieter now. “Hey. Open the door?”
Sal doesn’t answer. He can’t answer. If he stops now, it won’t be finished. If it’s not finished, it won’t be right. If it’s not right-
He scrubs harder. His skin burns. Four. Eight. Sixteen. Even it out. He taps his left hand against the sink edge.
Once.
Twice.
Three. No.
Four.
Then he does the same with his right. Equal. It has to be equal. Everything has to match. Everything has to balance or it doesn’t count, it doesn’t hold, it doesn’t fix anything.
“Sal.” The handle shifts slightly. “I’m coming in, okay?”
Panic spikes.
“No- wait, ”
Too late. The door opens.
Brian steps in, stopping short at the sight of him. For a second, neither of them says anything.
The water is still running. Sal’s hands are still under it, red and shaking, moving in small, repetitive motions that don’t quite resolve into anything complete.
Brian’s expression changes. Confusion first. Then something sharper.
“Hey,” he says carefully. “What are you doing?”
Sal’s chest tightens.
“I just-” He swallows. “My hands were dirty.”
Brian glances at the sink. At the soap. At Sal’s hands.
“They’re-” He hesitates. “They’re like…really red.”
Sal looks down. They are. He hadn’t noticed. Or maybe he had and it just didn’t matter.
“I need to finish,” he says, more to himself than to Brian.
Brian steps a little closer. Not touching. Just there.
“You’ve been washing them since we got back.”
Sal’s stomach drops. That’s not possible. Is it? Time doesn’t feel like that. It never feels like that.
“I messed it up,” Sal says, the words slipping out before he can stop them. “I did it wrong and I just need to fix it.”
Brian’s brow furrows. “Fix what?”
Sal shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to explain it. Doesn’t know how to put the feeling into something that makes sense outside of his own head.
“If I don’t do it properly,” he says instead, voice tight, “something bad will happen.”
The silence that follows is different. Heavier. Brian studies him for a long moment.
Then, quietly: “Sal…that’s not- ”
“Don’t.” The word comes out sharper than he intends. “Just don’t.”
Brian stops, he holds up his hands slightly, like he’s backing off something fragile. “Okay. Okay, I won’t.”
Sal turns back to the sink. The water is still running. His hands are still wrong. Everything is still wrong. He reaches for the soap again. And starts over.
The soap slips in his hand. Just slightly. Barely anything, his grip shifts, the bar sliding against his palm before he catches it again, but it’s enough. The movement breaks the rhythm, interrupts the count mid-sequence.
Eight- No. Was that eight? Or was that seven? Sal’s breath catches. He can’t remember. The numbers scatter, lose their shape, and with them goes the thin sense of control he’d been holding onto. His chest tightens immediately, pressure building fast and sharp.
He has to start over. Again. His fingers fumble as he repositions the soap, trying to get it exactly right, same angle, same pressure, same place in his palm as before.
Behind him, Brian shifts his weight.
“Sal,” he says, a little more firmly now.
Sal doesn’t respond.
He can’t. If he breaks focus now, it’ll make it worse. Brian reaches forward. And turns the tap off.
The silence is instant. Violent. Sal jerks back like he’s been hit.
“What are you doing?” The words come out too loud, sharp enough to cut.
Brian flinches, just slightly. “You’ve been washing your hands for, like, twenty minutes.”
“That’s not the point,” Sal’s voice stumbles. He looks at the sink, at his hands, at the still-dripping water clinging to his skin. “I wasn’t finished.”
“They’re clean,” Brian says, like it’s obvious. Like it’s simple. “You don’t need to keep going,”
“I do.” The interruption is immediate, automatic. Sal’s chest is tight now, breath coming faster than he can control. “I didn’t finish it properly.”
Brian exhales, dragging a hand through his hair. “It’s just washing your hands, Sal.”
The words land wrong. Everything about them lands wrong.
Sal stares at him. “No, it’s not.”
Brian gestures vaguely toward the sink. “You turn the water on, you use soap, you rinse. That’s it- done. You’ve done it. Like, five times.”
“That doesn’t count,” Sal snaps.
Brian’s expression shifts, confusion sharpening into frustration. “Why not?”
Because it wasn’t right. Because the count broke. Because the thought came back. Because if he leaves it like this something will-
Sal presses his hands against the edge of the sink, hard enough that the porcelain bites into his palms. “Because it wasn’t right,” he says, voice tight.
Brian shakes his head slightly. “You’re not making any sense.”
“I know.” The admission slips out before Sal can stop it.
They both pause. Sal’s stomach twists. He does. know. That’s the worst part. He knows exactly how this sounds. Knows how it looks, standing here with red, shaking hands, insisting something invisible and intangible isn’t correct. He can hear it from the outside, hear how irrational it is, how disproportionate. It doesn’t change anything.
