TW: death, blood mention, hallucinations, tell me if there should be more!

Tam doesn't know why he's crying.

Maybe it's the shivery feeling running down his spine, making his limbs shake and his teeth chatter. Maybe it's the blur in his mind, like it's impossible for his thoughts to land, like he's skipping past anything of importance and landing on blankness.

Part of him catalogs the symptoms in the section of his mind that is logical, that scans his surroundings and makes him take in every sensation around him.

This, he knows, is shock. He's felt it before, of course; his life has never been a safe one, even before they were banished. Shock is more familiar to him than the touch of his mother's hand on his cheek.

But he doesn't know why he's in shock, because Keefe is sitting right next to him, and doesn't he always make everything better?

Why is everything so numb and cold when Keefe sends sparks through his blood? Why are his thoughts so blurry when he is always hyperconscious of everything he does around him?

He watches a tear splash onto his knee, and it takes a moment to realize that it's his own.

Why is he crying?

He can't remember.

Keefe watches him cry without making a move to comfort him, as if he knows there's no point in comfort when there's this ripping feeling in Tam's heart whenever their eyes meet.

There are oceans of sadness in his eyes.

...

"Keefe?" Tam gasps, shooting upright in the bed they share, because the other side of the bed is cold, empty. "Keefe, where—"

"I'm here," Keefe whispers, and Tam twists to see him laying next to him, cheek resting lightly on the pillow. "I'm still here."

And yet he is sure that the bed was cool to the touch.

His heart speeds instead of slowing as he attempts to calm his breathing, resting his hands on his fists. He never minds the dark that always seems to call to him, but now it is choking him, smothering him, and he needs light now.

He stumbles to yank open the curtains that Keefe picked out for their room, the ones that they went to a shop to pick out, the ones that took hours to put up since they couldn't seem to decide how high to place them—

The night outside is just as dark as the room. He didn't realize how early it was; the sun hadn't even begun to rise yet. There was no light to save him from the shadows pulling at the edges of his body, calling him to join them.

He glances over, and Keefe is sitting up on the bed, the edges of his silhouette dissolving into shadow in the darkness.

"What's wrong, Tam?" Keefe asks, cocking his head to the side.

And Tam inhales slowly, the pressure on his chest releasing him. "Nothing's wrong. Nothing at all."

...

He rips a piece of paper into shreds methodically, carelessly tossing the scraps onto the ground. They scatter over the carpet, but he can't bring himself to care.

"I have been broken too many times," Tam says to himself. He is tearing his soul into pieces. "I am too broken to be whole."

He's alone until he isn't, but it's not a surprise when Keefe is in front of him, laying on the ground and trailing his fingers through the scraps of paper.

"Can I put you back together?" Keefe says, as if this is a conversation they are having and not Tam having one of his crises. He flicks his eyes up to Tam's so quickly he doesn't catch the moment it happens. One moment Keefe is twisted the other way, and the next their eyes have met in a line, a bridge, an ocean. "Are you too broken to be so living as you are?"

"Perhaps," he admits, letting the last bit of paper fall between his fingers and land like dust in Keefe's hair. They are grains of sand slipping through his fingers, bits of his soul that he can't put back together. "Do you think I am?"

"Perhaps," Keefe echoes, rolling onto his back. His legs dissolve into the shadow of the couch Tam sits on. "Maybe, maybe, maybe."

"I want to scream," Tam tells him, and Keefe grins, a quick quirk of his lips.

"Do it."

But he doesn't, because something about his throat feels too tenuous, like his vocal cords will snap if he raises his voice above a whisper. "I could drown in the night, you know. Let go of the ground, let myself fall."

"Couldn't we all? Wouldn't we all, if the stars weren't there to burn holes into us when we try our very best to drown?" Keefe's lips purse, twisting to the side in wry humor. "The stars are the gatekeepers of the sky, you know. There to keep us from falling too far into the shadows."

"Shadows are all I know," Tam reminds him, and there is something dark moving behind Keefe's eyes as he answers.

"Too bad."

...

They sit on a dock, toes skimming the top of the water. Keefe is wearing a button-down white shirt, startlingly clean for the muddy ground around them. Their jeans are rolled above their knees, and Tam's hand rests next to Keefe where it props him up. Their fingers are close, but not quite touching.

Tam's fingers twitch, and he's not sure whether he wants to withdraw them from Keefe's, or twine them together with his.

The sun beats down on them, and Keefe's eyes sparkle as he tips his face up to the sky, not bothering to shield his gaze from the bright glare.

"Do you think," Tam starts, and stops, and starts again. "Do you think soulmates exist?"

