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There's a new boy in my class. He's got dark eyes and sunkissed skin. Some kind of graceful energy given a mortal form. He's in my psychology elective, God knows why he chose it, I overheard him talking about the fact that he's an art history major. Apparently he got here recently too, boarding here in this college from his home across the continent. The Heavens must have smiled down on me, because whenever he speaks it feels like the Earth stops moving for a second. Maybe that's just my chest going tight and my head spinning fast enough to host a dance competition.
It's 8:47am, there's a pain pounding at the side of my head and my hand goes to reach for the tumbler cup full of ice cold water I grabbed from the freezer two hours ago. Behind my glasses, my eyes were struggling a bit to focus on the paper I needed to read. Tipping the water down my throat didn't do anything to ease the headache. If anything it made it worse for a solid couple of seconds. Now all it feels like is someone taking a mallet to the side of my cranium.
My fingers drum against the keyboard of my laptop. Then there's a presence at my side. Someone puts their bag down and asks, "hey, can I sit here? You seem a bit lonely?" and I give a quiet mutter, something along the lines of "yeah, sure, whatever." before I realise who it is. Before my brain wakes up. When the man sits himself down in the uncomfortable chair next to me and pulls out his laptop, the very first thing I notice is the layers upon layers of stickers covering its lid. Among what I could recognise was BioShock, Cyberpunk, Helldivers, Resident Evil, and Gundam.
I peered over to his laptop screen, wallpaper showcasing a brilliant blue car. Was that a Mustang?
"That can't be your car, right?" I asked to him, hoping he'd hear.
"Yeah, that's mine! She was my dad's before I had her, still in mint condition too." He says, his voice a bit raspy but still buttery-smooth.
"Huh... Neat. What's your name?"
"Santiago, but everyone calls me Cobalt." Cobalt holds out a hand for me to shake. I shake his hand for a second, and then retract, opening my mouth to speak.
"I'm Quentin, people call me Lancer. Did you get your nickname from the car?"
Cobalt laughed, and with a grin, he announced: "Right on the money! Cobalt is her name, after a while people just started calling me Cobalt too. What about you, Lance? How'd you get yours?"
The nickname made me cringe for a second, then I had to drum up the memory and that made me cringe even more. "So, in highschool, I was friends with this guy and we were both really into jousting." I began, taking a breath after I established the story's context.
"We, uh, were jousting with toy lances. I won, but at the cost of getting the other guy in the nuts with the point of it-"
Cobalt cut me off, almost howling with laughter. Lovely sound, really, but it drew in a couple of stares from the people who were still in the lecture theatre. It took him a bit before he calmed down and said, "Sorry, that's the fucking funniest thing I've heard all week. What nickname did the other guy get?"
"Shish Kabob, which, after a while, got shortened to Skewer."
"Oh, that's good!"
I straightened up my spine and took another sip from my tumbler cup. I managed to get a better look at him when I put the cup back down. Dark, soft eyes. Chestnut hair tangled but still neat and fluffy, pulled back into a loose, low ponytail. Skin the earthy golden colour of a beach at sunset. We spent the rest of the hour talking, sharing anecdotes and exchanging socials. Discussing our course material. He was effortlessly easy to talk to, all of his words woven together like satin.
That night I was laying on my bed waiting for my roommate to come home from his night classes, rolling over onto my side to ease some pain that was plaguing at my chest. For a second, it was hard to draw a breath in. Something sharp felt like it was stuck in my lungs. It was probably just something about breathing in my roommate's secondhand weed smoke. Staring at my phone, using my other hand to feel around for the bit of my chest that was hurting. It went away after a few minutes, so it left my mind soon after.
I pulled up Discord and shot Cobalt a message.
> Hey, you wanna play Helldivers with me?
> Been looking for someone to play with for a while
Cobalt's status changed from idle to online, and after a second of typing, he responded with:
> Yea hold on lemme open steam
> U a bot diver?
> No I do bugs. They dont shoot my mechs down in 4 secs
> Fair lol. vc?
The games were smooth, a lot of swearing and yelling back and forth at each other, and I got to wave to my roommate when he walked back in, clearly high out of his mind. Probably late home because he was out hotboxing his shitty Honda Civic. It was a common enough occurance that it was a safe assumption. We got off the games and said goodnight to each other because he had to do revision for his major classes. When I left the call, that same pain twinged from my chest again. Leaving me gasping for breath for a few seconds. My roommate shot me a look and went "you okay dude?" and I returned him a thumbs up. He shrugged and disappeared around the corner. He always was too quiet when he was walking around.