“I know it doesn’t make sense,” he says, quieter now, but the tension is still there, coiled tight under his skin. “I just need to finish it.”
Brian watches him for a second, searching his face. “Nothing’s going to happen if you don’t.”
Sal’s throat tightens.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” Brian says, a little sharper. “It’s a sink. It’s soap. That’s it. There’s nothing else.”
The words hit something raw. Sal laughs, but there’s no humor in it, just a brittle, strained edge. “Yeah. I know that.”
Brian frowns. “Then why are you acting like-”
“Because my brain doesn’t care what I know!” The words come out louder than he means them to, snapping through the small space of the bathroom.
Silence follows. Heavy. Immediate. Sal’s chest heaves once, twice, breath uneven. He looks away. God. He hadn’t meant to shout like that. Embarrassment floods in fast, hot and suffocating. It crawls up his throat, settles under his skin. He can feel it in the way his shoulders tense, the way he can’t quite meet Brian’s eyes anymore.
“Forget it,” he mutters, turning back toward the sink. “I’ll just finish it and then it’s done.”
He reaches for the tap. Brian catches his wrist. Not hard. Just enough to stop him. Sal freezes. The contact sends a jolt through him, sharp, immediate, wrong in a way that spikes his pulse all over again. His gaze drops to where Brian’s hand wraps around his wrist, skin against skin.
Contaminated. The thought is instant. Unwanted. Loud. Sal yanks his hand back.
“Don’t touch me,” he says, breath hitching.
Brian lets go immediately, hands lifting in surrender. “Okay, okay, sorry.”
But the damage is done. Sal stares at his wrist. He can feel it. The exact place Brian touched. The warmth of it, the pressure, the transfer, real or not, it doesn’t matter, it feels real, and that’s enough. His stomach drops.
“I have to start over,” he says, voice hollow.
Brian exhales sharply. “No, you don’t.”
Sal’s head snaps up. “Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t,” Brian repeats, more insistent now. “Nothing happened. I just touched your arm.”
“That’s the problem,” Sal shoots back.
Brian stares at him. “How is that a problem?”
Sal gestures helplessly, words tangling up before they can form properly. “Because now it’s not-” He stops, swallows, tries again. “It’s not clean anymore.”
Brian’s expression shifts again, something like disbelief creeping in. “You think I’m dirty?”
“No.” The answer is immediate. “No, that’s not—”
“Because it sounds like you do.”
“I don’t,” Sal insists, frustration spiking. “It’s not about you, it’s just, everything. Outside. The railings. The-” He cuts himself off, jaw tightening.
Brian’s brow furrows. “The railings?”
Sal winces. He shouldn’t have said that.
“It’s nothing,” he mutters.
“It’s clearly not nothing.” Brian steps a little closer, careful but persistent. “You’ve been on edge since we left the house. You freaked out at the crossing, now this- ”
“I didn’t freak out,” Sal snaps.
Brian blinks. “You literally froze in the middle of the street.”
“I was fine.”
“Sal.”
“I said I was fine.”
The words hang there, brittle and unconvincing. Neither of them believe it. Sal’s chest feels tight again, like there’s not enough room in his lungs to breathe properly. He turns back to the sink, gripping the edge hard enough to ground himself.
He knows how this looks. He knows how it sounds. He knows Brian is right, in the most basic, logical sense of it, nothing is going to happen. The world isn’t balanced on whether or not he washes his hands the correct number of times. The railings aren’t going to suddenly-
His stomach twists. The image flickers again, unwanted, intrusive, sharp. He squeezes his eyes shut for half a second. There it is. That’s the problem.
“I know it’s stupid,” he says, voice quieter now, strained. “Okay? I know it doesn’t make sense.”
Brian’s expression softens slightly at that, some of the frustration draining out. “Then-”
“But it doesn’t stop.” Sal opens his eyes again, looking at the sink, at his hands, anywhere but Brian. “Knowing doesn’t make it stop.”
The admission sits between them. Raw. Uncomfortable.
Brian hesitates. “So what? You’re just going to keep doing this until it feels right?”
“Yes.”
“How long is that?”
Sal doesn’t answer. Because he doesn’t know. Because sometimes it’s minutes. Sometimes it’s hours. Sometimes it never quite gets there at all.
Brian exhales slowly, rubbing a hand over his face. “Sal, that’s not healthy.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“Then stop.”
The word lands like a slap. Sal lets out a short, humorless breath. “Wow. Yeah. Okay. I’ll just stop.” He gestures vaguely at his head. “Didn’t think of that.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Sal finally looks at him, something sharp and defensive cutting through the embarrassment now. “You think I want to be doing this?”
