King stood outside Alex's door for a long time.

Longer than he would ever admit.

The hallway was dim, quiet except for the faint hum of the overhead light, but King's mind was anything but quiet. Maverick's words kept replaying, circling, drilling into him harder each time.

They're not going to forgive you if you keep giving half-truths.

You tell Alex everything, or you lose them for good.

It wasn't a threat. Maverick didn't threaten the people he loved.

It was a warning and a plea.

And King wasn't used to being the one who hesitated.

His fingers hovered above the door handle. He inhaled once,deep, steady, forced and finally opened the door.

Inside, the room was dim, lit only by the low bedside lamp. Alex lay curled slightly toward the wall, blanket tangled around their waist, hair damp from the way they'd pressed it repeatedly into the pillow while fighting everything they felt earlier.

King's chest tightened at the sight.

They looked small.

Not in a fragile way, Alex was never fragile, but small in the way someone looks after holding themselves together too tightly for too long.

Their eyes weren't closed, not fully. Half-lidded, distant, the familiar haunted glaze King remembered too well.

They noticed him the second he entered.

"Great," Alex muttered, voice tired and scraped thin. "Round two."

Their pronouns had always been they/them, and King had never once gotten it wrong even in prison, even in the chaos, even when the world refused them the respect they deserved. He didn't get many things intuitively, but that? That was instinct for him.

He closed the door behind himself. Quiet. Careful.

Alex tensed.

Not fear... never fear with King, but instinctive bracing. Vulnerability and King in the same room had always been dangerous combination.

"You look worse than when I left you," King said, trying for a soft joke but his voice came out lower, rougher, too honest.

"Yeah, well," Alex murmured, eyes shifting away, "crying'll do that."

They regretted the words the second they said them. King saw it.

Alex wasn't supposed to admit things like that. Not out loud. Not to him.

He didn't comment. Didn't flinch. He just stepped closer.

Alex's throat bobbed.

"Don't," they warned. The word cracked around the edges. "Don't look at me like that."

"How am I looking at you?" King asked quietly.

"Like you—" Alex's voice stopped, cut out sharply. "Like you still care."

King exhaled slowly, through his nose.

"I do," he said.

Alex's jaw clenched, eyes burning, anger flashing to cover what almost surfaced.

"Yeah? You have a funny way of showing it."

Their voice was sharpening now, growing colder, steadier. a defense mechanism King recognized too well.

"You and Maverick both. All that talk about how you 'bled without us' and you 'thought about us every day'—"

A bitter laugh escaped them. "Funny, considering you didn't come looking."

King didn't interrupt.

Didn't defend.

Didn't deflect.

He let them speak. Let the venom spill, because he could finally see the wound beneath it.

"You just left," Alex said, voice quieter now, trembling with fury they were trying not to feel. "You left us in there like we were nothing. Like we were some—some mistake you could just bury."

"That's not what happened," King said softly.

Alex shot him a scalding glare. "Then tell me what happened. Tell me why you left us. Tell me why you didn't come looking for me or Jessie. Why you stayed gone. Why you—"

They stopped, swallowing hard.

Why you didn't choose us.

King moved a bit closer, not touching distance, but closer than before.

"Because if we stayed," King said, voice steady, "you and Jessie would be dead."

Alex blinked.

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't dramatize it.

It was just the truth, raw, heavy, ugly.

King pulled in a long breath.

"When Maverick and I got out, we didn't walk into freedom. We walked into a war. A quiet one, but real. The people who put bounties on our heads didn't disappear. The people we crossed didn't forget. Prison didn't erase anything, it just paused the clock."

Alex's expression flickered. Confusion. Anger. Hurt.

King continued.

"If we came to you, if we even talked to you... they would've used you. Hurt you. Killed you to get to us."

Alex stared hard at him. "You think I couldn't handle myself?"

"I know you could handle yourself," King said quickly. "This wasn't about your strength. It was about... leverage. You were the only thing they could've used against us."

Silence pressed thickly between them.

Alex's eyes darted away again, breathing uneven.

"So instead of risk us getting hurt," they said slowly, "you just... vanished."

King's voice dropped, almost a whisper.

"That choice destroyed us."

Alex froze.

King took another step forward, finally close enough that Alex could see the exhaustion etched around his eyes, the kind of exhaustion that comes from guilt, not sleep deprivation.

"You think it was easy?" King asked. "Walking away from you? Pretending we didn't want you back? Every day I thought about coming to you. Every hour. But every time I pictured it, all I saw was your body on a floor because of me. Because I was selfish."

Alex's breath hitched.

King kept going, quieter now, almost breaking.

"You and Jessie were the only good thing we had. The only thing that kept us human in that place. And when we got out... we couldn't drag you into the world we walked into. Not when it's worse than prison ever was. Not when it was hunting us."

Alex's throat tightened so visibly King forced himself not to reach out.

"That's not a choice you get to make for me," Alex whispered.

King nodded. "I know. And I'm sorry."

Alex blinked hard.

Once.

Twice.

"Sorry doesn't fix three years," they said. "Sorry doesn't fix the fact that Jessie cried himself sick every night wondering why you abandoned him. Sorry doesn't fix waking up alone and thinking—thinking maybe we were delusional for believing you ever gave a shit—"

Their voice broke.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Just a small, cracked sound that sliced through King like a blade.

He took the final step forward.

"Alex," he breathed.

Alex shook their head violently, wiping their face with the back of their wrist even though no tears had fallen, not fully.

"I'm fine," they said sharply. "Don't—don't do this. Don't make it sound like some tragic love story where you were suffering in silence. You left. You didn't call. You didn't show up. You didn't try."

"I wanted to," King said.

"But you didn't."

"No," King admitted softly. "I didn't. Because wanting something doesn't make it safe. And keeping you alive mattered more than keeping you close."

Alex's lip trembled.

They hated that he saw it. Leaned back instinctively, putting distance between them again.

"You hurt us," they whispered.

"You hurt me."

King's voice cracked for the first time.

"I know. And I'll spend the rest of my life trying to fix it—if you let me. If you don't... I'll still be here. Whatever you need. Whatever you decide."

Alex swallowed hard. They looked away, shoulders tightening as if holding themselves together with sheer force of will.

"You should go," they finally said. It wasn't anger. It wasn't cold.

It was resignation.

King didn't move.

"Alex—"

"Please."

That one word.

Soft.

Barely audible.

But a plea King would never ignore.

He stepped back a single pace.

Then another.

Alex didn't look at him.

Didn't move.

Didn't breathe.

King opened the door.

Just before he left, his voice drifted back—quiet, steady, and devastatingly honest.

"We didn't leave because we didn't care," he said. "We left because we cared too much."

The door shut.

Alex finally let themselves breathe—

—and shattered silently into their pillow.