Humanity is so fucked up. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking—'Aw, Katsuki, look on the bright side!' Well fuck you, because what the fuck "bright side" even is there when you have to watch your best friend and the only person you've literally ever loved as they're diagnosed with one of the deadliest diseases known to us shitty two-legged creatures, suffer day after day for three agonizing years, and then die because supposedly there isn't a damn thing anyone can do to save him?

Fucking exactly.

Eijirou and I have... fuck, had known each other for sixteen years before none other than cancer yanked him out of my life. We met when we were two, when our parents dumped us both at the same daycare before that shit got corrupted as fuck and people could be trusted to look after other peoples' babies. We instantly gravitated toward one another. We were practically inseparable, and that never changed. Same elementary, middle, and high schools... that was, up until he got too sick to go to school anymore.

Don't take shit the wrong way—our friendship wasn't perfect or anything like that; we had our fair share of fights, most of them being over stupid shit. 'Course, he was almost always the first one to apologize even when I was clearly the one in the wrong or being an asshole, which is basically my middle fucking name.

I can't tell you why he was my friend, let alone my best friend, or the person who stuck around with me during everything. Can't tell you why or how he put up with my bullshit. I never could fully comprehend his endless amounts of compassion and love, especially for things he thought were manly, or how his soul stayed so damn pure right up until his very last breaths.

But I can tell you that all of those things, who he was, were why I loved him. So. Damn. Much.

Growing up in such a huge city with a population nearly reaching 100,000, it was already a fucking miracle that we were taken to the same daycare. On top of that we somehow lived in the same neighborhood only three blocks away from one another—until my parents divorced and my mother moved away, forcing my dad and I to find an apartment to live in because he couldn't afford the house payments on his own. What was but a five minute walk turned into a twenty minute drive, but fuck if that stopped us.

Those first eleven years of living so close to him are years I remember fondly. It was then when we made the memories closest to me—to us.

But those years, full of bullshit I loved so fucking much, aren't what this is about. I wrote about that shit, journaled about it like a little kid keeping a friggin' diary because it was part of my therapy and shit for the damn imbalances in my piece-of-shit brain that causes the mood swings and compulsions. They're well documented, and from times when I was in a much better headspace than I am now because, shit, I hadn't just lost my best friend to cancer.

As much as it hurts, I have to write about his last years. I have to document how he was, even up to the very end, from the amazing sunny days to the terrible ones where a black cloud hung over and filled our lungs, making it so hard to breathe. From the days where his illness and the detriment of treatment was invisible to the eye, to the days where there was no longer a single hair on his body, his skin was white as a sheet, his bones prominent beneath his skin.

It started out as a cough. Innocent enough. It was flu season after all, and no, he hadn't yet had his flu shot. The diligent little fucker was planning on getting one soon, but what was supposed to be an easy doctor's appointment turned out to be one of the scariest days of our lives.

I've had anxiety attacks for as long as I can fucking remember—go figure—but not once before had I felt the crippling, gut-twisting, heart-wrenching, mind-numbing panic that I felt during the phone call that afternoon. While normally he'd have taken the trip down to my house to tell me in person, it happened just over a month after Dad and I had to move into this tiny ass apartment, thirty miles away from him. Things were complicated—though it was only the beginning—and he had to settle for the phone call.

And yeah, I still remember that shit clear as day. Remember the oddly calm tenor of his voice, remember the smell of my dad cooking stew just down the hall in the kitchen, remember the way the light gray sheet of clouds hung over that evening, threatening snow but remaining still, almost like the sky was holding its breath, waiting for something. And I remember his words exactly.

"Hey man," he'd said in his usual, casual tone. Didn't matter. I knew something was up. I could feel it, almost the way you can feel static in the air before a thunderstorm. "So, I had my appointment. For my flu shot? And a general check-up, since it's been almost a year, so they figured they'd get it out of the way."

"Okay..." I'd muttered. "The hell's going on, then?"

At that point the panic had already started to rise; I could feel heat creeping up behind my eyes, my heart just starting to constrict.

"Well, uh..." he went on; it was too damn easy to picture him scratching the back of his head, maybe his neck. "They're not sure about anything yet, really. It could be something minor and simple."

Can't be surprised that I urged him to get the fuck on with it already.

"Y'know that cough I've been having? And how sometimes it's kinda hard for me to breathe? She was pretty concerned about that when Ma brought it up, so she listened to my lungs a lot. Said things sounded... weird. Asked me tons of questions and stuff, wrote down like, an entire freaking novel of notes..."

"Eijirou."

There was a pause that lasted an eternity.

"She didn't wanna jump to any conclusions but she's... worried it could be something serious. Maybe asthma or something..."

"Or?" I pressed, just fucking knowing.

"...worst case scenario, it... might be cancer? But don't freak out! It probably isn't!" He said it quickly, as if that would stop my heart rate from jumping through the roof. As if that would turn back the clock five minutes, or do anything to change what the hell it was I just heard. "I'm still at the office. They're gonna have me see their uh, respiratory specialist or whatever in like half an hour. I'll probably have to do a few tests and maybe an x-ray just to be safe. They like to catch this stuff early, y'know? Better to rule it out sooner than later. Once we know I'm all good, that I just have a bad cold or I'm developing bronchitis or something, you'll be the first one I tell. Promise."

Remember what I said about his pure soul? Yeah. Too fucking positive and happy-go-lucky for his own damn good. Kirishima-always-looks-on-the-bright-side-Eijirou should be the name on his birth certificate.

I didn't eat that night. I couldn't, no matter how damn much my dad tried talking me into it, insisting that a full stomach might help or the meal would help get shit off my mind. He knew that was bullshit, but he meant well I guess. I was too anxious. Bit off all my nails, made three of them bleed. Resorted to picking at my eyelashes, something I hadn't done in years because of my shitty anxiety disorder.

It wasn't until long after the sun had gone down that he finally called me again. For some stupid reason I don't remember that call as clearly, just that they said they saw something 'strange' in his x-ray and just to be safe were referring him to their sister hospital for a CT scan... whatever that was, because at the time my throat was too thick, my breath caught somewhere within it, rendering me unable to ask.

...look, it's not that I can't go into the awful, terrible details of his diagnosis of an aggressive stage two non-small cell lung cancer, or the impossibly long and agonizing six months he was being treated for it with, you guessed it, chemotherapy that caused a whole slew of other issues with his body. I could tell you about how much he slept, how he went from being the strong, vibrant person I knew and loved so much to a dull echo of himself with pale skin and no hair; from loving food and always going back for seconds, sometimes thirds, to only managing to take a few bites here and there that he'd more likely throw back up later.

Yeah, I know I said I'd document it but that... wasn't him. In those months he was hardly a shell of himself. His light was so terribly, painfully dim for those long months, and those memories are burned into my mind. Even if I wanted to I wouldn't be able to forget them unless I sawed my skull open and poured bleach all over my brain. Even then, I guess the soul he'd always insisted I have would remember. Writing it down is useless.

After six months of treatment, the chemo hadn't touched the cancer, really. All it seemed to do was poison his body and make him worse, and the shitty cancer ended up spreading through his lymphatic system anyway. As far as I'm aware the only organ it never made it to was his brain, the thing he always said he believed was some sort of medium between the body and the soul or whatever. Weird spiritual shit if you ask me, but when they said that, somehow it only made sense for him. If his brain was the thing holding his soul to his body—the soul that was so damn pure it could've cleansed the entire world had it been given the chance—it was eerily appropriate for it to remain untainted, even after everything.

When those six months, give or take a week, were up and the whole slew of tests he'd been through more times than any of us could keep track of anymore showed that the cancer had spread, that the original tumor in his lung wasn't any smaller, they gave him an option. They could keep trying, try a different form of chemo--a more aggressive form that, with the current results, would only have an estimated 20% chance of working--or call it quits, let the cancer run its course, keep him comfortable, and let him live out what was left of his life however he saw fit.

"And how long would that be?" his mother had asked the doctor through her tears, voicing the exact thing I was thinking but couldn't find my voice through the shock to say.

"It's hard to give an exact time frame, but I'd guess roughly two years since the cancer cells are relatively slow growing."

Two years. That was how long they gave my best friend to live. He wouldn't even get to live to see his twentieth birthday. Wouldn't experience any of the shit we'd been talking about since we were little kids. Wouldn't get to go to college or figure out what he wanted to do with his life—because suddenly it was being ripped away from him. Wouldn't fall in love (or so I thought at the time) or be able to get married, be a father if that's what he wanted.

As much as it fucking hurt (like we were ones to talk...), his parents and I (only because he wanted my opinion too) left the final decision up to him. His life was in his own hands, and we'd honor whatever it was he wanted to do—continue suffering with poison running through his veins on the unlikely chance that it might get rid of the other thing killing him from the inside out, or let his body rest and let nature run its course with him.

No amount of crossing my fingers, hoping, praying to any god or whatever I never believed in did a thing to change his decision, and regardless of what I selfishly wanted him to choose, I'll never be able to blame him for the choice he made.

"I'm tired," he'd said. "Chemo's freakin' exhausting... more exhausting than just living with this dumb cancer ever was. Twenty percent isn't really a lot, y'know? Not enough to gamble on and... make things worse than they've already been." He'd paused to cough, and the dry sound is forever embedded in my memory. "I don't wanna die but... I don't know if I can handle any more of this stuff."

Sobbing, his mother leaned over and pulled him into her arms. All I could do was look away, even though I could feel his eyes on me from across the room.

I was selfish, and felt stupidly guilty for being that way. He believed I was mad at him for the decision he made, too, and I'd have known it even if I hadn't heard him say it just before I walked into his hospital room the next morning. They'd kept him overnight to get his immune system built back up—another shitty side-effect of chemo—before they released him and let him do whatever it was he wanted with the rest of his life while he was still strong enough to do it. And man, do I hate feeling guilty, especially when I was the selfish asshole when he was the one truly suffering. I don't know who the fuck I thought I was. Hell, I still don't. So the fuck what if I was in love with him? What mattered was him, not my shitty, fragile feelings.

Speaking of, to be honest, I can't really tell you when exactly I fell in love with him, head over heels... basically doing fucking somersaults and cartwheels for him. But I do know I denied it for years, insisting that it was because we're... well, we were such close friends, that I've never felt such a strong bond with someone, that feelings like that can be platonic. And fuck, I'm not saying they can't, but this was one of those times where they weren't. Abso-fucking-lutely not.

And leave it to me not to realize that until it was basically too late, until I had no time to figure out what the hell to do about them but bury them for as long as I could, along with my guilt.

So, without him knowing, I went shopping. Wig shopping, specifically. Up until then he'd been wearing beanies and bandanas on his head to keep it covered since losing his hair, but not a day had gone by where he didn't mention something about 'feeling naked' or missing his hair.

"I put a lotta work into it, man," he'd sigh. "It's hard as hell going from black to a color light enough to put red dye over so it doesn't look like shit."

So yeah. I went and found a wig. Did research and shit. Borrowed the money from my dad that I promised to pay back by doing an assload of chores (that was, until he figured out what I spent the money on, and told me not to worry about it, saying something about wishing I'd just told him up front what my plan was). And I bought my best friend a bright red wig, cut in his usual style that he could spike up or pull back or do whatever he wanted with while his real hair grew back.

Needless to say his family and everyone else were basically moved to freakin' tears when he opened the box I packed it in and pulled it out. Eijirou himself, on the other hand, never really was a crier; instead he smiled a smile that was like the damn sun itself for the rest of the night, especially once the damn thing was on his head. With a little adjusting it almost looked like he'd never lost his hair at all, had it not been for his lack of eyebrows and eyelashes, too.

Seeing him that way, happier than he'd been in months, made my throat feel thick. I was glad that when he hugged me, smelling... off from the way I remembered him smelling before chemo seemed to change the entire chemical makeup of his body, I was facing away from everyone else because fuck if anyone saw the hot tear that dripped down my stupid cheek when he held me with a surprising amount of strength.

I swallowed it back. Swallowed my feelings back—the remorse for him and, more so, the love for him. Buried them under a hard exterior. I remained careful, unwilling to let even him see through me. It took so much damn energy because damn it if he didn't know me better than I knew myself, but I did what I could.

I spent that night in the hospital with him—the last one before they discharged him, though he'd be back monthly at the very least for monitoring and such. 'Keeping him comfortable' is what they called it. If he needed pain meds, he could ask. If he was nauseous, he should tell them. Any changes, really, he was to report.

