Dear Fitz,

This is not an apology.

Fuck. Fuck this. Fuck you.

...

Keefe opens the door too quickly, alight with an excitement he can't name, and Fitz jumps from his seat with a curse.

He comes to an immediate halt. "Fitz, why the fuck are you holding a knife?"

Fitz's hand clenches, flexes, and drops it. The polished dagger lands softly on the navy blue carpet, and when he looks at him, it's with confusion. Maybe a little relief.

"It's you."

"Yeah, it is. Who did you think it would be?"

Fitz shifts on his feet. He looks a little like he did when Keefe first came back; not unsure, not exactly angry, but colder. Distant, maybe. "I just wasn't expecting you." His face creases in fear for a split second, but Keefe doesn't think it's aimed at him.

"Hey," he says a little softer, and he takes a step closer. Fitz moves back, away from him, shoulders tensing. "What happened?"

His nostrils flare, but he doesn't say anything. He just gets colder, farther away.

Keefe wishes he could still feel. He'd give a lot to decipher the stony look on Fitz's face.

But he can't. So he sits down on the bed.

Fitz stays standing, but he takes a deep breath. And then he says, "What was it like in the human world?"

Keefe studies him for a second. "You've been there. More than I have, probably."

"Yeah, but as an outsider." Fitz is acting like an outsider now. Does he realize it? Does he see the wall that's been built between the two, reinforced by every day (every minute) apart? "You lived there. I was just... a visitor."

"If I'm going to tell you, you have to sit next to me," Keefe says, letting a grin spring to his face at Fit'z eyeroll. But he does come, sitting far enough away that he wants to scoot closer but knows he's testing his luck. It doesn't matter how he feels, anyway. He's seen how Sophie and Fitz act together. Cognates, he knows, share a trust bond— something he and Fitz do not have. Something they haven't had in a long time.

Keefe puts on a storytelling voice and gestures wide with his hands like he's ready to tell an epic tale, even if it's not that epic at all. "I rode a whale to the top of a mountain, jumped into an active volcano, became the Queen of England, and, most important of all... tried human food!" He drops the fancy voice a moment later. "It's really good, actually. They have this thing, pasta and the gnomes don't grow anything like it. There's a lot of meat everywhere, but it's pretty easy to avoid. Remember the gelato we got that one time?"

Fitz smiles. "Batman shirt. I remember."

Keefe does remember. Remembers with perfect clarity how Fitz looked in his t-shirt with his arms above his head, brown skin lit up in the sun, cool and confident and still flirting with Sophie. But— shit. He'd looked good that day. Biana had laughed at him when he couldn't stop staring. Of course she'd known even then.

"Talking?" Fitz prompts, and he laughs and continues.

"I read—by choice, mind you. They always told us humans are stupid, but they write some cool shit. And the libraries were quiet. Good place to get away from any—" he hesitates— "emotions that didn't belong to me." They were also a good place to write his letters. "There were cafes, too. Like the ones in Atlantis, the cute shop we went to that one time with Biana and Maruca."

"Was that in Level One?"

"I think so. Yes."

"We'd only just become friends then, right?" Fitz had moved closer while he spoke, looking at him with a focused gaze.

"About a year before, yeah. Why?"

"Just wondering." He sits back and watches him more. Keefe wants to figure him out but he can't possibly understand how.

"I tried more human biscuits, too. You wouldn't believe how many ways they've found to sell the same things in different packaging. The packaging is so shiny, too. I opened a package of it and it was all silver inside and I carried it around in my pocket because it was so pretty."

"I did that, too," Fitz says. "I found stones and cans and trash in the road and picked it up to take with me." He turns to the side and points over at his desk drawer. "It's all in there. I think there's an umbrella, too."

Keefe laughs. "You brought a full umbrella back?"

"And a few movie posters. Normal things to carry around, you know." Fitz grins, a full grin, and Keefe wants to kiss him so badly it hurts.

"You're always normal, of course."

"Compared to you, yes," he says. "I, for instance, can't identify a gulon by the smell alone."

"That's just my special skill!" Keefe protests, and Fitz laughs. "Come on, Alina could probably do that too with all the gulons I've stuffed in her desk—another skill, by the way, those are hard to carry around and they don't like desk drawers."

"Who would've figured?"

"Not me!" Keefe announces, and he laughs again, so hard the bed shakes a little with it, and he wants to keep making jokes forever.

...

You were sweet. Sweet in a sour, salty, bitter world. Sweet the way that turns your stomach into mush, sweet the way that keeps you wanting more, sweet the way that poison frogs are bright colors so predators know not to eat them. Dangerous sweet. Wicked sweet. Terrifying sweet. You scared me, is what I'm trying to say.

...

But Fitz says, "Wait. You were telling me about the human world," so Keefe continues.

"I stayed in a hotel in London. The fanciest one they had and it was made of stone and metal instead of crystal. I stayed in a suite on the top floor and walked around the city and talked to people sometimes and went a little numb." He's quiet for a moment. "The parks are beautiful, even though you can't see the stars at night."

"You can in some places," Fitz says softly. "You can see them in the mountains. Or where there aren't that many people. And they really appreciate them there. I think we spend so much time mapping them and bottling them that we don't see how beautiful they are." He's still looking. Keefe wants him to stop and he wants him to continue. His eyes glimmer in the warm lights.