Brian falters. “No, I just-”
“I know it’s irrational,” Sal continues, voice tightening. “I know it’s not logical, I know nothing’s actually going to happen if I don’t finish it properly. I know all of that.”
He swallows. His hands are still damp. Still wrong.
“And it still feels like something will.”
The room goes quiet again. Brian doesn’t interrupt this time. Doesn’t argue. He just stands there, watching, trying to understand something that doesn’t translate cleanly into words. Sal turns back to the sink. Reaches for the tap. His hand hesitates for a fraction of a second. Then he turns it on. Again.
The water runs. It’s the same sound it’s always been, steady, consistent, neutral, but after a while it stops sounding like water and starts sounding like time. Like something slipping past him in a way he can’t grab onto, can’t measure properly. Sal stares at his hands. They don’t look like his anymore.
The skin is flushed, too bright, stretched tight over his knuckles. There are faint lines where the soap has dried unevenly, ghost traces that catch the light if he tilts his fingers just slightly.
Clean, safe, okay. The words feel automatic, detached from meaning. He doesn’t even know if he believes them anymore. He just knows he has to say them, has to think them, or everything gets louder. Because the thoughts don’t stop. They never stop.
It isn’t just the railings. It’s never just one thing. The railings were just loud. Sharp.
Easy to latch onto. But the thoughts, they’re everywhere.
Constant. Waiting. What if you trip? What if you slip? What if you don’t notice in time? What if you do notice, but your body doesn’t listen? What if you lose control?
The last one sticks.
Sal’s fingers curl slightly, nails pressing into his palm. What if you lose control?
The image comes with it. Not just the railings this time. Other things. Worse things. Things he doesn’t want, doesn’t choose, doesn’t understand why his brain insists on producing them in such vivid, immediate detail. Movement where there shouldn’t be movement. Actions that don’t belong to him but feel like they could, like they’re possible in the worst way.
His stomach twists. No. He swallows hard. No, I wouldn’t. The response is automatic. Immediate. But it doesn’t stick. Because the thought comes back.
What if you would? What if you don’t know yourself as well as you think?
Stop.
Sal presses his hands flat against the sink. Hard.
The porcelain edge digs into his skin, grounding him in something solid, something external. He focuses on that instead, the pressure, the shape, the exact placement of his palms.
Left hand. Right hand.
He taps once with his left. Once with his right. Again. Balance it out. Make it even. Make it right. The problem isn’t fear. Not exactly. Fear would make more sense. Fear has a direction. A cause. Something you can point to and say that’s it, that’s the thing I’m afraid of.
This is wrongness. A constant, low-level hum under his skin that spikes into something unbearable if he ignores it for too long. It isn’t always tied to anything specific. Sometimes it’s just there, pressing in from all sides, demanding attention.
Fix this. Adjust that. Do it again. Do it properly.
Sal turns the tap slightly. Too far. The water pressure shifts. Wrong. He adjusts it back. Still wrong. Again. There.
No, not there. His chest tightens. He turns it back to where it was before, even if that wasn’t right either. It’s better to return to something familiar than to keep shifting endlessly, chasing a feeling that won’t settle.
He doesn’t remember when Brian left the doorway. Or if he did.
There’s a vague sense of movement at some point, footsteps, maybe a sigh, but it fades into the background quickly, drowned out by the constant loop in his head.
It’s easier like that. Not having to look at him. Not having to see the confusion. Or worse, understanding. Sal’s throat tightens. If he knew everything, not just this. Not just the handwashing, the counting, the visible parts that can almost be explained away if you squint hard enough. Everything. The thoughts. The images.
The way his brain turns ordinary objects into something dangerous, something sharp and immediate and wrong. The way it doesn’t stop there.
What if you lose control? The thought slides back in, quieter this time but more insistent.
What if you want to?
Sal shakes his head sharply.
That’s not real. That’s not him. He knows that.
Then why does it keep coming back? The question lingers. Heavy. Unanswerable.
He reaches for the soap again. His hands move automatically now, slipping back into the sequence without needing conscious direction. Rub. Turn. Press. Between fingers. Around thumbs. Across palms.
He counts under his breath this time, barely audible.
“Four, eight, sixteen, four, eight, sixteen,” The numbers loop, steadying something that feels like it’s constantly on the verge of slipping out of place. If he keeps the pattern, the thoughts quiet down. Not gone. Never gone. But quieter. Manageable. He focuses on the sensation instead. The friction of skin against skin. The heat building under the water. The exact placement of his fingers as they move. If he does it right, it’ll feel different.
There’s a point, he knows there’s a point, where everything clicks into place, where the wrongness eases just enough that he can breathe without thinking about it. He’s felt it before. Briefly. But enough to know it exists. He just has to get there.