"We want you to have the best quality of life as possible for however much longer you're here for," a nurse had said.

Apparently 'quality of life' was taking a handful of pills at least twice a day, and even still as the last of the shitty chemo was being flushed from his body he was throwing up a lot, unable to eat too much, having to swallow this nasty orange shit for some weird thing in the back of his throat. That was on top of the almost endless coughing, often with weird phlegm or sometimes blood because of the cancer in his lungs. And that was before the damn CT scans showed it spreading to his lymph nodes and other organs...

Classic Eijirou, he wasn't hung up on it though. Once the chemo was finally out of his system about a month after his treatment stopped, he seemed to get better. Didn't matter. We all knew it was a lie, a facade, that it wouldn't last long. He was still pale, still hairless, still weak. He was so much thinner than he used to be, lacking any of the muscle he'd built up via puberty and casual working out. He still slept a solid twelve hours a day. Sitting around with him, watching movies and endless Netflix shows, snacking, and watching over him as he slept felt at first like it was going to be what the next couple of years consisted of, and little more.

That was until, with a sheepish smile and a 'how dumb is this?' he passed over a slightly wrinkled piece of paper with his handwriting scrawled down it in list form. At the top were two words between thick quotation marks. "Bucket List".

Fuck if I know what it was, but something about the few things written down the page, plus a lot of different foods he wanted to try, closed around my throat. I'd become a fucking master at holding back my shitty, weak tears, but even though my face remained dry he saw right through me.

"Aw man, I knew I shouldn't have showed you," he said, scratching his head through the wig that he never went without during his waking hours.

"Shut up," I muttered. My eyes didn't leave the list. I read over it. Memorized it. And felt myself falling in love with just how damn simple-minded Eijirou really was.

Because the few things on that piece of paper wasn't shit like 'skydiving' or 'travel the world.' To this day I still don't know if he neglected to put those because he knew they were impossible for him or if he really didn't care for them, and I still regret not asking. Instead there were easy things, almost everyday things like 'watch the sun rise' and 'stargaze at midnight.' He wanted to swim in the ocean, shoot a bow and arrow, plant a friggen tree, and feed animals at the zoo. He even jotted down his desire to go on a ghost hunt, something we'd talked about a lot as kids and had since grown out of.

"For the kids in us," he'd explained. "Remember?"

Of fucking course I remembered.

One little list awakened something inside of me I didn't even know existed, or could exist, let alone fuel my motivation to do something.

It wasn't like I had an assload of money to my name or anything, but collecting change from inside the couch on top of shoveling snow out of driveways and off of sidewalks for a few bucks per house down the neighborhood helped me build what I needed over the course of that winter.

I didn't tell a soul what my plan was, either, because fuck if anyone was going to spoil the surprise. I expected him to catch on quickly, just as he did, but his reaction when we showed up at the damn zoo one morning just as spring was coming in, the air only just barely chilly anymore, made keeping the secret to surprise him more worth it than I could've imagined. Maybe it was just a stupid, shitty reaction from being so fucking in love with him that I couldn't hold back, but I didn't care. Still don't.

His eyes lit up like the damn sky during that sunrise he wanted to see, only much faster, when he saw the sign outside the car window. The sparkle shining within those warm red irises didn't fade the entire time we were there, especially when he got to offer food to certain animals, even pet a few of them. I swear he was like a little kid, even picking his favorite animal in the entire place—one of the giraffes that happened to be blind in one eye. I bought him ice cream, and on the way home he reached for my hand, making my heart jump like a friggen pogo stick.

"Ya know, I didn't give you that list to like, pressure you into doing stuff for me," he told me, his cool fingers pushing gently between mine. Holding my hand was something he'd taken to doing in those past months, and of course I was too chicken shit to ask why for fear he'd stop doing it because fuck if I didn't want to take what I could while I could.

"'Course I know that, idiot," I told him. And I fucking did. Eijirou was too damn humble for someshit like that. The most likely reason he gave me that list was because he, just like the rest of us, was feeling the heaviness of his impending death; hell, the idiot was probably having an existential crisis under the surface most of the time, and nobody could blame him. He was thinking about all the things he didn't get to do and sharing it, but in an entirely selfless way.

And fuck it, even if he did give me that list as a hint or bearing the expectation that I'd do the shit for him, I wouldn't have given a single shit about it. I'd have still done everything I could to make those dreams a reality for him before his time came.

With his hand in mine, he'd fallen asleep on my shoulder on the way home from the zoo that afternoon and had barely stirred when I carried him inside. The entire time my heart was jackhammering behind my ribs, and it was a freaking wonder he was able to sleep so soundly beside me because of it.

...

Sometimes it feels impossible to live without him. Writing about him is harder than I thought it'd be, because in the back of my mind the knowledge that when I get up I won't be able to just go see him is ever-present. I see him every day in my head, remember his warmth and his voice, his kindness, how... manly he was, but none of that can come close to comparing to having him right here, breathing in and out softly as he sleeps or draws or gets wrapped up in a movie. I'm so, so fucking terrified that one day my clear memory of those things will fade to the point that they aren't really him anymore... and then I don't know what the fuck I'll do.

...but fuck being sad and shit. This ain't some shitty poetry and not what the fuck this is supposed to be about.

So I guess I should talk about the ghost hunt, because it was something I wanted to do before he was too weak for something like that. After a solid hour of research I found one that seemed the most legitimate at some old hotel on the outskirts of our town. 'Course, it was the most expensive, but that only served to make it seem more real than any of the other bullshit ones I came across. How I came up with the money isn't really important, but let's just say I still owe some people.

I didn't bother trying to keep this one a secret because watching Eijirou's excitement grow over the course of the few days between telling him and it actually happening was rewarding in and of itself. Though if I had a freaking dollar for every time he told me some version of 'you don't have to do this for me, seriously bro' I wouldn't owe anyone shit.

But let me be the first to tell you, actual, real fucking ghosts are no goddamn joke. Being there was unlike anything either of us have experienced. I don't even know what kind of words to use to explain how it felt. Intense, maybe. Terrifying. Fascinating, I guess. But still, that shit doesn't cut it. I have to admit that going in I was still skeptical, but holy shit am I a believer now.

And yeah, of course, it makes me wonder if Eijirou's still around and just... not physical anymore or whatever. Makes me wonder if he's watching me write this over my shoulder and shit. Not like it matters if he is, 'cause by the end he knew everything anyway.

But we're not there yet.

About ghosts and shit being no joke, I'm fucking serious, because the day after we went on that damn tour/hunt thing, I came down with the freaking stomach flu. Vomiting my brains out, nearly shitting myself several times, fever, cold sweats, feeling absolutely miserable for a week straight—the whole nine fucking yards. Double and triple and freaking quadruple checked that anything I ate or drank wasn't spoiled to rule out food poisoning, and then we learned that while my case seemed to be the most intense, it by far wasn't the first to happen to someone who'd gone on that very same tour and felt a cold ass hand or whatever slide down their back like I did in a certain hallway on the sixteenth floor.

Shit's crazy. Don't fuck with it.

Did I ever mention how damn stubborn Eijirou is... was, though? That dumbass adamantly refused to leave my side for the entire week I was sick despite my every attempt to get him to stay the fuck away. He was already dealing with so damn much—he had cancer for fuck's sake! He already didn't feel good 99% of the time, was constantly dealing with his own symptoms, plus coughing 24/7 and whatnot. Letting him stay so close and freaking take care of me and shit felt so damn wrong.

But he did, and I don't know how he won that battle because fuck if I'm not hard-headed as fuck myself. Maybe I just felt like shit and was delusional from my high fever (that almost sent even me to the hospital—go fucking figure). I don't know. But he was there, unwaveringly. Rubbed my back as I heaved over the toilet or a bucket, provided cool washcloths, made soup for me. Most of the time he still fell asleep before I did. I think dealing with his own issues on top of taking care of me tired him out more than usual, and because I'm me, I couldn't let it go for a good week after I was better.

There was one night, though, that despite feeling like absolute shit (which I still feel bad about saying in front of him, because, for the millionth fucking time, he had cancer), I know I'll remember for the rest of my life. It was in the peak of the shitty flu and a day where spring was transitioning its way into summer; it'd been raining all afternoon and into the night. The storm ended up knocking the power out after my dad had gone to bed, leaving him oblivious to the increased darkness of the neighborhood around us.

I remember my throat burning from all the damn stomach acid that'd passed through it, and while I was physically hungry I had no appetite to speak of. There was nothing for us to do but lie awake in my bed with a small candle lit on the table beside him.

"How ya feelin'?" he'd asked softly from beside me where I was curled up around a pillow, trying to will the nausea away.

I'd merely grunted in response because if I told him I was fine he'd have known I was lying, but telling him that was the worst I'd felt yet would've made him worry too damn much.

It was then that his hand, cool in comparison to my feverish skin, tangled its way gently into my hair. My heart still managed to stutter as soon as I felt it, and all I could think to do was look up at him as he shifted onto his side, the lightest, sleepiest of smiles on his face.

It was one of the rare occasions where he was without his wig. His brows and eyelashes had grown back by then, and the hair on his head was stark black and still less than an inch long. His eyes reflected the candlelight, giving them an orangeish hue that made them even softer than they already were. With a light dusting of pink on his cheeks, he looked deceptively healthy.

And for that moment I could pretend he was. I could pretend he'd just decided to cut all his hair off and start over from scratch instead of having lost it to chemo. I could pretend the last nine months hadn't even happened, that my best friend's body wasn't being ravaged and torn apart by a deadly, incurable disease from the inside out.

In that moment I fell more in love with him than I ever thought possible. It felt like I needed him just to keep on breathing, needed him in order to wake up in the morning, needed him to keep my feet steady.

It was all over for me the second he started humming, soft and breathy. I didn't recognize the tune and in all honesty I'm not sure he didn't just make it up on the spot. Somehow it reminded me of a river or a stream, and I think I was at least a little delirious from my fever because, once I closed my eyes, it started to feel like the two of us were floating down, down, down in that stream together. Cool and clear. Fresh. Easygoing. As soon as we reached the end, emptying into the dark of the ocean, I knew I'd fallen asleep.

A piece of advice: savor the voices of your loved ones, because once they're gone you're not going to be able to remember them for what they were. Your memory, even if it's strong as fuck like mine has always been, won't be able to reproduce the exact sound you knew yoou heard, and you'll realize just how much of them were in their voice alone. Savor it. Record it. Hold it close, or you'll regret it. I know I sure as fuck do.

When I was finally over the shitty stomach flu a week and a half later I was able to get back to business—fulfilling every single thing I possibly could on that bucket list of his that never left my pocket. Below the activities he wanted to do, like shooting a bow and arrow and planting a tree, was an entire list of foods he wanted to try. Let me just say, thank fuck for the internet because I don't know how the hell I'd have managed to pull off checking all but two of those foods on his list without it. In the midst of it all, too, I managed to become a licensed driver so I could stop bothering our parents and other friends for rides to places—all I needed was their cars. By then they'd more than caught on to what was going on and not once after that did they bother me for gas money or anything of the sort. Even Eijirou wasn't saying anything anymore because, admittedly, we were having fun.

I just fucking wish it wasn't because he was dying, even if he didn't look like it a good 75% of the time.

His 'shoot a bow and arrow' quickly turned into 'get a bullseye with a bow and arrow' after the first time we went to the shooting range. It ended up turning into a weekly thing we did (unless he wasn't feeling well enough to go) up until the last couple of months, and even after he managed that bullseye he wanted to keep going. We tried shooting guns too, but as he said, it was too intense, so back to the bows we went.

Like the archery, we ended up watching many more than one sunrise, spending many more than one evening out under the stars (even if their light was diluted because of city light pollution).

And all the while he was on a shallow but still very real decline, one that seemed to speed up exponentially as time went on. His skin never fully returned to the flushed, full of life ivory it'd been before his diagnosis. He never regained all of the weight he needed; in fact, I don't think he gained any at all, and then he started losing even more.

He continued going to his monthly check-ups and screenings so they could monitor him and take the appropriate measures for whatever came up to continue 'keeping him comfortable'. I went with him every time—an unspoken thing between us that I wanted to be there for him to know what was going on, ask questions his foggy mind may not have thought of, and provide moral support, and that he wanted me there, too. I was there for every med addition, removal, or swap. For every instance where the CT scans showed growth or spreading of the disease slowly taking over his body. For every time they asked if he'd changed his mind about chemo, and every time he said no.