I let my laptop slide off my bed and onto the cushioned ground below the mattress where I left it, not even bothering to put it on charge. I'll just take the charger into class with me tomorrow, I made a mental note in my head. As if I wouldn't forget it until I'm in class with a dead laptop.
I rolled over onto my back, pressing against the spot that dull pain was radiating from. It was behind my ribcage, and I'd wager a guess and say it was my lungs. Darkness flooded in when I closed my eyes, and all I heard before drifting to sleep was the click of the dorm's light switch, flicked off by my roommate.
The next day wasn't all too interesting, it all blended together. The next few days were worse, spending a couple minutes each day having to deal with dizzy spells that made me want to run to the nearest bathroom and purge the contents of my stomach. It never happened, but more often than not it drew attention. People insisted I go to the doctor; spend a couple days off. Get my head right.
My roommate didn't notice anything different with me, but between his constant coffee consumption and weed usage I didn't expect too much from him. His black hair hidden inside a hoodie as he typed away on his tablet PC, fringe falling in front of inhumanly green eyes.
About a week after meeting Cobalt, I leaned over my bathroom sink at night. Cold air raising goosebumps on my skin. I could barely look at myself in the mirror. There was blood splattered across the sink and dripping down my chin. The metallic taste lingering in the back of my throat. That was the first time I knew something was seriously wrong, but I neglected going to the doctor's office. I could, but it would mean I'd miss too much class, and I'd lose my record of perfect attendance since first grade, when I was sent home for calling a girl a mean name.
I rubbed at my throat, at the scar laced across it, nails digging in for a second. My hand came away and against the scar tissue were the deep crimson imprints of my nails. I turned the tap on, shining the sink with my hands to remove any evidence of internal bleeding. It seeped into my nailbeds, and the next best idea I had was to jump in our horribly small cubicle shower. Hot water rushing over me and uncomfortably sticking golden hair to my skin. The blood slowly washing clean off my chin and hands. Dissolving into an orange-hued liquid, that same colour as the sunset.
I made it to my psychology elective late the next day. I scanned the crowd for Cobalt, who waved when I spotted him. He'd saved a seat next to him for me.
"Hey, Quincy. You seem a little out of it?" He kept his voice low in volume. "Anything I can do to help?"
I shook my head no and took the seat he'd saved. I grabbed my laptop out of my bag and slid it onto the desk. My body felt like it weighed a hundred more kilograms than it was meant to, all of my joints heavy like iron. I blinked, and Cobalt's expression was pure concern, or maybe it was worry. I couldn't tell.
"Want to get coffee with me afterwards? There's this hole-in-the-wall cafe nearby that I know of." I said to him, trying desperately to steer the conversation away from my ailment.
"Yeah, alright." He replies, "but you gotta tell me what's up with you."
I groaned, opened my laptop, and reluctantly nodded. Opening up the class Teams page to see if anything about the exam had been posted. Thinking about an exam made my head spin, and I had to take off my glasses to pinch the bridge of my nose and screw my eyes shut. Willing the dizziness away.
"Hey, uh." Cobalt put a hand against my shoulder. "You're bleeding, man."
I turned to him, eyes open and probably full of embarrassment. My hand lowered to my mouth. Fingers came away with blood. "Oh, fuck," was the only thing my brain and mouth came up with in their cooperative effort to say something. It was awful, the sting of saliva against the back of my throat was even worse when I tried to swallow it back. Risking choking was better than throwing up blood in class and in front of someone I'd probably already consider one of my closest friends. He was rubbing circles into my back through my shirt. It helped, but the feeling of sickness pooled in my stomach with every passing second until it was enough to make me stand up and book it out of the lecture theatre to the nearest bathroom. Cobalt followed after me, catching up as soon as I was kneeling in front of a toilet and staining it wine red with my own blood. The pain behind my ribcage twinged again and I choked up a stained-red flower petal. Half a powder-pink hued white, and half a dark crimson red.
It happened again then, and again, and soon there were at least half a bouquet's worth of bloody flower petals in front of me in the already bloodstained bowl. Only then did I stop choking and coughing up more and more blood. Spitting out the rest of it into the toilet. Then I stood up and flushed it, all the blood and petals spinning down and disappearing. But when I spun around to wash my hands and face, Cobalt was there with the worst look of worry I'd ever seen in my life. I knew I couldn't explain this one for the life of me. To be honest, I could barely explain it to myself.