The problem is, it keeps slipping. He gets close. He almost gets there. And then something shifts. A thought. A movement. A number that doesn’t line up. And it’s gone again. Back to the beginning. Again. Again. Again. Time stretches. The light in the bathroom changes, subtly, as the day moves forward outside. Sal doesn’t track it consciously, but it registers somewhere at the edges, brighter, then softer, then something in between.
His hands ache. He ignores it. His shoulders are tight, muscles locked in place from holding the same position for too long. He ignores that too. There’s only the sequence. Only the next step. Only the next correction.
At some point, he realizes he’s repeating the mantra without the words. Just the shape of them. The rhythm.
Clean, safe, okay. Clean, safe, okay. Clean, safe, okay.
It doesn’t mean anything anymore. It just is.
Like breathing. Like blinking. Like something his body does whether he wants it to or not.
He wonders, distantly, what Brian is doing. If he’s still in the apartment. If he’s sitting on the couch, waiting. If he’s frustrated. Annoyed. Confused. All of the above.
Sal’s stomach twists. If he knew everything, he’d leave.
The thought is quiet. Certain. Not sharp like the others. Not intrusive in the same way.
Just there. A baseline assumption that sits under everything else. If he knew how bad it actually is-
How long it takes. How much space it takes up in his head. How often it gets like this, even when it’s not visible. He wouldn’t stay. Why would he? Sal barely wants to stay with himself most days.
The water keeps running. His hands keep moving. The loop continues.
He chases the feeling. Misses it. Starts over. Chases it again. Misses it again. There’s a moment, brief, flickering, where something almost settles. His hands align just right, the pressure even, the sequence complete without interruption.
His breath catches. There. There-
A thought slips in. What if you didn’t do it properly?
It shatters immediately. Gone. The wrongness floods back in, stronger for the brief absence. Sal’s chest tightens. He squeezes his eyes shut.
“Fuck,” he whispers. His voice sounds small in the space. Frayed. He opens his eyes again. Looks at his hands. Still wrong. He reaches for the soap.
Again. And again. And again. The loop doesn’t end. It just keeps going.
The water is still running when Brian comes back. Sal doesn’t hear him at first. Or maybe he does, somewhere distant, the sound filing itself away without meaning, footsteps, the soft creak of the floorboards, the shift of air when someone enters the room. It doesn’t break through the loop. Nothing breaks through the loop unless it’s wrong enough.
“Sal.”
Closer now. Still not enough.
Four.
Eight.
Sixteen.
“Sal.”
A hand closes around his wrist. Everything snaps. Sal jerks violently, the motion so sudden it sends water splashing over the edge of the sink. His breath catches in his throat, sharp and painful, like he’s been pulled under something too fast.
“No!” He yanks his arm back, stumbling a half step away from the sink. The contact burns, immediate and overwhelming, spreading from the exact point where Brian touched him.
Outside. Brian was outside.
He went out. He left. He-
Sal’s stomach flips violently.
“No, no, no, ” He shakes his head hard, backing further away until his hip hits the edge of the counter. “You touched me.”
Brian frowns, confused. “Yeah, I was just trying to-”
“You touched me after being outside.” The words come faster now, sharper, panic threading through every syllable. “I didn’t finish, I wasn’t done, I didn’t-”
His hands. He looks down at them. They’re still wet. Still wrong. And now, now they’re worse. The thought crashes in all at once, overwhelming, undeniable: It’s ruined.
Everything he did. All of it. Gone. Contaminated. Wrong. Sal’s breath stutters into something uneven, too fast, too shallow. His chest tightens painfully, like there’s no room left for air.
“I have to start over,” he says, but it comes out like a gasp.
Brian takes a step toward him.
“Don’t.” Sal’s voice spikes, cracking. “Don’t touch me.”
Brian stops immediately, hands lifting slightly. “Okay. Okay, I won’t.”
But he’s still there. Still in the space. Still part of it. Sal presses himself back against the counter like he can put distance between them without moving through anything else.
“You went outside,” he says again, like he needs to confirm it, like maybe if Brian denies it this will all unravel and disappear.
Brian hesitates. “Yeah, but I washed my-”
“You didn’t do it right.” The words tumble out, frantic now. “You didn’t do it the right way, you didn’t-” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, it’s already-”
He looks at his hands again. They feel wrong. Wrong in a way that crawls under his skin, that makes him want to peel it off, start over, reset everything down to something clean and untouched and safe. His throat tightens.
“If I don’t fix it-” he starts, voice breaking.
Brian’s expression shifts, concern deepening into something closer to alarm. “Fix what, Sal? It’s just-”
“Stop saying that!” The shout tears out of him before he can stop it. “It’s not just anything!”