I was always there, watching my best friend slowly die.

Regardless, the further downhill he got the more eager he was to continue down his list. After the cancer spread into some of his bones was when he decided he needed to check 'tattoo' off the list. It took a week to do research into a decent artist that wasn't painfully expensive for what he decided he wanted, and it'd have taken longer if another friend, someone we hadn't really talked to for a few years at that point, pointed us in the direction of a close friend of hers. He was an artist in training, so we were well warned that the work may not be entirely 'professional grade'. Once he learned the situation with Eijirou, though, he didn't charge us a single dime.

The night before was when he talked me into getting one too.

"C'mon, man, do it with me," he'd urged. "Tattoos are manly. You'll look sick with one."

'Course, it was always hard as fuck to say no to him, and being in this sickly state made it even harder.

"The hell would I even get?" I muttered.

"Anything, dude. You could pick out a design from the shop or somethin'."

"Or I'll just steal your design and go before you," I muttered jokingly.

"Rude!" he joked back. But then he'd sat up with a gasp. "But wait, you should! Let's make 'em match!"

I rolled my eyes at first, thinking he was still kidding. "Sure. 'Kay."

"I'm serious, Katsuki. Yeah I want a tattoo before I'm gone, but it'll be so much better to get one with my best friend. Like, together."

The way he said 'together' pulled at my friggen heartstrings, and the remainder of the evening was spent with cheap printer paper and pencils trying to brainstorm tattoos we could get. In the end we came up with something vaguely about gears and grenades, the gears representing him and the grenades representing me. The artist refined the idea and made it better than either of us could've imagined hopped up on caffeine in the middle of the night.

So now on my left peck, right above my damn heart, is a black tattoo, half gear and half mid-explosion grenade—the exact same one that'd gone on Eijirou's upper right shoulder.

In the end I'm thankful as fuck he talked me into doing it with him. Cheesy as it is, it makes me feel like I've got a piece of him with me all the time, and it helps me get through the day.

As summer continued on we kept checking things off of Eijirou's list, the rollercoaster being the next one. It ended up that we spent an entire day at an amusement park doing ride after ride—not that that's some big surprise. He seemed to love every second of it, though once again he fell asleep on the way home. I'd carried him into the house and all the way upstairs to his bed in spite of his protests when he woke up to the seatbelt releasing.

It was the following morning when what woke us both up (there was hardly a night I didn't spend with him) was a horrible coughing fit. It was before sunrise; I can still remember the way the sky looked, darker than I ever remember it being, and the way the air smelled—crisp and humid, almost like rainwater even though the sidewalks were dry. It was the beginning of autumn, and the morning showed it.

I remember it because with the coughing came blood, blood, and more blood. His sheets were stained beyond saving from the stains. His pajamas, too, as well as mine. How the memory of the sky and the air stayed with me or even registered I can't tell you because my entire goddamn body was in panic mode.

Is this it? Is it over? Do I have to say goodbye now? Is it really it? Why can't I wake up? This can't be it! I'm not ready yet...

Yeah. Those sorts of thoughts go through your head when your best friend has cancer and things like that happen. No matter what, you're never gonna be ready. Doesn't matter how long you have to prepare or how much you think you've made your peace with it, because when it comes right down to it you'll realize you were holding out and holding on, even if it's by bloody fingernails.

I know you're curious so no, it wasn't... it. It was a worsening, yeah, with the cancer cells in his lungs continuing to grow and spread within them, causing a hemorrhage. He was in the emergency room for a night and ended up being prescribed oxygen, at first just to use at night and as needed.

That didn't last long. It was maybe another month, if that, before he had to go on it full time.

Throughout most of this shitty journey with his disease, Eijirou kept a smile or, at the very least, he remained reserved. Rare was it that he became emotional, which impressed... everyone, really, because none of us—me, his parents, other friends and family, even the hospital staff who we were all closer to than we ever wanted to be—could keep it together all the time. The thing that induced any tears from Eijirou's eyes was the side effects of the chemo that ravaged his body for months. It was the physical pain that brought any kind of emotional reaction to his face.

The mortality of it all? Nothing. Even if there was underlying sadness and fear in his eyes he didn't cry, didn't break down like everyone expected him to eventually do. Even I couldn't tell for sure, but I was fairly confident that he was holding himself together for everyone else's sake on top if his 'it is what it is' attitude.

"There's nothing we can really do about it, right? Might as well just do what I can with the time I have left, ya know?"

Something he said to me not long after his chemo treatment ended. And yeah, it worried me. Shouldn't he be freaking out? Shouldn't he be scared, or at least sort of... mourning for the life he'll never really get to have?

It didn't come, and after a while I was beginning to think it never would. But it did.

The day he was told to stay on oxygen 24/7 was when it happened. His parents were both at work, leaving the two of us at his house alone. He'd fallen asleep by accident while I was playing video games, and I thought nothing of it. His prescription said he should use the oxygen at night, and a little nap was nothing. He'd taken them before and had been fine.

Not that time, obviously. He'd woken with a start, gasping for air with sheer panic settled into his face, his hand grasping for his chest. By then my reflexes and instincts were refined enough to react quickly, and within seconds I had his oxygen tank beside him. While it helped, he could only take shallow breaths and winced with every inhale. It was enough for me to load him into the car (his mother had left hers, carpooling with his other mom to work, just in case we needed it) and drag him back up to the hospital.

I don't remember much of that particular trip, to be honest; there were so many visits to that damn hospital that they'd all begun blurring together, and this one was one of the less... intense ones, I guess. I know they gave him some sort of supplement and let him sit on oxygen for awhile before telling him he needed to go ahead and use it all the time now. I think we were only there for about an hour before heading out.

I do remember the ride home though, because he was eerily quiet. While he'd usually chatter about something or comment on things here and there, or even hum quietly along to whatever music was playing, he merely sat with his hands folded in his lap, head turned so I couldn't see his face, his gaze fixed out the window. And when I parked in the driveway and cut the engine, he didn't really move. I did the usual—went around the car to help him out in case he needed it. Still, he said nothing as he moved to his feet. Didn't smile or thank me.

"Ei?" I'd asked when he didn't even look me in the face.

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't for him to swipe a shaky hand across his face, draw a deep breath, and then use it to say, "...I'm scared."

The words didn't make sense in my head at first. They felt... smeared. Illegible, only to the ears.

I didn't snap out of the stupid fucking fog my brain was in until he shook his head and started to look further away, muttering a quiet 'sorry'.

Before he could move further I'd caught him by the shoulder—his thin shoulder that, even through his sweatshirt, I could discern the bones of. "For what?" was my fucking genius response.

"Ah... nothin'. Let's just go—"

"Eijirou."

His sniffle brought the tear streak down his right cheek to my attention; the way it curved ever so slightly made me realize just how thin his face was, too. (Having such a strong, vivid memory is both a blessing and a curse—I'm fucking telling you.)

"For... keeping you from living your life, man," he managed. Swiped his hand under his nose. "For makin' you sit around all day with me... ruinin' your clothes with my blood, makin' you take me to the stupid ER every two damn seconds."

He tried to go on, I think, but I wouldn't let him.

"Shut up with that nonsense, you idiot. Don't you know me well enough that you'd know if I didn't wanna be here, I wouldn't?"

It was then that he finally looked at me straight in the eyes, with his tired, tear-filled, bloodshot ones. In that second I wanted nothing more than to just dive right into those deep red irises and stay there forever.

But I'm so selfish.

"...man," he breathed, swiping a hand under his nose again, somehow without disturbing the cannula. Tears spilled down his cheeks again, rendering me unable to keep from pulling him gently against me, encircling him in my arms, holding as tightly as I dared. He latched onto me with all he was worth—or at least I thought, maybe because I hoped that's what he did. Sometimes it's like I can easily remember the shaking of his body rattling through my own bones. He was so thin. So weak, and cold. I only ever had an inch of height on him but he felt so much smaller than that.

"Well I'm... really glad you're here, Katsuki," he mumbled tremulously into my shouler. "'Cause I'm... I'm terrified."

A breath blew from my lungs, my head tucking tighter towards him. "Finally, a rational reaction," I'd said.

Surprising me a little he'd hiccuped a laugh through his tears, saying I was right, confirming my suspicions that he'd been trying to keep a brave face on for everyone else. He told me he'd been having bad dreams he couldn't wake himself up from, and in zoning out he found himself thinking way too much about certain things.

"But man, then... then you get my attention and snap me out of it or I wake up and you're next to me and it... it all feels okay again, even just for a little while. I don't wanna keep you from your life and yourself but if you weren't here I'm pretty damn sure I'd have lost my mind by now."

At that point something seemed to have lodged itself right in my throat, and I still can't tell you what the fuck kept me from fucking crying. Guess I had to hold it together for the both of us, because by the time we eventually headed in after standing there for... shit, I'd completely lost track, there was a decently sized tear stain on my jacket from him that he'd apologized for multiple times, embarrassed, saying shit about 'unmanly tears' and whatnot. He was an idiot, but fuck if he wasn't my idiot...

I almost blurted it out right then—my feelings. I thought of a million ways to put it, to insert it right into the conversation, let it finally roll off of my tongue and into the air around us.

I bit my tongue. Settled for, "You're my best friend. Fuck being anywhere else. You couldn't get me to leave no matter how damn hard you tried."

What I wanted to say was "How in the hell can you be keeping me from my life when you are my whole damn life?"

I know what you're thinking because I've said it to myself about a hundred thousand times by this point—I shouldn't have put so damn much of myself into another person, especially one I knew wasn't going to be around too much longer. I shouldn't have put everything pertaining to him before anything that had to do with me. The thing is... by the time he was diagnosed, by the time those coughs spurted up that first little bit of blood, I was already in so, so fucking deep. As much as his diagnosis and the rocky journey that followed, those first awful six months up until the very end (and even now, after he's gone) crushed me, they only made everything I felt for him catapult into territories I could no longer reach myself. It all made me clutch onto him harder with the fear of losing him, dig myself in deeper, wanting to hold him closer and warmer and more, more, tighter... just in case, just in case.

And all that time it felt simultaneously like I was floating in absolute nothingness aside from the dread of watching the life being sucked away from him and flying above everything, so damn happy just to be next to him, even in the worst of moments. Even in the hospital, or waking up to his coughing, or holding the hair of his wig back as he heaved over a bucket.

Lost as I am now, still trying to find my footing in life now that he's gone, I don't regret loving him as much as I did... as much as I fucking do. And I never will.

...

Anyway. He was on oxygen permanently for the rest of his days after that, and he slowly stopped hiding his true feelings about being in the face of death—in front of me, anyway. It led to seeing more of his tears than I ever hoped to. Led to him crying himself to sleep in my arms. Led to letting him see more of the terror and desolation I'd harbored myself spilling out of my shell (even if he tended to see right through it anyway).

And then that led to... therapy. Yeah. Kinda weird, or so I thought at first. It took some research and gently coaxing the idea into his head—hell fucking knew we were both so, so fucking tired of clinics and hospitals and doctors—before we found somewhere. It was a group thing for terminal people and their loved ones to get through the grief of the whole... 'getting ready for death' process. I'd be lying if I said the whole thing didn't feel weird as fuck at first, or if it didn't send me into a couple of existential crises late at night, but it helped. The first couple of times we went alone, but of course he was the one who decided to invite his parents. Without hesitation, they joined.

Let's just say I've had more than enough crying and grief and shit for sixty fucking lifetimes.

In between the billions of goddamn appointments, we continued to slowly but surely tick things off of his bucket list. I took him to a tree nursery where a nice elderly man drove us around in one of those little golf carts so we could choose 'the perfect one'. It took hours, not because Eijirou wasn't feeling well or anything but because the little shit couldn't decide. I swear that dumbnut loved every single fucking tree there, and while he never said it, it was obvious he felt guilty about having to pick a favorite.

In the end we never ended up bringing a tree back anyway, but a small cylindrical box with seeds and everything needed to start from scratch. The difference was, though, that this box was put together with the intention of mixing the materials with the ashes of a deceased person, which would then grow into a tree. Energy conversion or whatever, because the nutrients from the ashes would aid in the tree's growth.