Not when the most I know about coughing up flowers is a cliche anime trope that I only see in fanfiction, nothing about it existing in real life. Hanahaki disease, the Internet called it. My brain couldn't formulate any response other than what my mouth had already said- some under my breath muttering in Polish, then in English: "I don't know what's happening to me."
A lie.
He breathed in, trying to keep himself calm. Then looked at me and braced his hands against my shoulders. I fell into him, trusting him to hold me upright. "Stay here. Sit down. I'll go get our things and I'm taking you to a doctor." He instructed me, and I nodded weakly and fell back against the wall, sliding down it until my knees touched my chin and my head was in my hands. I must've fallen asleep, because he came back almost instantly and it felt like I was shocked awake by my bag hitting the tile next to me.
Another type of pain twinged in my leg. I made a noise half of roughly discomfort and pain. It came out as more of a gutteral whine than I'd have liked, but now wasn't the time to feel embarrassment over it.
I tugged the left leg of my trousers up to my knee and worked to undo my boot, pulling off my prosthetic when I had enough give. Relief was almost immediate, and using my non-bloodied hand I rubbed against where it was sitting and chafing my skin. "There's a folded up cane in my bag." I clarified to Cobalt, who hasn't said anything since he came back. "It hurts too much to keep it on." I kept talking. Feeling the overwhelming urge to explain myself to him. I rummaged in my bag for the cane and replaced it with my prosthetic. Guess I don't have a choice on whether or not I'm seeing a doctor about this. He picked my bag up and slung it over his shoulder, hooking an arm under mine and helping to pull me up. I shifted my weight between him and the cane, hobbling over to the sink to wash my hands and face before we left so I at least looked a little bit presentable.
He dragged me out of the building and into his car. Practically tossing me into the backseat. The thought crossed my mind of if I actually weighed anything to him or if I was easy to carry. The car started with a rumble and I fussed around with the seatbelt, my lapse in consciousness lasting from until we pulled out of the spot until I was being prodded at by an ER nurse.
"Does he have health insurance?" The nurse asked Cobalt, Who didn't have an answer. I answered in Polish, and only when I opened my eyes I saw the other two looking at me, both with a confused stare. "Sir, do you need a translator?" The nurse asked again, to me this time.
Cobalt answered though, and said "No, he speaks English. Just give him a second." and a second was indeed given. I blinked a couple times and nodded, fishing around in my pocket for a health insurance member card. The nurse thanked me and turned away in her chair to enter something into the terminal next to my bed. Probably to bill my health insurance. I wonder if they had a code for 'patient coughing up flowers.'
The nurse handed my card back to me and asked in a cautious tone, "Have you ever heard of Hanahaki Syndrome, Mr. Starek?"
"Lancer." I corrected her out of habit, then when I noticed her puzzled look I backtracked and said "Uh- don't worry about... that. I have, but I thought it was a myth. Flowers growing in your lungs..." My head started spinning and there was blood pooling on the back of my tongue again. "Can I have a tissue?"
Cobalt handed me the box, I grabbed a few and spat blood out into the pile in my hands, coughing out the remainder of what was congealing in my throat.
"Yes," The nurse began. "A lot of patients afflicted don't seem to realise it is in fact a real thing. There are flowers beginning to grow inside your lungs, and the blood is coming from the roses that are sprouting. Typically we only see a little bit of blood, but the thorns growing inside you are ripping apart your lungs."
More bad news after bad news.
"This type of the syndrome progresses quicker, and leads to death more rapidly than other kinds."
That was more a truck hit to the face than it should have been. Pain blooming throughout my body while I choked back on more blood. I held the already bloodied tissues up to my mouth and tried to rid my throat of the mucus and blood. The world was spinning around me, I let my head drop backwards to ease some of it but Cobalt put his hand on the back of my head and made me tip my head forward. I let out a noise of annoyance, to which he responded with, "We can't have you choking on it. It'll make it feel worse."
He scratched the top of my head lightly, feeling with his nails in between the half-assed braids I did this morning, and then retracted his hand. He asked something in Spanish, I didn't put my head up and instead closed my eyes and willed the pain away with some Polish prayer my parents used to make me do every night. The nurse replied in Spanish, and they had a small back and forth while I was feeling like Death was chewing at my neck.
"Do you want to tell him, or should I?" The nurse finally said in English.
Cobalt replied again in Spanish, I wish I understood even a lick of it.
"We have to keep you here for a few days for observation," the nurse continued to me. "We're worried this will be fatal sooner than we expect.