Silence crashes down between them. Sal’s chest heaves. His hands are shaking now, visibly, fingers twitching like they don’t belong to him.
“If I don’t do it properly,” he says, quieter this time but more frantic, the words tripping over each other, “something bad will happen.”
Brian stares at him. “Nothing’s going to-”
“You don’t know that!” Sal snaps, louder again. “You don’t, you don’t know what I thought about out there, you don’t know what-”
He stops. Too late.
Brian’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”
Sal shakes his head hard, like he can physically dislodge the words before they form.
But they’re already there. The railings. The image. Sharp, sudden, unavoidable. It flashes again now, worse than before because it’s tangled up with this, with Brian standing right there, with the memory of being touched, of being too close to something that could go wrong in an instant.
His stomach drops.
“No-” His voice comes out small. “No, no, no-”
“What?” Brian steps closer without thinking. “Sal, what-”
“Don’t come closer!” Sal’s back hits the counter fully now, nowhere left to go. “Please, just don’t-”
Brian stops. The space between them feels too small anyway. Too close. Too dangerous. Sal squeezes his eyes shut. And the image hits again. Not him this time.
Brian. A misstep. A fall. The railings. Wrong angle. Wrong timing. Through.
Sal makes a choked sound, something between a gasp and a sob.
“No, no,” His hands come up to his head, fingers tangling in his hair as if he can physically hold the thought back, crush it before it finishes. “I don’t want that, I don’t-”
Brian’s voice is softer now, careful. “Hey. Hey, look at me.”
Sal shakes his head harder.
“I can’t,” he says, voice breaking. “I can’t, I can’t-”
“What’s going to happen?” Brian asks, slower, like he’s trying to understand. “You said something bad, what do you think is going to happen?”
Sal’s chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself.
“If I don’t fix it,” he whispers, the words dragged out of him, “something’s going to happen to you.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. Brian doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. Sal keeps going, because he can’t stop now, because it’s already out and it’s already real in the worst way.
“I saw it,” he says, voice shaking. “Out there. The railings, I just,” He swallows hard, eyes still squeezed shut. “It just happens. You fall, or someone pushes you, or something goes wrong and I don’t, I don’t stop it in time and it just,”
His voice fractures completely. He can’t say it. He doesn’t need to. The image fills in the rest. His whole body is shaking now, small tremors that build into something harder to control. His breathing is uneven, hitching, catching on the edges of words he can’t get out.
“I don’t want that,” he says again, quieter, desperate. “I don’t want that to happen, I don’t,”
“Sal.”
Brian’s voice is closer now. Not touching. Just there. Grounding in a way that almost makes it worse.
“Hey. Look at me.”
Sal forces his eyes open. Brian is still standing there. Whole. Fine. Nothing has happened. Nothing is happening. But the thought doesn’t care. The thought says not yet.
“You’re okay,” Brian says gently. “I’m okay. Nothing’s going to happen.”
Sal’s head shakes automatically. “You don’t know that.”
Brian exhales slowly. “Sal, listen to me,”
Sal’s words come out frantic now, overlapping. “I have to wash my hands, I have to do it properly or it’s going to- it’s going to mean something, it’s going to-”
He doesn’t even know how to finish that. Mean something. Cause something. Make it real.
He turns abruptly back toward the sink, hands already reaching for the tap. “I need to do it again, I just need to do it right and then it’ll be fine, it’ll be better,”
Brian steps forward again. This time, he doesn’t stop himself. He grabs Sal’s shoulders. Firm. Grounding.
“Sal.”
The contact is too much. Sal gasps, the sound breaking into something raw as panic spikes all over again. His hands jerk back, his whole body trying to pull away at once.
“Don’t!” His voice cracks into a sob. “You’re making it worse-”
“I’m not,” Brian says, but there’s strain in his voice now, too. “I’m trying to help.”
“It doesn’t help!” Sal’s breathing is ragged, tears burning at the edges of his vision now. “It doesn’t stop it, it just- it just makes it louder,” He chokes on the rest, shaking harder. The thoughts are everywhere now. Overlapping. Relentless.
What if something happens to him because of you?
“No,” Sal presses his hands against his face, like he can block it out, like he can contain it somehow. “No, no, no-”
Brian lets go of him slowly. Carefully. Like he’s realizing, too late, that every attempt to help is landing wrong.
Sal slides down slightly against the counter, legs unsteady, breath coming in short, broken pulls. His hands hover in front of him, like he doesn’t know what to do with them, like they’re the problem and the solution all at once.
“I need to fix it,” he whispers again, voice wrecked. “I need to fix it or something’s going to happen to you.”
Brian doesn’t argue this time. Doesn’t say it’s irrational. Doesn’t say it’s just a sink. He just stands there, watching Sal come apart in front of him, the reality of it settling in piece by piece. Sal’s shoulders shake. His thoughts don’t stop. They don’t slow. They just keep going, louder and louder, until there’s nothing else left.