I don't know if the man could tell something about us, about Eijirou in particular, but he was the one who brought the whole thing up. Told us a story about how his wife was cremated and her wish was for her ashes to be planted as a tree. He told us about how he checks on it and takes care of it every day, how it just recently it finally sprouted.

It took 0.2 seconds for Eijirou to decide that's what he wanted. It led to a whole thing of telling the staff he had cancer, stirring up my own emotions about it that somehow laid dormant more often than you'd think until shit was brought up. They gave us 60% off of the purchase (red maple seeds, he chose—not without my opinion, though) and threw in some other shit. A sad smile graced his features the whole way home.

Eijirou was bedridden for nearly a week after that with a fever and pain all over. As if he didn't sleep so much as it was, there was hardly a time where he wasn't asleep during those first several days. Most of that time was spent on the couch because he claimed his bed wasn't comfortable. A few of those instances, too, he'd fallen asleep in my lap, and not even I had the heart to wake him so I could move when I had to piss or my ass fell asleep.

Once again it was one of those is this it things, and the smothering worry that it was seemed to take years off of my life, too.

But he improved. Gained his strength and appetite back for the most part.

That month the CT scans showed the cancer had spread to his right kidney. They said they expected he had about another year at best, which was on par with the estimate we were given a year before that when he stopped treatment.

That night it... hit me. It's one of the nights I remember the best, which is clearly impressive given the amount of detail from my memory I've provided so far. Some instances have remained so damn detailed in my mind that it's like I can close my eyes and relive them. Some weird form of dissociation, I guess, but if I can't have him here beside me I guess I'll settle for that.

Lying in bed beside him, listening to his deep breathing as he slept, it felt like bricks were toppling down on me. Crying wasn't and has never really been in my nature; except when I was a toddler, I've cried... maybe twice in my whole life. Dealing with my emotions? Never fucking heard of it; I bury that shit as far down as I possibly can. Doesn't matter how many times I've been told how 'bad' that is or whatever, even by Eijirou himself who was the only one who'd ever been able to see through me, and even then it was when there was nothing less than a fucking mountain of shit built up within me.

This was one of those times—one of the worst, in fact—and I can't blame Eijirou for not picking up on it. In fact, I'm glad he didn't for so long because the idiot already had so much on his plate already, and guilt would've swallowed me whole had he tried to help me too.

When I felt my eyes stinging, my chest constricting, my stomach twisting itself into some weird pretzel-thing, I knew it was coming. As quickly and discreetly as I could I slipped out of bed, my ribs already tight from forcing it all back, back, don't let it out, wait, wait, wait.

I don't know how loud my footsteps were against the shiny wood floor of his house as I retreated through it and escaped out the back door, where I sunk down onto the stairs of the porch. All that pent up shit seemed to explode in that second, and I remember curling in on myself with my eyes burning with salty tears.

Look, I've effectively had my entire arm crushed under the weight of a car while helping my dad fix it and two surgeries to put my bones back into their correct places. When I hit puberty I had two growth spurts so fucking fast that all my joints felt like they were being pulled apart for days. I ended up with a severe concussion after a dirt bike accident on a trip abroad with Eijirou's family and had a splitting migraine for a week as a result.

And yet not a single one of those things, nor any of them combined, can hold a fucking candle to the emotional turmoil and agony I felt spilling out of me that night. Holding it back did nothing but make it worse, but I had to. Had to. I'd be fucking damned if I woke Eijirou up and let him see me like this.

The kicker? Didn't matter how much I tried to hold it back, press it down, stay as quiet as I could. The idiot found me like that anyway, with my face and hand covered in tears and snot like a damn baby, with my muscles so tense they were beginning to cramp, with my breathing hitching and so uneven it was like I was having some sort of shitty asthma attack. I was so wrapped up in the pain and trying to keep myself quiet that I didn't even notice him until he was already sitting next to me, wrapping his arm along with a blanket around my shoulders, pressing himself against me, pinning us both in the blanket.

In his other hand was a small plastic package of tissues and a pair of socks—the first things I saw of him, before I even looked up at his face.

He didn't say anything for a while, and neither did I. It was weird just how much we didn't have to say anything. He offered me the socks which I pulled onto my feet, bringing my numb toes to my attention. He offered the tissues, let me wipe my face, and then didn't judge me or do anything, really, when the tears continued, the hiking and jerking of my shoulders continued because I couldn't stop crying.

It was wrong. He was tired with tousled black hair and bloodshot eyes. He was the one with the disease, but there he sat, comforting a pathetic piece of garbage like me without a speck of judgment or irritation about it. He let me lean into him, hide as much of my face as I could against his shoulder, and at that point there was nothing within me that was strong enough to hold any of it back anymore, and I bawled. Loud and gross and like a little kid who doesn't get what they want. It was lucky for me his mom was working an overnight shift, that his mother was an exceptionally heavy sleeper, that the neighboring house had been vacant at the time, that the dog in another yard's bark was loud enough to mask my disgusting sobbing.

He proved to me just how much strength he still harbored, too, because his arms were like vices around me, holding me so tightly, doing all they could to protect me though they held me against the very thing that was the source of my emotional agony.

Believe me, I know how fucking cheesy and dramatic this all sounds. I'd be the first to fucking point that out. It's taking a lot to admit this shit. But once you've loved someone so fucking much, felt connected to them on a level beyond yourself that no words in any language can even hope to try and explain, and that person will be ripped from you within such a short time, then you can fucking tell me it's dramatic and gross and I won't have to sock you in the face—even though I'll still want to.

The tissues ran out and eventually so did the tears. My eyes throbbed, my throat was raw, my voice beginning to go hoarse. Eijirou managed to coax me to the bathroom through my bleary state. Splashing cold water on my face gradually brought my mind back from the fog of emotion, and it was only then as he sat on the closed toilet lid beside me, watching, that I began to feel the shame—almost embarrassed—for my shitty, disgusting breakdown.

"Doin' better?" he asked.

I moved the towel away from my face. "Yeah." It was a mumble. I couldn't look him in the eye, much less myself in the mirror. "Where's your oxygen?" I wanted to divert the subject away from myself, not that it mattered.

"I'm okay," was his answer. "More worried about you."

"Don't. 'M fine."

He'd shifted. I leaned against the counter, watching the faucet drip. "But..." he'd said. Hesitated. "But you're not."

He knew me too well sometimes. He really did.

"I'm—"

"I've never seen you cry like that. I'm sorry I didn't notice you've been in so much pain. You should've told me, you could've talked to me..."

"You have enough to worry about without my bullshit."

"But... you're my best friend, Katsuki. I care about you... man, probably more than anyone if I'm being honest. Thought I was usually pretty good at seeing when you're not doing so well but I... was oblivious, and I'm sorry."

"Stop, Ei. It's not on you to... to..." I couldn't find the words. The tension was building up again, right in my very bones. I gripped the edge of the sink so hard that my knuckles were white.

That was when he stood up, took a step toward me, effectively leaving maybe half a meter of space between us. It wasn't very big bathroom, after all. I remember feeling a jolt through my entire freaking being when his cool hand covered mine, pried it gently from the edge of the sink, and massaged my palm with his thumb. My eyes stung again. No matter what I did I couldn't stop the stupid tear from welling up and falling, only to land right on the back of Eijirou's stupid, gentle hand.

He looked up, frowning, his thumb pausing near the heel of my hand. What he said next was probably something he hadn't meant to say aloud, but the idiot was off of his oxygen and was supposed to be asleep, so it came out of his mouth anyway.

"I've never seen you like this..." he murmured.

I sniffed, dragged my free hand across my face to catch the damn salt water. "Yeah, well... that's what happens when you're so fucking in love with someone who's dying."

Yeah. It was out. Just like that. Can't even begin to tell you where it came from, if I'd planned it for even a second before it was there, hanging in the air between us, or if it'd just spilled out like word vomit. But there it was, and there was no going back.

"Oh," he murmured after a moment, but I could tell he didn't get it. When you spend so much damn time with someone for most of your life you pick up on shit like that, even if you can't explain how you know.

And I almost stayed quiet. Almost let him just concoct his own story in his head like I knew he would. Almost let myself get caught up in a mostly-lie I'd have to keep up for the next year of my life and the last of his. But when I realized that, my mouth opened. My tongue formed his name as my eyes finally ascended to his face.

"Eijirou."

Wasn't often I called him by his full first name rather than the nickname I'd given him when we were kids, Ei. His eyes lifted too, and if I knew how I'd describe exactly how his face went from some kind of solace to the realization that morphed into shock in a split second.

"Wait... me?!"

Embarrassment that in the moment felt more like annoyance flared up. "Who else, idiot?!"

"I—I don't know!" he blurted. "How, though? Why? What?" he babbled. Needless to say he was awake then, his eyes wide and basically projecting his confusion into the air between us.

"Jesus, Ei, have you met you?" I grumbled.

"But—"

I don't know what came over me but I ended up withdrawing my hand, stepping back, shaking my head. "It's fine. It's no big deal. You don't have to do or say anything about it, alright? You have much more important things to worry about, like putting your damn cannula back on since you're starting to look pale without it."

Yeah, I was retreating. Trying to cover myself, hide the insecurities from my inadvertent confession, change the subject, hoping in vain he would just let the whole thing go and eventually forget all about it. But we've also established how damn well Eijirou and I know... or knew each other, I guess, so of course I knew turning around toward his room under the intention of grabbing his oxygen tank wouldn't work, that he'd never in a million years let something like that go. I felt the tug of my shirt just as I stepped into the hallway.

"Wait, dammit," he said. "You—you can't just drop a bomb on me like that and say it's no big deal! You can't... just walk away..." he huffed, breathless.

I knew what the paleness meant, and when I turned around to see him beginning to topple over from lack of oxygen it was like my entire being somehow twisted itself into a knot.

"Eiji—"

I caught him, and while he didn't completely pass out, he was little more than delirious until the cannula was back on his face for a good five minutes and his oxygen levels went back to... well, relatively normal, I guess.

Even after that, as much as I wanted to hide from him, from the whole freaking world, I sat with him and rubbed his back until he felt better. Stayed and made sure he was okay, because that was a hundred million times more important than my bullshit feelings.

"Sorry," he whispered. "Got a little too worked up."

"The fuck are you sorry for? Like you said, I'm the one who dropped the bomb."

He shrugged. "'Cause I took my cannula off when I know I'm not supposed to, and didn't listen when you told me to get it back on."

I had no response to that because he was right, so another quiet few minutes went by. Sometime within them he reached for my hand, held it gently between both of his, and after another minute I started to withdraw it.

"You don't have to do that," I began to say, but in the middle of it he said, "Can I tell you something?"

"...'course you can, dummy."

He swallowed a few times, kept his eyes lowered. Sucked in a deep breath. "I'm... pretty sure I'm in love, too."

This is probably where I'd tell you how it probably felt like all of the air got sucked out of my lungs, but in all honesty whatever I felt after hearing those words is one of the few things about that night that I don't remember. Pretty sure my brain blocked it out, and frankly I'm more than okay with that.

"Yeah? Sucks, doesn't it?" is what I said, though.

That was when the smile I knew and loved so much quirked back on his lips, still regaining their color. "Nah," he murmured. "It's... pretty great, actually."

"Hmph. Lucky."

"True. I am lucky, 'cause I just found out that the person I'm in love with loves me like that too, and he's my best friend."

And this is where I'll tell you how I've never really felt like more of an idiot before that moment in my life because my shitty, short-circuiting brain didn't make any connection even though it was obvious. I'll tell you how it felt like I could stand on the freaking sun, too, because of how damn ecstatic I was to hear him say that—once I understood his initial confusion when I blurted out what I had back in the bathroom. As much standing on the sun as I was doing in my mind I was also being swallowed whole by blackness, coldness, because as quickly as the realization of what the hell was happening settled in—that holy fucking shit he actually loves me back—so did the realization that it... didn't entirely matter, because he had eleven or so months left, at best...

I'm fairly certain that under any other circumstances I'd have accused him of fucking with me and we might've escalated into some shitty argument where I'd regret everything I said later, but his eyes met mine and something jolted between us that I'll never be able to find or even make up the right words to describe to you. It was all I needed to know there wasn't an ounce of deception in his words.

So instead my head fell into my free hand and I laughed—incredulously. "Goddammit, Eijirou..."

He'd laughed the same way. "I know," he said, "I know."