"Fitz, what's wrong?" he asks softly.

His face freezes over, and he looks away.

"Come on," Keefe says, frustrated. "I've told you everything, haven't I? I've cried in your goddamn arms!"

Fitz laughs. Laughs. His eyes crinkle and his cheeks lift and his teeth glint and it's far too fake for him to bear. "Keefe, you know I'm not like that."

"I wish you were!" Keefe stands from the bed and lets Fitz stare at him, shocked and a little insulted. He scrubs at his face with his hands and lets them tangle in his hair. "God, I wish you shared something. You don't have to tell me your deepest darkest secrets, dammit, but I'd like to know— maybe who the fuck you are!"

"Of course you don't know," Fitz says bitterly. "Of course you don't know me."

"Of course I don't know you!" Keefe cries. "Because you don't tell me shit! I barely know your favorite color! You're always just so— perfect— the golden boy— Dex was right, wasn't he? You're just so put-together, so talented, and god forbid you let yourself slip and admit to some goddamned emotion for once in your life—"

"I'm not the numb one!" Fitz shouts, and Keefe feels his eyes well up with hot tears.

"You could fucking fool me!"

They're both standing now, fists clenched at their sides. Fitz's face is tinged red, eyebrows drawn in a line across his forehead.

"Why do you just have to be so fucking perfect all the time?" Keefe's tears threaten to spill over and he wills them to stay in his eyes with all his might, so hard that his nails dig into his skin. "Perfect grades, perfect life, perfect fucking girlfriend—"

"Don't you think I'm crumbling too?" Fitz cries back, his lower lip trembling slightly. "Don't you think I know what it feels like to break?"

Keefe blazes past him. "You just do everything right, don't you. You know exactly what to say, what to do, to convince them you're all okay! Everything's normal! Well, you can't fool me! I don't know shit about you but I know that everything's fucked and you can't fix it this time! You can't fix anything!"

"Figure out yourself before you come after me—" he starts, but Keefe doesn't let him finish, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Damn it, you even confessed to Sophie before me!"

"I never wanted to confess to Sophie!" Fitz shouts, hands clenching and unclenching, brown skin darkening in concentrated spots on his cheekbones. "If I'm so perfect all the time, how come I've never been able to confess to you?"

Keefe's breath stutters in his chest, but the words don't stop slamming into his chest at the speed of sound, caving in his ribcage until all he can manage is a choked, "What?"

Fitz deflates. He looks so, so scared, but exhausted. He runs a hand through his hair and Keefe thinks of the millions of times he's watched him do this, a movement so familiar to him that he barely registers it. Hello, Keefe might introduce him. This is Fitz, and he runs his hands through his hair when he's too exasperated to figure himself out. And, he adds as an afterthought, I'm Keefe, and I don't know how to deal with myself either.

"Damnit, Keefe," Fitz says. "I'm in fucking love with you."

...

I'm going to leave you behind. I meant to leave my heart behind, but sewing it to Sophie's sleeve left needles in my stomach instead of butterflies.

...

He hasn't breathed in thirty seconds, the time counted by grains of sand in an hourglass.

It's supposed to be sweet.

Keefe supposes that he'd imagined this moment a million times, and every time he'd imagined it sweet.

What had he written to Sophie?

Fitz is like honey. I feel my feelings dripping down my spine, catching in my hair and tangling it with liquid fingers, gilding my vision.

Honey isn't supposed to be filled with broken glass. But he supposed that's how the two of them work: shattered, clashing against each other to smooth their edges.

"Say something," Fitz says, his voice breaking, eyes creasing with regret. Like he's already expecting the disappointment of a rejection.

...

This is not an apology.

...

"What do you want me to say? Something as perfect as you try to be?" Keefe asks softly, and as Fitz takes a step back he takes one forward. "That when I look to the clouds I think of you? That the sound of your voice is the only music I ever need to hear? That I could pluck a star from the skies and it still wouldn't be as bright as your smile?"

Fitz's lips part ever so slightly, and Keefe takes another step. This time, he stays still.

"Or maybe you want to hear more about the Forbidden Cities. Here: I missed you and hated you there because you were part of the reason I left. I wrote letters to everyone including you but you won't ever see yours because it's about how much I can't stand being away from you and can't stand it when you're near me. I ripped it apart and threw it away. I've been dreaming of you since we were twelve years old."

He takes another step, and Fitz meets him in the middle with it. Keefe brings his hands to his cheeks, cupping them gently, bringing them closer. "Or maybe," he breathes, and Fitz closes his eyes. "You want me to say that I love you."

Fitz's fingers go into Keefe's freshly bleached hair. Their noses bump, breath ghosting over lips, and suddenly he feels again, the forest-green wave of excitement and fear and yearning spreading over him until he's full to bursting. "Do you?" Fitz asks softly. "Love me?"

Keefe laughs, breathless. "Yes."

"Oh," Fitz says, and kisses him.

It's fierce and angry, the only way they know how to be. His face is feather-soft and bumpy beneath his fingers as he comes closer, as Fitz's fingers tangle in his hair, as their hearts match rhythms in their chests. He's heating up, a teakettle, asphalt in the sun, a boy in stupid love with the stupidest boy he's ever known besides himself.

...

What's wrong with me?

...

They turn inside out and lose themselves in their new skins.