The panic doesn’t stop all at once. It burns itself out slowly. Like something too big to sustain, too sharp to last at that intensity forever. The edges of it begin to dull first, breathing still uneven, hands still shaking, but the thoughts losing just enough force that they stop crashing over each other.
Sal doesn’t move for a long time. He’s still half-braced against the counter, shoulders tense, eyes fixed somewhere just past the sink. The water is still running. He knows it is. He can hear it.
He just can’t deal with it yet. Brian hasn’t left. He’s quieter now. Careful in a way Sal doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.
“Hey,” Brian says after a while, voice low. “Can you sit down?”
Sal doesn’t answer right away. The request feels simple. It is simple. But his brain catches on it anyway, what that means, what it interrupts, what he hasn’t finished.
The sink. His hands. Everything still wrong. But he looks at Brian. Really looks at him this time. And something in his chest shifts. Not better. Not fixed. Just different. He nods. Small. Slow.
“Yeah,” he says, voice rough.
They move to the edge of the bathtub instead of leaving the room. Sal doesn’t think he could leave yet, not with everything unfinished, not with the feeling still clinging to him like something sticky under his skin.
He sits. Keeps his hands held slightly away from himself, like he’s not sure where they’re allowed to go. Brian sits across from him, not too close. Not touching. Just there. For a while, neither of them speak. The quiet feels fragile. Like it could break if either of them pushes too hard.
“I’m not-” Sal stops. His throat tightens. He tries again. “I’m not trying to be difficult.” The words come out small. Defensive, even though he doesn’t mean them to be.
Brian shakes his head immediately. “I didn’t think you were.”
Sal lets out a breath that doesn’t quite feel like relief.
“I know it looks like that,” he says. “Or like I’m overreacting. Or just making it a bigger deal than it is.”
Brian hesitates. “I mean, I don’t fully get it. But I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose.”
Sal huffs out something that might be a laugh.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “That would be easier.”
Another pause. The words sit there, waiting. He doesn’t want to say them. Because saying them makes them real in a different way. But they’re already real. They’ve been real. He swallows.
“My brain doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to,” he says finally.
Brian frowns slightly, not interrupting. Sal stares at his hands.
“They’re not,” He exhales, frustrated. “They’re not just thoughts. Not like normal thoughts.” He flexes his fingers slightly, like he’s testing them. “They show up,” he continues, slower now, choosing each word carefully. “And they don’t feel like mine. I don’t want them. They’re not intentional.”
Brian nods once, still watching him.
Sal’s stomach twists.
“You know those railings?” he says, voice tightening. “Outside?”
Brian’s expression shifts, cautious. “Yeah.”
“I don’t just see them,” Sal says. “I see,” He stops, jaw clenching. “Things happening. Bad things. Like accidents. Or worse.” He forces himself to keep going. “And it’s not just, like, a quick thought. It’s clear. Detailed. It just happens in my head like it’s already happening.”
Brian’s brow furrows deeper, but he stays quiet.
Sal’s voice drops.
“And then it doesn’t go away.” Silence presses in around them. “I try to ignore it,” Sal says. “Or tell myself it’s stupid, or not real. But it just comes back. Louder.” He swallows. “And then it turns into what if.”
Brian shifts slightly. “What if?”
“What if it happens,” Sal says. “What if I don’t stop it. What if I cause it somehow, even if that doesn’t make sense.”
His hands tighten slightly where they hover.
“And then it’s like: if I don’t do something about it, then I’m responsible.”
The word hangs there. Heavy. Brian’s expression flickers, confusion, then something softer.
“So the handwashing?” he starts.
“Is trying to fix it,” Sal finishes quietly.
Brian exhales slowly. “Fix how?”
Sal shakes his head, a small, frustrated motion.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “It just feels like if I do it right, then it won’t happen. Or it cancels it out. Or-” He lets out a shaky breath. “Or at least it makes the feeling stop.”
He glances at the sink. The water is still running. Still unfinished. Still wrong.
“If I mess it up,” he continues, voice tightening again, “then it’s like starting over. Because it doesn’t count. And if it doesn’t count, then I didn’t fix anything.”
Brian is very still now. Listening. Trying to follow.
Sal presses his lips together.
“There’s also,” He hesitates. “It’s not always about something bad happening. Sometimes it just feels wrong.”
Brian tilts his head slightly. “Wrong how?”
Sal struggles for the word.
“Like,” He gestures vaguely, frustration creeping back in. “Like everything’s slightly off. Like something’s uneven, or not lined up properly, or just not right.” He exhales sharply. “And I can feel it. Like physically. It’s-” He presses a hand briefly to his chest. “It’s here. And it doesn’t go away until I fix whatever it is.”