Why now? Why the hell did we wait so long to tell each other this? How did neither of us have any idea what the other was thinking, feeling? Why did fate or God or whatever-the-fuck make us wait so long, give us so little fucking time to be together the way we were fucking supposed to be, and in his last months where his decline would steepen and steepen until the end engulfed him—engulfed both of us?

That was what we both knew, and why we sat there in our own bubble of bittersweet silence for a solid ten minutes.

"So I guess... we've, uh, established we're in love..." he'd said softly. Still, those words sent a jolt up my spine.

"...shit. Yeah."

Another beat of silence, and then he looked up at me. "What should we do?"

"Fuck if I know. Never been in love before."

"Me either."

More quiet, and then a bubble of laughter that I swore drew freaking stars into the room came from his chest, and within seconds I found myself laughing with him—quite the opposite of half an hour before when I was bawling my eyes out like a damn baby in his arms.

Laughing with him, awkward as it was, felt good. Felt free. Light. For just a moment I forgot about all of the bad in the world, and focused on only him. Him, but not the part of him that was sick, dying. Just... Eijirou. And I wish so damn desperately I could've trapped us in that moment for eternity.

But then it was over, leaving me with nothing but the memory of it, because he spoke again, and finally I met his eyes, shiny and bright like a damn Christmas tree.

"Nothin' has to change, y'know? If you don't want it to. S'okay if you don't. I still want you as my best friend more than anything." His voice dropped. "Even if I... uhm, want you in..." He looked away, the tips of his ears darkening with a blush and god, every second had me falling more and more in love with that beautiful fucking boy. "... er, other ways," he finished in a voice just barely above a whisper.

Words fell out of my mouth before I even noticed them in my damn brain.

"Fuck, I want them to change. I've been... fucking fantasizing about... being with you for so stupidly long..."

He peeked up at me from under his unfairly long eyelashes, but there wasn't the faintest trace of his smile from before. "...even though I'm sick?"

That was what brought the cloud back—the invisible but dark cloud or shadow that had been hanging over us since the minute those first droplets of blood spurted from his lips. Reality slammed into me at full force that physically I had to sit back, take it all back in, let it settle into my bones.

"That's never mattered," I told him, once again in control of my own words. "I think it made me realize I want you even more, especially when I learned I'm gonna lose you."

It felt like pins were poking at the backs of my eyes when he started to pull his hands, finally somewhat warm from the transfered heat, away from mine. "Maybe we should pull back, then," he said shakily. "I won't be here much longer. If we get too close, it'll just be that much more painful when—"

"We're already so fucking close, Ei. We've known each other since we were two, for fuck's sake. I just fucking cried and snotted all over your damn shoulder like a toddler when I haven't cried in front of anyone since I was little. I just told you I'm in love with you. It's gonna hurt like hell, for both of us, when the time comes. You more than me, probably, 'cause you have all that shit eating you up from the inside out." I paused. Swallowed. Sucked in a deep breath, and used my free hand to gently coax his head back up. I can still remember so clearly the feeling of his soft, delicate skin against my rough fingers, and it aches in my core to know I can't have that anymore. I went on, "I'll regret it and hate myself for the rest of my miserable fucking life if I don't take advantage of every last goddamn second I have with you, because it's some sort of fucking miracle that you feel the same way about me.

"It's... selfish as fuck and I know it and fucking hell if I hate begging, but I'll do it if I have to. Please just... give me this time. Some of it, if you don't want to sacrifice what you've got left for a bastard like me, but I can't—"

"'S not selfish," he murmured. "'Cause that's what I want, too. I wanna be with you however you want for as long as I can. Seriously. You don't even have to ask. We're on the same page, Katsuki."

That's one thing he and I never agreed on that last year—that turned out to be 14 months, actually. I am a selfish bastard for wanting to monopolize the rest of his time for myself. How the hell could I not be? But you can't really be surprised that Eijirou never thought the same, and more often than not he'd shut me up with kisses or the silent treatment whenever it was brought up again, just like I'd use tickle attacks or lay my dead weight on him (without hurting him, obviously) whenever he brought up how he wondered why I'd want to 'waste' a year of my life on a 'sick, weak guy like me'.

Oh yeah. You're probably wondering about that—the kissing and shit. The first one specifically, right? Well it didn't happen that night. Sorry to disappoint you, but despite how many times I'd fucking fantasized about it, caught myself daydreaming, or had to will the urge to just do it when he was right in front of me sometimes, I hadn't even been thinking of it.

We ended up crawling back into bed, turning the lights off and burrito-ing ourselves into the blankets. And I just... held him. That was all I wanted, was to hold him close. To feel him beside me, but more than just that. I wanted to feel him breathing, to feel his heart beating with my palm pressed to his back, to feel his warmth and solidity.

And he let me. He relaxed against me, using my arm as a pillow, one of his sandwiched between us (he insisted it wasn't uncomfortable), his other arm practically clinging to my waist until he fell asleep and it relaxed. The only weird part about any of it was how it didn't feel weird. It was comfortable—more than that. Cheesy as it sounds, it was almost as though we were supposed to be doing that shit for a long, long time.

Staying that close didn't last. We ended up pulling away from each other at some point as I found when my eyes, dry from the shitty crying I'd done, opened to the pre-dawn light beginning to filter into the window. Before making a trip to the bathroom I tossed the comforter back over him where he was lying, halfway curled up and not an inch of blanket on him. He looked peaceful enough, though, and fuck—if it hadn't been creepy I'd have taken a damn picture of him. My tired mind was still trying to process whether or not that night had been a dream and, upon laying back down, I never managed to quite sort it out before I succumbed to sleep again.

When I woke up it was to a strange burning smell laced with what I thought was bacon. The sun was streaming between the cracks in the curtains, splaying across the bed and making me, now covered by the blanket, way too warm. That on top of the smell had me throwing the blanket off and practically rocketing out of bed.

Turned out Ei was just in the kitchen attempting to make breakfast but was so busy stuffing his face with the bacon as soon as it was cooled off enough that the eggs had started to burn. I'd rushed in, jolted fully awake as I saw the smoke curling away from the pan, and twisted the burners off.

Needless to say it elicited a good laugh and sheepish apologies from the adorable idiot, his cheeks stuffed with bacon like a freakin' chipmunk. I couldn't be mad though, and not only because he was so fucking cute that I could barely breathe but because a symptom he'd been dealing with from the get go was loss of appetite, which resulted in him being underweight, even anemic. He could have all the damn bacon he wanted.

...right, the kiss thing. Look, it's not like I could wait too damn long, especially when that damn urge I was talking about earlier seemed to be a daily friggen thing at that point. After I finished scraping burnt egg into the trash can and salvaging the pan, I distinctly remember turning around to him, still at the stove, munching on a half-eaten piece of bacon. With the way his cheek was still puffed out, crumbs dusting his mouth, and his big, dumb eyes glancing up at me almost guiltily with the last piece of bacon in the opposite hand, I almost couldn't fucking hold myself back. And I'm glad I was halfway across the kitchen or I might've just fucking leaned in.

It was at that moment when everything from the night before came back to me and my stomach clenched before the damn thing exploded into butterflies or someshit.

"What?" he'd asked.

"Nothing," I said quickly—too quickly, of course.

The stupid bacon lowered. He swallowed. "Katsuki, what—"

"I just... wanna fucking kiss you, okay?!" I shouted without thinking like the damn idiot I am, and that weird cold kind of heat rushed to my face immediately; all I wanted to do was fucking crawl into a hole an never, ever, ever come out.

Something akin to surprise coated Eijirou's features for a mere second before they relaxed into the softest, shyest of smiles I'd seen. The tips of his ears reflected how I was damn sure my face looked—a bright, vibrant red, one that I swear would've blended in with his hair had he been wearing his wig.

"Well what's stopping you?" were his next words.

It was in that moment I learned it's impossible for hearts to spontaneously combust, because if they could mine definitely would have right then and there.

I'll spare the details of what I remember of the awkward mumbling between us as we tried to figure out what the fuck it was we were doing, what we wanted to do.

In the end it felt more like our faces mashing together than a real kiss, and my heart was pounding so damn hard I swear he could probably hear it. When we broke apart the idiot started laughing like a goon. In the moment irritation flared up, but in hindsight I wish I could've trapped that moment in a jar or someshit, to keep with me forever.

I'm not gonna tell you kissing him made me feel fireworks or someshit, or that it was some sort of life-changing experience, 'cause it didn't and it wasn't. It... felt like home. Like warmth. Comfort. A cool rain or a warm campfire. Just home. He was home.

He'd laughed in the midst of it which was what eventually broke us apart.

"Nothing," he'd chuckled when I demanded he explain what was so funny. "'S just... I'm kissing you. Makes me feel all..." He'd done an odd shake. "...all giddy or something."

"...you idiot," I grumbled, but instead of pushing away from him out of embarrassment, my hand slipped around to the back of his head to pull him against me, and we melted into each other like freaking chocolate. I can sometimes still feel the phantom sensation of his arms resting around my waist where he preferred to put them, or the weight of his body leaning into mine, or the tickle of his hair against my ear as his head was on my shoulder. Eijirou was, and always had been, the type to hug with his whole body, not just his arms, and I cherished that as much as I possibly could.

Anyway, we ended up breaking open the other package of bacon and cooking it, eating it right out of the pan like savages, and when we were done we found ourselves once again on the back porch with cups of steaming cocoa cradled between our hands, a blanket wrapped around the both of us as we sat shoulder to shoulder, his oxygen tank on the stairs beside him.

"Gotta ask you something," I'd said.

"Okay."

"Did you really not know?"

His head swiveled in my direction. "Know what?"

"About..." Yeah, I admit my face was heating up again. "About me being fucking in love with you. Did you have no idea at all?"

"Oh." His shoulders relaxed, his body leaning even further into mine. "Not really, I think. I just... hm, I guess I had my own feelings for you but I kept them hidden because I didn't wanna ruin our friendship, and I..." He huffed. "Don't get mad, but I didn't see how you could love someone like me in, well, that way the way I love you. Especially 'cause I'm sick and I won't be here much longer."

I couldn't help but laugh, as fucked up as that sounds. Guess it was more of an exasperated huff resembling a laugh than anything, but I'd turned my head toward him, pressed a kiss into his hair, and then rested my forehead in the same spot with my eyes closed. I loved him so fucking much.

"Eijirou," I sighed. "I don't love someone like you, ya idiot. I fucking love you. Have since long before you got sick."

"Wait, how long, exactly?"

"I don't even know. I just started... knowing. It's been a long time."

"And you didn't tell me because...?"

"How the hell was I supposed to know how you were gonna react? I didn't know you feel the same, too. Shit—I'm still skeptical about it 'cause it feels too damn good to be true and really shitty at the same time."

He'd sat up. Our eyes met. "Shitty?"

I remember not wanting to answer, but I owed the explanation to him at that point. "'Cause you're sick. Every second... brings us closer to that last day. If you hadn't felt the same I could've moved on." Paused to clear my throat, trying to rid myself of the building up emotions. I'd already bawled my fucking face off in his shoulder, and I really didn't wanna end up doing it again. "Well, could've tried. Probably wouldn't have been successful. But now that I know you feel the same for some weird reason it leaves me with all these thoughts about 'what if' and shit, but none of that... none of it's ever gonna..." I made myself shut up. Had to. Every word was more selfish than the last, and I felt a stab of self-loathing.

Bet you can't guess what he said next.

"...look, I know this is gonna sound really selfish..." See? "But even if I had to cross off everything left on that stupid little bucket list I made that we haven't done, or even if I had to take back what we have done, so I could make the only thing on it spending the rest of my days with you, like this—" He emphasized it so I knew he meant being closer, as so much more than best friends. "—I'd do it in a heartbeat. This is what I want more than anything, man. I just wanna be with you for however long I have left, even if we have to try to fit an entire lifetime into a year."

He knew that was impossible. We both did. But honest to god, we'd be damned if we didn't do what we could. If you thought we spent a lot of time together before then, you have no idea what a lot of time meant. Before then I'd go home every once in a while, check up on my dad, tidy up the apartment. After that, though, Ei started coming with me. We hardly left each others' side. Not saying we took shits together or whatever, but months down the line when we were comfortable with it we showered together. Having him next to me was almost as necessary as the push and pull of air in my lungs. I didn't get tired of him, nor he of me (somehow). It was like we really were subconsciously trying to squeeze a lifetime into a single year.