My head shot up. Fatal?
"No." I was frantic, my already broken voice refusing to cooperate with me. "I can't- No, I can't die, I won't let it- I won't let it kill me."
The nurse put her hand up and shushed me, "We can surgically remove it with the side effect of removing all of your feelings for your love interest, and the cost and your recovery is all covered by your health insurance. You could be cured by the weekend."
I thought it over, and while I did I could feel Cobalt's gaze boring into the side of my head. He was here. The man who started it in the first place. I couldn't tell him, but I couldn't let this kill me. I couldn't get rid of my feelings, I couldn't. I couldn't. I can't.
"I won't let you do surgery on me." I stated, and I heard Cobalt audibly sigh from where he was standing behind me. "I'm not giving up, but I will let you keep me for observation."
"Lance, come on, I don't want to see you die from this."
It almost felt like he knew he was the cause. Telling me that I should give it up, he'll never feel the same way, it was a lost cause. I brought my knees to my chest and closed my eyes again.
"Look, we'll need to transfer you to a bed, but we haven't got any available, so stay here. We'll put a blood pressure monitor on you until we can get you upstairs. Press the red button if you need me." The nurse explained while she attached a clip-on monitor to my finger. It felt weird, and I didn't open my eyes, but I let her. Cobalt thanked the nurse when she finished up and left, then he took a seat at the edge of the foot of the bed. I opened my eyes and looked at him. Desperately hiding the fact that my eyes were almost certainly watering.
"You okay, Quincy?"
"Yeah." I told him. I was lying again. "My throat hurts."
"It will. Listen, I've been with other people through their hanahaki, it's an ugly sight and you might be better off just getting the surgery. Especially since your insurance covers it."
But I didn't want to. He already means too much for me to give it up. I'd rather face my end than give up these feelings. I wanted to cry. To cry and sob and explain to him why it's all so heartbreaking and horrible and perfect that he's here. That he has front row seats to the climax of my suffering. The suffering that would kill me. The nurse just said it was killing me quickly, not how long I had left. Cobalt looked at me expectantly. He wants me to take the coward's way out. I don't want to just feel nothing towards him. I just shook my head and instead asked him to go get me some water.
I sunk down into the bed, laying down properly. My head propped against the pillow and mouth hidden in a bundle of tissues to catch the blood that was still trickling from my lips. Observation. What did observation mean? They already had a blood pressure monitor on me. Did they want everything to do with my vitals? I could feel my heart beating in my throat. Cobalt came back and set a paper cup of cold water on the bench next to me.
"I want to see you get better."
It was sincere, but he wouldn't see me get better. I could humour him, but my brain told me how much it was futile.
The hours leading up until Cobalt had to leave were a daze. I faded in and out of consciousness between staring at the wall and throwing up blood into a bucket. They moved me up to a bed a few hours after Cobalt left. I spent all of it on my phone, thanking the Gods that my phone charger was in my bag. They wouldn't let me sit up to use my laptop for whatever reason so I doomscrolled Instagram until I was bored. Then I opened TikTok and did the same thing. Scrolling endlessly on TikTok in a hospital bed made some horrible memories bubble to the surface from deep within the pools of my long-term memory. The memories of the post-amuptation recovery. Days blending together in the midst of chaos.
I could barely sleep that night. What little sleep I got was in the gaps where I wasn't coughing up chunks of flowers and half-grown in fruits. There weren't just rose bushes in my lungs, there must've been entire fruit tree branches. Scraping at my capillaries, bringing up mucus with the leaves and blood with the fruit. Thorny roses scratching my trachea from the inside. How long would it take for the flowers to grow up my throat and out of my mouth? Until I can't clamp my teeth down on my skin? It's two in the morning. I've spent 3 hours on TikTok and my roommate is online on Discord, playing Hitman 2. I rubbed the tears out of my eyes and typed out a message to him.
> I'm in the ER I wont be there for a bit
Then I waited. Unsurprisingly, it took him a whole five minutes just to react a thumbs up emoji to my message and then respond with:
> i told u man u looked like u were dying the other night
> whats up w u.
> is it contagious
> No its not contagious there's flowers growing in my lungs
> ??? ok lol
So he was infuriating like usual. Then he went silent and I put my phone down.