Brian nods slowly, even if he doesn’t fully understand.
“And the counting?” he asks.
Sal huffs out a quiet breath. “That’s part of it. Things have to be even. Balanced. If I do something with one hand, I have to do it with the other. Same number of times.”
He glances down.
“If it’s not even, it feels wrong. And then I can’t focus on anything else until it is.”
Brian runs a hand over his face, slower this time.
“That sounds…” He trails off, searching.
“Exhausting?” Sal offers.
Brian lets out a small, humorless laugh. “Yeah.”
Sal nods. “It is.”
The admission is simple. Flat. There’s no dramatics to it. Just fact.
Another silence settles. Heavier this time. But not as sharp. Sal’s chest feels tight again, but different from before. Less panic. More exposure. This part is worse, in some ways. Letting someone see it. Actually see it.
“If I told you everything,” he says quietly, not looking at Brian, “you’d think I was insane.”
Brian doesn’t respond right away.
Sal’s throat tightens. “I already kind of do,” he adds, softer. “Sometimes.”
The words feel dangerous. More than the others. Because these are the ones he actually believes. There’s a pause.
Then,
“I don’t think you’re insane.”
Sal blinks. Looks up.
Brian’s expression is still a little confused, still trying to piece everything together, but there’s something else there now too. Something steadier.
“I think you’re dealing with something I don’t understand yet,” Brian says carefully. “But that doesn’t mean you’re broken.”
Sal’s chest tightens.
“You didn’t see it,” he says, almost automatically.
“See what?”
“The thoughts,” Sal says, voice low. “All of them.”
Brian hesitates. “I mean I get that they’re bad, but-”
“No, you don’t.” The words come out sharper than he means, then soften almost immediately. “Sorry. I just,” He looks away again. “If you knew everything that goes through my head sometimes…” He exhales shakily. “You wouldn’t want to be anywhere near me.”
The silence that follows stretches. Sal braces for it. For distance. For discomfort. For Brian to pull back, even just a little.
Instead, “That’s not how that works.”
Sal frowns slightly, glancing up.
Brian shrugs, a little uncertain but steady. “You said it yourself. They’re not things you want. They just show up.”
Sal’s chest feels tight again. Different.
“Yeah, but they’re still there,” he says.
Brian nods. “Okay. But that doesn’t make them you.”
The words land softly. Not fixing anything. Not solving anything. But not hurting either. Sal swallows.
“I still feel like,” He stops, struggling. “Like I’m dangerous. Or like if I mess up, something bad will happen because I didn’t stop it.”
Brian shakes his head slightly, but gently this time. “I don’t think you’re dangerous.”
Sal lets out a shaky breath.
“You don’t know that.”
Brian meets his gaze.
“I know you don’t want to hurt anyone,” he says.
Simple. Certain. Sal’s throat tightens. That’s the part that matters. The wanting. The not wanting.
He looks back down at his hands. They’re still red. Still wrong. But quieter, somehow.
“I don’t,” he says, barely above a whisper.
Brian nods. “I know.”
Another pause. Then, softer:
“Is there anything I can do?”
Sal hesitates. There are a hundred answers to that. And none of them are simple. He looks at the sink again. At the still-running water. At everything unfinished.
“…I don’t know,” he admits.
And for once, that’s the most honest answer he has. Sal’s mind feels quieter now.
Not silent, but quieter in a way that lets Sal notice the small sounds he usually blocks out: the faint hum of the radiator, the soft thump of Brian moving in the other room, the distant chatter of the street outside.
Brian sits nearby on the edge of the bed, hands resting lightly on his knees, watching but not hovering. He doesn’t reach for Sal’s hands. He doesn’t offer the quick reassurances that usually end in a reset of some ritual or another. He just waits.
Sal stares at his own hands, still slightly red, still trembling. The compulsion to move, to fix, to “make it right,” pulses in his chest. His stomach twists. Every part of him wants to stand, move to the sink, start over. The urge is immediate, screaming, insistent. But he doesn’t. Not yet.
Instead, he takes a shaky breath, then another. He focuses on the feeling of his feet on the floor, the texture of the carpet beneath him, the slow rise and fall of his chest. Brian had called it grounding earlier, and the word sticks somewhere in the back of his mind.
“Focus,” he whispers to himself. It feels wrong. Uncomfortable. His skin prickles, pulse racing, thoughts spinning faster than he can follow. Four. Eight. Sixteen. He catches himself counting anyway, muttering the numbers under his breath even as he tries to ignore them.
Brian notices. He doesn’t intervene. He just sits, calm. “Breathe with me,” he says quietly. “One in, one out. That’s it.”