We continued on with his bucket list. He chose a spot in his parents' backyard for his tree to be planted, and we went on several rollercoasters—he loved them, was like a little freaking kid at every amusement park, and wasn't even bothered that he was out of commission for at least two solid days after the fact.

Worry in my gut always spiked on those days, but he continued to bounce back. Needless to say I fucking dreaded the day he didn't, when he'd have to go back to the hospital and rest in hospice care where they could continue to 'keep him comfortable' while his body shut down.

That was brought up in an appointment three or so months after we 'got together', as a few of our other friends were putting it—because of course they were. (It wasn't like we tried to hide it, even from our families; they apparently all saw it coming anyway.)

The doctor spoke to him like he was a little kid, that much I remember even if I don't remember the exact words she said. "You still seem to be going strong, and I know this can be difficult to talk about, but I want you to know it's up to you to decide when you think you need to come check into our hospice care, okay?"

It would be a while—nine months almost on the dot—before he did make that decision. And in the meantime we kept going, ticking things off his bucket list. Adding them as we thought of them and then ticking those things off, too. We watched dozens of sunrises, during all of which my focus was more on him than the big hot ball of gas in the sky. I wished I could paint so I could've painted him how I saw him, but I settled for pictures. Hundreds and hundreds of them between my phone and the little disposable cameras you get developed at the drugstore he insisted upon getting (like I was saying no to him—please) the day we went and swam in the ocean.

It was an eighty kilometer drive out there, so it wasn't like we'd never seen the ocean before, but usually it was in the midst of winter and had only happened a few times. This time we waited purposefully for warmer days and filled our time with other things until they came. By then Eijirou couldn't walk too far without getting tired, and it just so happened that the day before he was prescribed a wheelchair for that reason.

Being the middle of the week just after lunchtime, the beach was effectively deserted, giving us the place to ourselves for however long we wanted it, and needless to say we took advantage of that shit. We took turns spreading sunscreen on each others' backs, and while we had a huge bay of the ocean to swim in we stayed together. Kissed more times than I can even count up to at this point, I swear.

There was a point where we were standing together in the sand, rib deep in the water, arms around each other, my head resting on his shoulder. A wave of emotion rolled over me as I stared down his back, able to count the bumps of his spine...

He must've felt me tense or something because his arms tightened and he asked what was wrong.

Admittedly it took me a moment to collect myself enough to speak.

"I'm gonna miss you so fucking much."

His arms had only tightened, a warm contrast to the cool saltwater. "Aw, Katsuki... we don't have to talk about that right now, okay? I'm here now, and it's a pretty great day..."

It was too late for me, though; I had to press my mouth into his shoulder to keep quiet, and I was glad my face was already wet to somewhat disguise the shitty hot tears that fell as soon as I squeezed my eyes shut.

No, we didn't have to talk about it. Didn't have to think about it, as he'd also said. But I was always thinking about it. Thinking about how every tick of the clock above his parents' fireplace brought us closer to the moment where he'd leave. Thought about how I got a few more months, and then I'd have to spend the rest of my shitty life, no matter how long, as half a person. Incomplete. Wandering around, lost and stupid like a chicken without a head.

They say you shouldn't put so much of yourself into someone else, shouldn't make someone else your whole world because once they're gone it'll be like gravity ceases to exist. But I didn't care. I did it anyway. And even now, sitting here writing this and smudging some of these stupid words with more of my gross tears, I don't regret it.

...anyway, eventually Ei got too tired and I had to carry him back to our towels, and then back to the car when he stumbled on the way there, where he slept for the entire hour ride.

And we continued.

We slept beside each other whether we managed to sleep cuddling up or were on opposite sides of the bed for one reason or another. We cooked for each other. Laughed like goddamn idiots at each others' jokes or idiocy. Watched endless movies and TV shows. Kissed a lot, a lot, a lot, and not always on the lips.

For some reason he was fond of finding my hand, weaving his fingers into the spaces between mine from behind, and lifting it to press soft, sometimes barely there kisses to my palm. I never questioned it, but I can only assume it was for the same reason it made some sort of fire flicker inside me to press my lips to the soft curve of his shoulders, either through his clothes or bare, where I knew the lightest of freckles made themselves visible after our day at the beach in the sun.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't like our lives were entirely consumed by one another. We spent a lot of time with our families—his especially, though it was small. We went to his increasingly more frequent appointments. I didn't desert my dad, of course, and went back to spend time with him on occasion (not that my old man was ever mad at me for spending time with my dying boyfriend; he even encouraged me to do so). We made time for our other friends when they could pull away from other obligations. There was balance. It worked out, in the midst of our bucket listing.

We were huddled up on the couch with a blanket on a rainy late September afternoon, the storm having knocked the power out, when Eijirou added something else to the list—an entirely normal thing at that point—but this one threw me for a loop. I'd been bugging him for a week at that point about what he wanted for his birthday, coming up in less than a month, and every time I brought it up he insisted he just wanted to spend the day with me, maybe some other friends and family, and hang out. 'Course, I was all too aware of the fact that this birthday would be his last and continued to pester him no matter how irritated he got with me, because I'd be damned if I didn't make it special for him.

So yeah, it surprised me when, out of nowhere he said, "Y'know... I actually think there's something I wanna do on my birthday."

"Finally. Spill."

"Well uh..." He scratched the back of his head, eyes avoiding mine. "'S really cheesy and probably pretty dumb..."

"Doubt it. Tell."

He used his habit of fidgeting with my fingers as an excuse not to look me in the face when he spoke. "So... 's pretty obvious we're never gonna be able to get married. I've got, what, five months or so left? Maybe?" He paused to cough, as if we needed the damn reminder, and I rubbed his back like I always did. "So I figured we could pretend or somethin'. You'd look super manly in a suit, and I kinda wanna see it... just for the hell of it."

Normally the thought of wearing a suit would immediately put me off and have me saying hell no, but I already know you can guess what exactly I did.

'Course, I had to use every ounce of my willpower not to react to the fact that he wanted to fucking marry me, even at only eighteen years old. It's not like the feeling wasn't entirely mutual—it was, I just didn't think it'd ever come up, seeing as if it ever did it would've been years and years down the line, and we all know we didn't have that long.

So the next day we went out suit shopping, just for the hell of it. At first we didn't tell anyone else and honestly I think neither of us fully believed it was going to happen, especially because even the cheapest suits were well above our pathetic budget. We tried some of them on anyway, and even though I hated being anywhere than behind the damn camera I let Eijirou take as many damn pictures as he wanted, even when they didn't particularly fit—whether it was physically or personality-wise.

But he laughed. A lot. And then so did I, because he laughed, and I couldn't help it.

And it only fucking figured that we both found one we... well, he liked on each of us, but even the rental fee was more than we could afford. We left with a bittersweet taste in our mouths, but my plotting began as soon as he fell asleep against me on the reclining chair in his parents' living room.

...okay, so I owe people more money than I'd like to admit, but I have a job now so it's no big deal. Still not a single fucking regret.

"How the hell did you afford this?!" was Eijirou's first question as soon as I showed him the suit on the morning of his birthday, the very one he loved so much that day we screwed around trying them on, complete with a red tie and everything. It laid on his bed beside another, the one he liked so much on me, with the vest embroidered with white roses. I wasn't a huge fan but for the millionth time, how the hell could I say no to him?

"Don't worry about it," I told him. "Just put it on and get ready. We have to leave soon."

"What? Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

"Katsuki—"

"Just get ready."

He'd grabbed my wrist as I started to leave the room and, with a surprising amount of strength, tugged me back. He looked me straight in the eyes, those thin brows of his ruffling a wrinkle into his forehead. "You're not getting into trouble or going into some kind of debt for all this stuff, are you?"

"Don't be stupid, Ei, no. I'm not an idiot."

Okay, it was a white lie—but it wasn't like I got myself into debt with a credit card company or someshit, just people. People who understood to a good enough extent to lend me the money.

So look, I'm not a fucking sap and it takes a lot of shit to make me cry like one, but the second Eijirou stepped out of his bedroom wearing the suit, even with the tie undone because he never got the hang of it, my hand was pressed against my face like it was trying to hold back the emotion—to no avail.

It washed over my entire being like a fucking tsunami. He wasn't even wearing his wig, still had his cannula across his face, was shoeless. But damn... ever look at someone and suddenly realize how fucking much you love them out of nowhere? Because fuck.

"Katsuki, what's wr—"

"Dammit, Ei, shouldn't you be used to my shit by now?" I grumbled, automatically trying to hide my face despite it just being him, despite the fucking swimming pools of tears I'd cried in front of him at that point. Tears make me feel weak, and he was the last person I should've been weak around. But I was.

I wasn't the only one who was brought to tears by him wearing the suit. I'd been in the middle of tying his tie—standing behind him to do it because fuck if I can do it from the front—when his mother walked in (the one who actually gave birth to him) and saw us. Saw him, and how damn handsome he looked. It only took about two seconds before her hands were on her face, her cheeks dampened by tears.

Leave it to Eijirou, though, to be smiling and comforting and handing out tissues. At one point he said he didn't really get why we were all so damn emotional about it... until it was my turn to walk out after changing.

Seriously—we all could've fucking filled an olympic sized swimming pool (or six) with all the damn tears shed that day, and there were only six of us.

My surprise for him was a photoshoot that I'd commissioned our friend Mina to do, and it took place in one of his favorite parks that was more like a garden with flowers everywhere. We couldn't even be bothered by the fact that that it was an hour drive from his house. Our parents came, too—his moms and my dad. I got them in on it days before and made them keep it a secret from Ei.

Mina took a million pictures, as did Eijirou, the little shit, with my phone. Of all of us. The two of us together, with our parents, him with his moms, me with my dad, him with my dad, me with his moms, more of us together. I still hate being in front of the camera but for him it was more than damn worth it.

He kept his cannula off as long as he could, eventually pulled his wig off of his head and let his mom—the one who didn't birth him—fix his real thick, black locks so we could continue taking pictures. There came a point when he needed his wheelchair. Not once did he let his smile fade, though, or refrain from offering someone a tissue from his pocket because the little shit was so damn thoughtful.

It wasn't a wedding, of course, but it was just as meaningful. We entrusted all of the photos and editing to Mina who promised to do her absolute best, and Eijirou thanked her probably a million times.

There was a point where all of our parents were on a food run, Mina had left because she had to make her shift at work, and the two of us were left alone by a small pond near the center of the park with a small brook that emptied into it not too far off to the right.

"Thanks for this," Eijirou murmured. I could tell just by the way he spoke he was exhausted from the day.

"'S nothin'," I told him.

He'd punched me lightly on the arm with an, "Oh please, since when are you so humble?"

Even I couldn't help but laugh at that, just a little. "Yeah, yeah. You're welcome."

"Seriously, though," he said, more reserved now. "I'm glad you'll have these memories and the pictures to hold onto. I'm... actually a little disappointed that I won't..."

I remember the way his voice dropped so clearly every time I think about it, and it still leaves a dull ache in my chest. I took his hand then, cold despite the suit jacket and the sunny, warm weather—odd for mid-October, but not unwelcome. He was trembling, and his lip was trapped between his teeth when I looked up at his face again because he was trying so damn hard not to cry.

There was nothing I could do but pull him against me as best I could with the arm of his wheelchair between us, let him rest his head against my shoulder, and convey in every way I could think of how to without words that it was okay for him to cry—just cry, and not apologize for it.

Because dammit if he didn't fucking deserve it. Everyone around him, for months upon months that faded into over a year and almost two now, shed so many damn tears while he was the strong one. And yet he was the one suffering—struggling to breathe, coughing so hard his voice was hoarse and not what it used to be (or would be ever again), coughing up blood, being weak, having trouble keeping food down when he barely had an appetite to begin with. Being in pain, more than any of us could imagine in ways we probably didn't even know about...

In the end, he told me he was glad he got to have this experience before 'it' happened—words we never liked to say. Ended up telling me he was grateful for everything he'd got to experience, even before he got sick.

And then somehow he managed to erase all evidence of his tears before our parents returned with lunch, and the rest of the day you wouldn't have any idea he'd shed a single tear.

Life after that was... calm. Low key. It was a big day for someone in a... compromised body like his ("Weak. C'mon, Katsuki, you can say it. I'm weak. 'S just a fact, y'know?" I never could.) and this... this was the time he didn't really bounce back like he had before, after dates and amusement parks and the tattoo or anything else we spent our time doing that was more taxing on him.