I woke up with a start. Pressure in the back of my throat and rapid beeping echoing out into the room. Light was streaming in through the shitty white curtains in front of the window. It took me too long to adjust to the light. I had the urge to move, and my hands fought to grab at the sheets before they were soaked in red. Hands covered in blood again. Oh, God. It's all too much. My brain's screaming danger at me. I feel like screaming but instead I choke back on it and double over. Hands clutched to my stomach to ease some of the burning. It's been worse in the mornings for the past few days. Easing up as the morning transitions into afternoon and the world starts properly waking up.
Then there are doctors and nurses all around me, fussing over me while I was drowning in my own blood. It was impossible to relax but I tried my best. They moved my body to how I needed to be positioned and I let them with little resistance. My body felt like jelly anyway, barely responsive and feather-light. I closed my eyes and fell asleep from the exhaustion, the last thing I heard was the still beeping monitor.
Cobalt shakes me awake.
"Lancer. Quincy, Quentin?" He kept cycling through my names with increasing urgency until I blinked my eyes open and looked up at him. I didn't move my head, or my mouth. There was dried blood everywhere around me and I felt like I'd just come short of a brush with the reaper. I made a noise acknowledging him and to signal that I was awake.
"Dios mio, are you okay? You look like someone tried to flatline you," His video game references never ceasing to appear in his speech. He held a hand to my forehead, sticky with sweat. Sometime last night I pulled out my braids in frustration and left my hair a horrible mess of straw-coloured strands. Sticking to every bit of my available skin. It felt like the very air around me was humid and sickly. Infected with something ancient.
"....'m fine...." I managed. Cobalt brushed the hair off from in front of my face. I could barely keep my eyes open while he rested his hand against my burning hot cheek.
"They called me, told me about what happened this morning. You've been asleep since," He explained, "told me too that they decided to put you on IV since you can't eat anything."
That made sense. There was a numbness in my left arm and still a lingering pain. I opened my eyes and looked at the bed next to me, bags of some kind of solution and blood hanging from a pole next to me. Connected up to my arm in a grotesquely nonhuman manner. Sickness rose to my throat again, I covered my mouth and choked up another flower. The entire rose this time. Yellow petals covered in my sickly crimson blood. They'd been keeping track of what was growing inside my lungs: Apricot blossoms, yellow roses, and almond blossoms. I hated the almonds the most, they got stuck in my throat and suffocated me sometimes. It's a miracle I'm not already dead. I struggle to sit up using my right arm.
"..it's.... getting. Worse." Voice hoarse and strained, I leaned forward and almost wanted to put all my body weight onto Cobalt. I rubbed at my eyes with the ball of my cleaner palm, pressing down until my vision went sparkly. The flower laid beautiful in my other hand. The perfect intersection of divine agony. I looked at it for a second and put my hand over the bin, flicking it off my hand. It landed in the bottom of the bin with a wet thunk. Cobalt shifted himself closer to me, taking advantage of the extra space where my left leg should have been. He was close enough for me to rest on now, and I did. Slumping against him as if I were some sort of puppet cut from his strings.
"I know. They told me." There was something in his voice. It wasn't as graceful as it should have been, an inflection of sadness. Grief. Maybe regret. He patted my shoulder. "It's going to be okay."
Now he was lying. He meant it well but he was lying. I could see it in his eyes. Those eyes...
I nodded in some kind of twisted false agreement. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe my death would be peaceful, or some kind of miracle would bestow itself upon me and I could be saved by him. It was fucked up to think about, and it seemed cruel to think about for longer than a couple seconds. The door clicked open somewhere outside of my immediate range of hearing, I only processed the sound after the nurse was already talking to Cobalt. Its been the same nurse since yesterday. She was speaking Spanish. Cobalt's voice was beautiful in my head. I wanted him to whisper to me about all the things he was thinking about. Cradle my head against his shoulder while I cried from my torn throat.
"Hey, Quincy?"
"Mmmm...?" I looked up at Cobalt, and he nodded towards the nurse, so I looked to her too.
"We predict that you're not going to make it through the night." That one sentence tore me apart the second the word 'night' left her mouth. Even though it had just dawned on me that I was going to die within the next twelve hours from blood loss or suffocation, she kept speaking.
"Since we haven't gotten your permission to put you on life support equipment or to do the surgery, your chances of survival are incredibly low. I'd suggest you take this time to prepare some messages to your friends and family, but I'll leave you two alone now to discuss this."