Sal tries. He inhales, slow, deliberate. Exhales. He wants to pull his hands to the sink, scrub until the feeling goes away, but he keeps them in his lap. It’s sharp, unbearable at times, like a weight pressing down on his ribs. Minutes pass. Maybe longer. Time doesn’t make sense anymore, it rarely does when he’s battling himself, but he stays. He counts, then stops. He breathes. He stares at the carpet. He shivers, small and sudden, and doesn’t move.
“I know it’s hard,” Brian says gently. “I know it doesn’t feel okay. But sitting with it, just sitting, is progress too.”
Sal swallows hard, voice tight. “Feels like nothing.”
“Feels like nothing,” Brian echoes, soft, patient. “And that’s still something. That’s part of it. You’re surviving the feeling without acting on it. That’s huge.”
Sal lets the words hang in the air, almost tasting them, and for a moment, he allows himself to believe it. Small. Fragile. But real.
Later, he moves toward the sink, not for a full ritual, but just enough to rinse his hands lightly. Not the full sequence, not the counting, not the balancing. Just water over skin, a fraction of the motion he usually needs. It’s painful. Unfinished. Wrong in every sense he’s trained himself to feel it. His stomach tightens, pulse jumps. He wants to restart, to erase, to fix. But he doesn’t. He lets the discomfort sit there with him. Breathing with it. Watching it ebb and surge like waves. Each moment is small. Each second of restraint is sharp, exhausting, and imperfect.
Brian watches quietly, nodding once or twice. “That’s enough,” he says finally. “You did it. That’s progress.”
Sal doesn’t feel victorious. Not really. Just exhausted. His hands are still slightly damp, his mind still twitching with loops he can’t fully silence. But the terror is quieter. Not gone. Not cured. Just quieter.
*****
Morning light filters through the blinds, pale and steady, spilling across the bathroom tiles. The sound of water running in the sink is familiar, almost comforting, almost neutral, but Sal feels the tension already tightening in his chest before he even turns the faucet. He moves through the motions, slower this time. Not perfectly, not yet, but with purpose. Fingers trace the familiar lines across his palms, soap lathering lightly, the small ritual of rubbing and counting starting, but he stops himself mid-sequence.
Four. Eight. Sixteen. No.
He freezes. The next step is waiting, insistent, nagging, but he doesn’t follow it. He exhales, slow and deliberate, letting the feeling of wrongness press against him instead of instantly correcting it.
Brian stands just outside the bathroom, leaning against the doorframe, quiet. Not hovering. Not offering reassurance he doesn’t need. Just present. Watching.
“You okay?” Brian asks softly.
Sal glances up, hesitates, then nods, though his hands are still slightly trembling. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Trying.”
Brian nods, smiling faintly. “That’s enough for now. That counts.”
Sal focuses on the sensation of the water on his skin, the temperature, the sound, the rhythm. His pulse is faster, mind buzzing with the urge to finish the sequence perfectly, to make everything even, balanced, right, but he resists. He just sits with it.
The clock ticks. Light shifts. He glances at Brian again. His partner doesn’t reach for his hands. Doesn’t step in. Doesn’t erase the discomfort. But he’s there. Steady. Watching. Supportive without enabling.
It’s small. It’s fragile. It’s nothing like a cure.
Sal lets the sensation linger, letting the loop in his head slow, letting the need to “fix” fade slightly into the background. Not gone. Not quiet. But manageable.
He takes a shaky breath and mutters softly, almost to himself, “It’s okay, it’s okay, just this.”
Brian nods, voice low, careful: “I’m here.”
And that’s enough. The water runs over his hands. Not perfectly even. Not “right.” But it is something. It is progress.
Sal feels the urge to restart, to complete the ritual, pressing at him. But he resists. He exhales again, slower this time, letting the tension recede slightly. He catches Brian’s gaze through the mirror. There’s no judgment there. No impatience. Just presence. Just understanding that this is hard. That this isn’t about perfection.
“I’ll try again later,” Sal admits quietly. “Not now.”
Brian nods, smiling faintly. “That’s fine. We’ll take it one step at a time.”
Sal exhales, the tension easing just a fraction more. The room smells faintly of soap and warm water. The light hits the tiles at the perfect angle for a moment, and he lets himself notice it. The calm, fleeting, fragile moment.
The thoughts, the urges, the rituals, they haven’t disappeared. He knows they won’t. But neither has the connection. He steps back from the sink. Hands still damp. Mind still racing, but slower, steadier than before. Brian stays close, not too close, not distant, just present.
Sal glances at him and allows the smallest smile, soft and tentative, but real. This morning, the ritual isn’t complete. The loop isn’t fully silenced. But for the first time in a long while, the day feels possible.