Most of our days were spent on the couch watching movies or binging television series, and a lot of the time he'd fall asleep in the midst of it, but not every time. Hell, there was once when I fell asleep in the middle of some episode and he ended up binge watching the entire thing until two in the morning without realizing how late it got. Some days we spent in bed when he was too tired to get up, but sometimes I suspected he feigned it so we could stay huddled up as the days grew colder, talking and making out and having... intimate moments, I guess. But I never said a word, because having him all to myself for a day was a friggen blessing.

He'd have family visitors now and again who brought him gifts and spent time with him. None of them said too much about his condition, but they didn't really have to. He was happy to see them, to talk to him, to... say goodbyes that were somehow actually unspoken, especially to the relatives who were further on the distant scale.

It was all hard on him—harder than I realized at first.

"Sorry I can't do much anymore," he'd murmured to me one morning when flurries of snow were drifting through the disgustingly frozen air outside. He was sitting in the kitchen wrapped in a blanket, his parents just having left for work, absently stirring a spoon through his steaming mug of tea (his mom insisted on buying some when he told her his throat was sore) when he said it.

"What?" I sat down beside him, but oddly enough I don't remember what I was drinking.

"...we used to do all this stuff," he murmured, "go places and have a lot of fun. Bucket list stuff. But now I can hardly do anything but sit around, and I make you... do it with me. So I'm sorry."

"Can it, Ei," I told him. "You don't have shit to be sorry for. It's not your fault, and you know I don't mind."

"You should, though. Aren't you bored? You're young and healthy and you can go do whatever you want but you're stuck in this tiny, shitty house with me. 'S not fair."

"I am doing what I want."

"Aw c'mon, stop kidding yourself, man. You never liked just sitting around the house or lying in bed all day. You only do it 'cause I do it, and I do it 'cause it's all I can do anymore." He'd stopped to cough—something he was doing far too often those days. "It sucks."

"I do it 'cause what I want is to spend time with you, and we don't have to be riding rollercoasters or watching sunsets or fucking anything but sitting and staring at the damn wall for me to be content to just be with you."

He didn't respond to that—not right away anyway. His eyes drifted down to his untouched tea. He coughed a few more times. And then just when I was sure he wasn't going to say anything else, he spoke up like I hadn't even said a word.

"You should break up with me."

"What?" I wasn't sure I'd even heard him right.

"Yeah. You... we should. So then you can stop feeling so obligated to me 'n get on with your life already. No point letting me drag you back anymore."

"Don't be crazy."

"I'm not, man, I'm just... trying to see what's best for you."

Angry. I was angry, but not at him. At something I found I couldn't even name. "You are, Ei. I'm not fucking breaking up with you. Ever. I love you and I want to be here, got it? So I'm not breaking up with you unless you can give me a damn good reason you don't want me around anymore."

His eyes lifted again after that, and all he said were two words. "I can't."

So yeah, I fucking kissed him and I didn't stop kissing him for several long, long minutes until he needed to come up for air, and then he kissed me again and somehow he ended up pulling me into his lap and again, he proved he had more strength than it seemed from the outside or even to him because while I was, he was in no way worried about me hurting him. And then he was the one to have us stand up, take my hand, and lock us both in his bedroom for the rest of the day. And no, it wasn't so we could lie down all day and simply make out or talk. Do the math.

After that ice was broken it was almost an everyday thing for a while. Eijirou insisted he was okay despite my blatant concerns he was pushing himself too hard, even if we were... softer than you'd probably expect because of his illness. Most of the time, anyway.

For some reason his insecurities from the conversation before the first time seemed to fade away after that and he gravitated closer to me again. Maybe even closer than before. Still, I made it a point to check up on him frequently, more than before.

After that there wasn't anything too interesting to get into detail about for a while, really. We did our normal stuff. Drove around sometimes, just to get out of the house since Ei said he enjoyed it, even if he fell asleep as usual. That was something he did a lot—sleep. More than he had before. And hell, I slept with him more than I probably should've. Once was even in the car. It'd been dark. He was asleep, and my eyes were dry from staring at the road for so long. I ended up pulling into a parking lot and going to sleep myself, only to wake just after dawn to drive us home.

Those weeks—two or three months, I think—were as peaceful as they were tense. As always I was hyper aware of how close we were coming to the end of his life expectancy. Aware that at some point he was likely to make the decision to go into hospice care at the hospital to 'stop burdening us', as I was sure he'd put it (he had). Yet he remained as happy as usual for the most part. Smiling a lot. Remaining mostly positive. Talking about his manly shit. He was still himself, and still had his same energy, and for that I'm still grateful.

I'll be honest—I consider myself lucky to have such a damn good memory, but sometimes it's felt like... more of a curse. I remember the good shit, and there was a lot of good shit. You already know that. But obviously I remember the bad shit too, and it seemed like while it wasn't as often, the bad shit was... twice as bad as the good shit was good.

Fuck, that doesn't even make sense. But seriously. I'll explain.

After those few months something happened that I still hear echoing in my head, entirely unprovoked, unprompted. Looking back I realize it was sort of the beginning of the end. Didn't matter how much I tried to deny it as it was happening, during those hours in the ER—sleepless, anxious, tense, scared, long. Denial was running through my veins. Even then it was still a while before I finally began to accept it.

In the grand scheme of shit we should've seen it coming, but it took us by surprise anyway. We'd been asleep on the couch; Ei's joints, his bones, hurt too much to move and he refused to let me carry him to his room, so on the couch we slept.

It was... maybe two in the morning when I was jolted awake by yelling—him yelling, alternating between 'mom' and my name. There was so much pain and fear laced into the hoarse strain of his voice, and while I'm not 100% sure, I think he'd been there for a long few minutes before anyone was woken up by his cries.

...fuck, this hurts to write. Hurts to relive.

I got to him first, and I'll never, ever, ever forget what I saw. It often haunts me when I close my eyes, has been the source of some of my inability to sleep for months. Since he died, really.

Blood. There was so much blood, smeared and puddled on the floor and the walls where he sat at the end of the hallway. I later learned he was headed for the bathroom when he started coughing. Said he felt like his insides were burning, and then the blood came, and it didn't stop, and he collapsed to the floor soaked in his own blood and tears. His pajamas were ruined. Blood had pooled in his cannula. It was gruesome. He was in agony.

I had knelt beside him, asking what happened and trying to calm him down, trying to keep myself calm at the same time. His fear snaked into me through his hand and the vice grip his fingers had around mine. The question we were both too afraid to ask aloud hang in the air between us.

Is this it?

Those three words followed us for hours after that. Stayed between us—all of us—as one of his moms made the emergency call while the other was trying her best to keep her cool and help me get him off the floor. Hovered over our heads as we did our best to clean him up only for another round of bloody coughing to splatter against our skin, our clothes. They were practically tattooed on his hand where it gripped a fistful of my shirt so, so tightly with the fear and pain he felt radiating out of him, panicking and shaking in between every cough. They followed us into the ambulance once it arrived, separating us from his parents but not from one another because the paramedics agreed he was too panicked to go without someone familiar, and I held his hand the whole time regardless of how slick with his blood our skin was. They were between our locked eyes for the entire ride, where I did every damn thing I could to tell him without words that I wouldn't leave him, no matter how scared I was or what happened.

Turned out the tumors in his lungs were causing hemorrhaging again, but that was all I remember about... whatever it was they found and did to help him. He was hooked up to things—an IV, a heart and oxygen monitor, an oxygen mask.

He laid pallid and kind of out of it on the thin ER mattress, his half-lidded eyes rarely leaving mine. I kept my hand around his; hadn't even bothered to wash the damn dried blood off because leaving him for even a second felt like it would be gut-wrenching. I won't apologize for that. I just kept stroking my thumb across his forehead, his skin hot from his fever, making sure he was comforted.

It wasn't until he was checked in for monitoring that we got ourselves cleaned up. The shower in his bathroom was just a drain in the floor with the faucets attached to the wall behind it. No climbing or stepping over anything needed, and they provided him with a shower chair. He was deemed a fall risk because of how weak he was from the blood loss, but they still let him use his own soap for washing himself down after his mom brought a suitcase for him. He mentioned something about her being fast at packing but that only served to show how out of it he still was, because even I made the connection. She'd done it previously—weeks, if not months ago in preparation for something like this.

It was quiet between us as he let me wash down his skin, the water and soap a rusty color from the caked blood. We were tired, so tired—him from the obvious thing and me because at that point it'd been nearly 36 hours since I'd had a full night's rest. Before it happened I probably only slept just over an hour, and nothing but adrenaline was keeping me going.

Even in his tired, slightly delirious state of mind, Eijirou noticed.

"You gotta sleep," he murmured in the midst of rinsing soap out of his hair. His head was already tilted back; it just so happened he noticed the bluish purple circles starting to show themselves beneath my eyes.

"I will."

"Good. I love you, Katsuki."

Even I was too damn tired to fight the tears triggered by those words, and I was glad for the water cascading down both of our bodies because it masked them, saving him from noticing.

"I love you too, Ei."

It was strange, I have to admit, because that evening after we both managed to catch a solid six, almost seven hours of sleep, it was almost like that night never happened. Sure, he was still tired, still relatively weak, but the color had mostly returned to his face. His appetite came back in full swing and his moms let him order as much food as he wanted, and of the three entire entrees he ate every last morsel. It was like it came in waves, with the bacon, and that, and several instances in between.

While he was much more animated, much more with us than the night before, fear radiated off of him like freaking sun rays. He didn't say it. Didn't allude to it whatsoever, but we knew. We felt it too.

Things were progressing with his illness as expected, so the doctors said. His prognosis was a mere two words, two, but they wrenched my gut so badly I had to flee to the bathroom.

Three months.

Yeah, I'd known it. If anyone was counting every damn minute it was me, and yeah, I knew prognoses were never dead on. In my head there was still... just under four months, I think. It had me dry heaving over the toilet anyway.

Everyone showed up that day—my dad, a few of his other relatives who lived close enough, every single one of our friends. He accepted their sympathy with grace because it was his nature, and because fuck if I was going to ruin the first bit of happiness he felt since showing up, I kept to myself in the corner and bit my thoughts back. Thoughts about how sympathy and 'feel better' wasn't going to cure him, change his prognosis, keep him with us longer. Wasn't going to stop the shitty universe from ripping him away from us way, way too soon.

He refused their offer to put him in hospice while he was already there—after making sure it was okay with us first. With me and his parents. He wanted to stay home as long as possible. The hemorrhaging was over. It was safe for him to go home. You already know what his parents and I said. So he was set to spend one more night and get released the next day.

It was evening, both of us winding down from all of the commotion from the day, and I was seated beside him, leaning forward to rest my head on the mattress next to him. The television was on but neither of us paid any attention to it; I was focused on his hand running gently through my hair, and I think he was lost in thought, too.

And then the words were spilling out.

"I wish it was me," I said.

He blinked, eyes coming back into focus, drifting down to my face. "What?"

I swallowed. Hesitated, but said it anyway. "...the... the cancer. I wish it had chosen me instead of you."

His hand stopped, slid down to my cheek where it rested a minute and then lifted to find my hand. It was easy, too easy, to take it and hold onto it so tightly.

"...well I'm glad it chose me and not you."

"Ei—"

"Probably for the same reason you wish it was you, right? But you have to stay alive, man. You have so much more potential than me."

I sat up. "Don't fucking say that, Eijirou. You know damn well you—"

"Okay, okay," he cut in. "You're right. We're equal. But I have to be the one to carry this burden and go away, 'cause if it was you who was gonna leave, I don't think I'd be able to handle it. I don't think I'd be able to cope, being left behind..."

I couldn't stop the tears, yet again. I was so fed up with them, but they welled up anyway. "Dammit, Eijirou, do you think that's not how I feel?" I grumbled, swiping at my face. "Do you think I'll be just fine when you're fucking gone? How the everloving fuck am I gonna be able to live out the rest of my shitty life without someone who's been part of it since I was a goddamn toddler?"

"I know, Katsuki," he said softly, tenderly. "I think about that every day. But I'm holding onto the hope with an iron fist that you're as strong as I think you are and will make it through."

All I could do was shake my head and lean forward again to hide my face in the blankets near his thigh. His fingers tangled into my hair again for comfort, but it didn't help. It felt like I was spiraling into an abyss of blackness I could never climb out of, all the while heavy with guilt from feeling like this when he was still the one suffering.