I could hear her voice breaking. She'd known me for two days but something told me she doesn't break this news often. The door shut with a thud that made my head hurt. I leaned over and spat blood into the bucket next to my bed that was meant to be for the flowers. Petals spilled out of my throat and I spent the next 5 minutes choking out blossoming flowers between pathetic sobs and half-grown fruits. It was humiliating. Gasping for air between all of it. I couldn't keep oxygen in my lungs, all of it being pushed out as the flowers fought for their right to my airway. Something sharp cut the inside of my throat and after I finished coughing I let a thorn fall off my tongue in a drip of sputum and blood. Cobalt seemed nothing but sympathetic. He didn't say anything, his expression said it all.
I took a tissue and wiped my mouth clean of blood. Throwing it into the bucket along with the rest of the fluids and flowers, I tried to take a breath again. It succeeded far more than from the past 5 minutes.
"I need to go take a walk, text me if you need anything?" Cobalt said without looking at me. I reached for him but I didn't have the strength to keep it up. I nodded weakly, keeping my mouth at the rim of the bucket in case I needed to throw up anything else.
The room was silent other than my laboured, shallow breathing.
Leaves crunched underneath Cobalt's boot. Eyes darting around the trees that were turning shades of golden and red. He couldn't bear listening to music right now, with his earphones dangling from their cord around his neck. Something was tugging at the back of his brain. He couldn't fight this feeling of guilt that had sprouted somewhere inside of him. Should he have left to go wander while his newest best friend was choking on blood in a hospital bed alone?
The nurse thought they were together. He thought back to the conversation they had yesterday. She referred to Lancer as his boyfriend. Cobalt didn't correct her when she did, but he couldn't figure out why. He left them their number, demanded they call if anything else happened. He wanted to stay longer, with every neuron fighting to agree that he should insist on staying. He had class of his own to get to, and exams of his own to study for. Textbooks to revise, documentaries to watch, reports to annotate. He took a seat on a bench and crossed one leg on top of the other. Hands in his pockets and eyes turned up to the cloudy sky to look for an inch of sunlight in between the trees.
The knowledge of Lancer's imminent death weighed on him heavy like chains attached to his arms. Yet again he was Sisyphus, doomed to watch another friend die because they would not listen to his suggestions of surgery. People regarded it as a coward's way out. He hated that people saw it like that. He held a hand to his chest, where the scar from his removal surgery was. Cobalt took in a deep breath and held it for a few seconds. It made him panic when something like this happened again. Maybe this was his cross to bear. Maybe he was the saviour and the saint of those who must bear this curse.
Something snapped when he let the breath go.
Oh.
Oh no.
It was him, wasn't it?
It was him.
Waves of emotions came crashing down over Cobalt. Guilt and relief and sadness and joy and everything else he could think of. His brain scaling through every kind of human emotion in the span of fifteen seconds. He needed to get back to Lancer and he needed to do it fast.
I gasped for another breath, choking on my sobbing. The salt from my tears mixing with the blood on my lips. It was digusting and metallic, like a floral iron filling. The next time I took a breath, something was looser. It didn't feel like a struggle to keep the air in my lungs. I reached into my mouth with two fingers and swiped all the blood out from under my tongue, dragging petal and pollen along with it. The blood formed a string between my tongue and my hands. I had to grab another tissue to clean everything up. Throwing it haphazardly into the bin beside the bed.
The next time the door opened it startled me. Cobalt was standing there, panting, eyes wild and hair windswept.
"It's me, isn't it?" He asked. No- Not ask, he was demanding to know. "It's me, Lancer, isn't it?" He demanded again. Voice desperate and breaking.
"It's- Is what you?" I had to ask him back. Part of me knew was he had to be asking.
He waited until he was leaning over my bed to say it again. "It's me. I'm the reason you're here." He took a breath and laughed, a sound torn between broken and happiness: "I'll be the reason you're going home soon!"
Cobalt locked eye contact with me, now I really wish I had done a better job cleaning myself up. Blood stained the area around my mouth and neck, I was embarrassed. He cupped my cheeks in his hands and leaned forward anyways. There was barely any allowance between our lips, but I faltered for a second.
"Quincy. I'm trying to kiss you." He had to state to me so I could know for certain it was okay. I tangled up my clean hands in his hair, fingers gently playing with his curls as he kissed me. It was a miracle. He swiped his tongue over my front teeth, tasting the blood that was stuck there before he pulled away from me, resting his forehead against mine. I kept my hand tangled up in his hair so I could keep him close. So I could keep feeling his touch.
"You..." I started, but he put his thumb over my lips and shook his head.
"Don't say anything. You need to still stay here for a bit, but you'll recover. You'll be okay." Cobalt was smiling while he talked.
"I told you, didn't I? I told you that you'd be okay."