But sometimes I had no goddamn control over my mouth, or my actions, or the stupid shit I say.

I peeked up, my face wet, and managed to mumble, "How mad would you be if I followed you?"

It was obvious he didn't really get it at first. He merely blinked at me, brows drawn together. I was just about to hide my face again when his whole body relaxed in realization.

"Oh... oh man," he whispered. "There isn't even a word to describe how pissed I'd be!" My head lifted. Guilt, my old friend, stabbed me in the gut yet again as I watched the panic rise in his face. "Seriously, man—if you're anything less than a wrinkly old man by the time I see you again I'm seriously gonna have to kick your ass."

For some reason that caused a laugh to bubble up in my chest, and I let go of it. Let it right out, and let it be the thing that erased his worry. I kissed him, too, and let his warm hands brush away my shitty tears. Let him tell me he loved me about a thousand times until he fell asleep.

...honestly, there's not much of interest to tell about the next few months. His decline was slow—slower than expected—but steady. He slept more and more, ate less and less, lacked energy. Somehow his spirit was still so full of life when he was awake, though, and I think that's what kept us all sane until he finally and inevitably made the decision to head into hospice.

The night before, he asked me something.

"How will you remember me?"

That was when I was certain it was coming, that decision, and soon. I'd known it was impending, but for some reason that question made it... real.

We were lying on the floor in a mess of blankets and pillows in his living room; for some reason he was more comfortable there than anywhere else. He'd insisted upon being the big spoon, holding me against him, tucking himself securely around me and holding both of my hands in front of us.

And how the hell was I supposed to answer something like that? How the fuck could I put that into words?!

Like anything before, I did my best.

"Your eyes," was the first idiotic thing out of my mouth. But he chuckled.

"What about 'em?"

"They're my favorite color."

"Oh, fair. Mine too, but yours."

A quiet minute passed.

"They show a lot about you. Doesn't seem like it to people who don't know you, but I know you. It's like looking through a window straight into your soul—I can see how you're feeling, sometimes even guess what you're thinking."

"What else?"

"...'M gonna remember how manly you are. How you've always loved things you thought were manly, but honestly you're the manliest damn thing ever. Gonna remember how passionate you always have been about those manly things even when you didn't have faith in yourself. So... your humility, I guess."

"...oh man, I can't believe you just called me manly," he mumbled, burying his face into my hair.

"How the fuck can I not? You've gone through these last couple of years with hardly a single damn complaint. You've endured it all, and somehow you keep managing to be more concerned about everyone else than yourself, like everybody else matters more."

"You do matter more."

"And I'll remember your selflessness and how somehow, despite the fucked up hand you've been dealt, you manage to create so much fucking love it probably would've made middle school me throw up all over the place at the thought. I'll remember how you give so fucking much without expecting a single thing in return, and yet you're happy to be so sickeningly generous."

"Makes me feel good."

"I know, Ei." I swallowed. No crying this time or I'd be damned. "I'll miss how gentle you are. How thoughtful. I'll miss how your hands are rough but tender, how you hold me like I'm delicate and the most precious thing in the world... miss how you tend to smile into our kisses and get lost in them, almost. I'll remember how you let your stupidly long eyelashes brush my skin and the way you always sigh like you're so freaking content when we're together like this. I'll remember the stupid shit you laugh at and how when your smile is big enough you get this tiny dimple in your left cheek. I'll remember the smell of hair dye. The sleepy way you scratch under your shirt in the morning after you've just woken up and how you can never wear socks to sleep. I'll remember how passionate you are about manly shit and I'll always think of you when I see something you'd say is manly.

"...I'll remember the sound of your voice and the warmth of your hands and your laugh. I'll remember how damn lucky I am to exist at the same time as you and be in your life and have you in mine and to be able to fall so fucking in love with you that it's gonna tear me apart when you're gone.

"I'll remember everything, Eijirou. Everything. You don't have to worry."

He hadn't responded, not for a moment—one that was probably shorter than it seemed. I can't fully recall what I felt or thought when he didn't say anything or even really move.

But then when he did it was nothing more than a soft, "I love you too, Katsuki."

It was only two days later when he told us he wanted to go. "I'm tired," he'd said. "I feel really bad for making you guys put up with all of this. I've dragged it out because I wanna be home, ya know? But I think going where the professionals know how to help me with all my issues... will be better for all of us."

"You're not a burden, Eijirou," his mom murmured with unshed tears in her eyes. She and her wife sat across the room from us, clinging to one another with their eyes nowhere but on him. "If you want to stay home until the end you can."

"I know, Ma," he murmured.

"But you should also do what you think is best for you," his mother said, nodding as the first tear spilled. "We love you so much."

"I love you guys too," he said.

When he turned to me I couldn't give him a straight answer because I was torn—so fucking torn. So I told him it was up to him, and while it made my stomach turn into more knots than I'd ever know how to untie and make it feel like my veins were full of needles, I knew his decision was hospice, and I couldn't blame him. They could make him comfortable. They could provide what he needed when he needed it. And while his mom was right in the fact that he wasn't a burden to any of us, it would ease the stress surely on his mind in believing he was.

He was given his own room—a hospital room, if a little bigger than the ones he would be before. The couch under the window pulled out into a twin sized bed and was made of cloth instead of weird plastic. The bathroom had an actual enclosed shower. If it weren't for the machinery and people running around outside in scrubs (the door had a window, unlike any of the previous rooms), and I squinted really fucking hard, I could almost pretend it was a hotel room. Sort of. But not really.

Honestly, there isn't much of interest to say anymore. Yeah, people visited, left some things. Most of them only came once, clearly saying their goodbyes. Most of the time they had Eijirou with a whole oxygen mask rather than the simple cannula, and to keep him hydrated he was connected to a saline drip constantly. Unsurprisingly the shitty cancer was in his stomach and he could hardly keep anything down. He never claimed to be in pain, though, because hanging up with the saline was painkillers—high end ones, at that. But they weren't worried about addiction... for obvious reasons.

His parents were around more than they weren't, and unless I absolutely had to for some reason, I didn't leave. I was there during every worsening coughing fit, every vomit, for the long hours he stayed asleep, every IV bag change, every blood test, everything.

And while he'd accepted it, the fear wasn't erased. I knew it because he never told me to leave, never said a thing about how I should be spending my time better than hanging around a hospital. No one, least of all me, could blame him for not wanting to be alone.

Sometimes dogs visited—support dogs that made the rounds through the place every so often. They brightened his spirits better than anything else could, and he soaked up every second he could with them. They were so gentle and happy to see him too, even when they'd never met him.

Other than that, the decline was... steady. He was only awake a few hours a day. Sometimes he seemed... delirious. Out of it, like he wasn't really with us in his mind. But then he'd snap out of it for a while and it'd be like it never happened. Back and forth, up and down, almost like a wavelength, and it went on like that for... a few weeks, I think. After that it got to the point where he didn't even want to get out of bed, even to use the bathroom.

I could just... see the deterioration in him. He paled more and more. Lost so much weight until his cheeks were slightly sunken, his joints were prominent, his ribs were visible even through the hospital gown. His eyes lost their luster but at the same time remained bright and him. Eventually they were the most recognizable part about him.

That last month wound down into weeks, and then into days. He was dazed and out of it for most of it. He mumbled incoherently sometimes, asked questions that didn't make much sense, and slept. The hospital staff kept him clean and comfortable. He seemed to be in no pain until one night when he scared the shit out of me.

He'd mumbled something. I hadn't even realized he was awake until I looked up and his eyes were open—barely, but they were. Immediately I moved toward him, took his hand to massage it as I'd taken up doing.

"...hurts," he mumbled.

I was already reaching for the nurse's button. "What hurts? I'll call the nurse."

"No," he reached for me with his free hand. "Not that."

"What?"

"I mean... you. Leaving. It hurts to leave you."

It felt like my throat instantly closed. I had no words.

"You'll be okay, right?" he eventually asked, gaze never breaking from me.

Again, I couldn't find my voice.

"Ah... yeah, that makes sense," he said as if I'd answered anyway. I was beginning to wonder if he was starting to hallucinate the way the doctors explained some people do the closer they come to death. "Why would you be okay? I definitely wouldn't be, 'f I was you." He swallowed, weakly cleared his throat, and shook his head slightly when I reached for his water. "I'm sorry, Katsuki."

"Shh," I hushed, lifting his hand to my lips. "You have nothing to be sorry for. It's not your fault."

"I know. But I wish I could stay. I wanna stay with you."

"...I know, Ei. I know."

"Don't cry."

It was too late. My voice had broken and then there were the tears—again. I tried to stop him but he insisted upon sitting up anyway, even turning so his legs dangled off the side of the bed. He coaxed me closer and held me against him, weak as he was, and just let me cry.

"I love you," he murmured into my hair so, so many times. I did everything I could to capture each of the words and hold them close, protect them the way I couldn't protect him from this.

That was the last time he sat up. The last of the strength he ever really showed. From then on he was barely conscious, even when his eyes were open. It was obvious he wasn't really... there when he was awake. His eyes barely followed movement. He didn't respond much to touch or sounds—not unless it was my voice, and only then was it with a shift of his eyes or a deeper breath.

Just two days after that last time he held me, his eyes slipped closed and never reopened. The motion of his chest slowed and slowed, and slowed. Every breath I expected to be his last, sitting there in utter silence with his parents, his mom's arm around me while they held hands between them, bunched up tissues in their lap. I clung to her, too, and with my other hand I kept hold of his, my fingers threaded through his the way they always used to.

A black, black hole swallowed my entire being when his chest fell and did not rise again. No tears. Not a word or a sound. Nothing. Unbearable sadness I couldn't even fathom. Couldn't piece together my own thoughts. Even though I knew he hadn't been in there for a while, not really, that last breath felt like it sucked my soul right out of my body, like I wanted to believe he was there while his body clung to life by the thinnest of threads. It felt like nothingness.

...

It wasn't until his funeral (that I'm sure he would've hated) that I realized it—his last words, not only to me but to the world as a whole.

I love you.

It was also when I realized I'd never said it back, and that was when the storm came. A storm unlike any other—fierce and mighty and raging, with a hunger to destroy absolutely everything in its path.

I left the funeral home, escaping before it could consume me completely, and headed down the street, away, away, away. My lungs were sore, my throat tight from holding back the sobs, the screams, the agony ripping through me with rusty knives. It wasn't until I found an alcove in an alley a block or so away that I let it out, curling up and burying my head in my knees to muffle the pathetic cries tearing out of my body.

Can't be surprised that I was followed, not only by Eijirou's mother but my own father and a couple of our friends. His mother got to me first, knelt down in her dress right on the dirty asphalt and gathered me into her arms. I didn't fight it, but I don't know whether it was because I couldn't or didn't want to—but I didn't.

They were understanding, of course, and reassuring that it was okay that I felt the way I did. But they didn't get it—didn't know the real reason I was bawling like a fucking toddler, not until I managed to get it out through the hiccups that had resulted from my sobs.

"I didn't fucking tell him I love him. He told me so many times that day that he loved me. It was the last damn thing he said to me—to anyone, and I didn't fucking say it back!"

It was a few minutes before I calmed down enough to be more coherent, to regain the capability of listening to her speak. She held my hand, rubbed my back, said soothing mom words... and then changed my world forever.

"Katsuki, honey, shh, sshhh... it's okay, darling. It's okay, and you know why? Because you know he wouldn't be mad, you know he'd understand." And then she spoke as if he were still there. "You know he forgives you, that he doesn't blame you. And most of all he knows, oh he knows so, so well that you do, honey, you do love him back more than anything."

I admit it took me a second. Somewhere in my mind I figured she just... wasn't used to talking about him in the past tense, was having a hard time accepting that he was gone, too. But when I looked up at her something clicked. She meant it. It was no mistake, saying it the way she did. She meant she truly believed he was still out there somewhere, that the end of his body didn't mean the end of his existence, just as he'd always believed.

That was one of the fucking billions of pure things about Eijirou—he believed in the afterlife. Believed in heaven. Believed in redemption and atonement. I never really decided what I believe in; one one hand, how could there be anything after our bodies are deceased? Where the hell would we go? How can heaven exist if we don't have any proof of it? But on the other... for him, if there's anywhere he went after his heart stopped beating, it's heaven for sure.

~Fin~

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Published: January 16th, 2020

Word Count: 23,389