Keefe tilts his head to the side as he thinks, and Tam resists the urge to swipe at the lock of blonde hair that falls over his eyes. Part of him doesn't want to break this spell they're under, this magical moment they're trapped in.

"Soulmates," Keefe says slowly, drawing out the word in an elegant line. "True love?"

Tam is exceedingly casual as he nods, studying the way the shadows cast Keefe's jawline into sharp relief. "True love, happily ever after." A quirk of a grin as he adds, "Riding into the sunset."

 He blinks, hard. The tears in his eyes are from the glare of the sun.

"I don't know," Keefe answers softly, so still he might as well be a statue. "What do you want me to say?"

The words could be taken as a challenge, but Keefe speaks as if this is still a question, one he doesn't know the answer to.

"I don't believe in soulmates," Tam says hesitantly, a thread in his voice stretched thin enough to snap. "But I believe in you."

Keefe smiles sadly at him, shadows swallowing his fingers as he rests them next to Tam's thigh. "If only everything we believed in came true."

...

"Tam," Linh whispers, and he wakes up, shooting upright. His clothes are plastered to his sweaty body, his bedsheets twisted around him from tossing and turning.

"Linh," he says, his hammering heart calming. He glances to the side, and sees Keefe still sleeping soundly on the other side of the bed. He can sleep through anything, Tam supposes, although it's some kind of superpower that he wasn't woken up by whatever nightmare he'd been going through.

"It's late, Tam," Linh murmurs, tracing a cool hand down her brother's cheek in the way she used to do when they lived together. "You don't want to be late."

"Late for what?" His heart is hammering again. Something, he is suddenly, absolutely sure, is wrong.

"For..." Linh hesitates. "Don't you remember? I called you about it. I told you it was today."

Something about the past few weeks is a blur. Tam can't seem to remember anything that has happened. The only solid memory in his mind is Keefe's face, as if he has spent hours staring at his boyfriend's closed eyes as he sleeps.

"What?" he says, something rotten pooling in his stomach. "Late for what?"

"For the funeral, Tam," Linh tells him, and something in his legs goes weak.

Don't you remember?

Don't you remember?

Don't you remember?

"The funeral," he repeats.

Haven't you heard? Why don't you remember?

He looks over at Keefe again, still sleeping, and something in his head feels shaky.

"Yeah," Linh says, concern written all over her. "For—For Keefe." She is shaking, or maybe that's him, because his legs don't seem strong enough to hold his weight anymore.

"No," he says, and his voice comes from a distance. "No, Keefe's not dead."

For Keefe.

The funeral, Tam.

For Keefe. For Keefe. For Keefe.

Wouldn't it be hard for him to say the words if Keefe were gone? They slip out easy as Keefe is able to say  "I love you."

Linh takes a step back, biting her lip as she searches his face. As if he's joking. "Tam..."

"Keefe isn't dead," Tam repeats, his voice far too loud. Linh flinches, reaching for his hand. He snatches it back, pointing it to the bed where Keefe still sleeps, oblivious to the practical joke Linh must be playing on him. "He's right there," he insists, because no, he saw Keefe just a moment ago—

"Tam," Linh says hesitantly, "There's no one there."

"No," he breathes, because she's wrong, she's wrong wrong wrong—

And he leans over the bed, reaching for Keefe's sleeping body to shake him awake, a thousand images flashing through his head, murky with shadow.

(a shirt too white for the mud flecked all around him, eyes staring straight into the sun, edges dissolving into shadow, shaking legs and sad ocean eyes—)

But Keefe isn't there. Tam's hands land on blank bedsheets. The bed is cold.

He whirls around, his gaze blurry through tears, and Linh has stepped forward again, her eyes welling with her own tears.

"Tam, you didn't... you didn't think..." Her voice breaks.

(he is alive he is alive he is alive he is alive he is alive)

A hand rests on his cheek.

(fingers close but never touching, a bloodied hand lain across a still chest, a thump as he fell to the ground—)

"I'm so sorry, Tam," his sister murmurs. "I'm sorry you had to go through this alone."

He wasn't alone, he had Keefe, he doesn't have Keefe, he is alone—

"But I'm here now," Linh continues, and Tam's tears fall faster. "Keefe is gone."

But he isn't gone, because Tam sees him right there, standing behind Linh, smiling at him, edges dissolving into shadow, in all black (the only shade he hates on himself), eyes a bright blue that shouldn't gleam so brightly on his gray skin.

Tam's eyes unfocus, and Keefe solidifies, and he has been dead all along.

"Let me go," Keefe's voice sounds in his ear, and Tam shakes his head, hard.

"I can't..." he whispers, and he doesn't know what he can't do.

I can't let you go.

I can't be alone again.

I can't wake up to cold sheets.

You went and inserted yourself into my life, and I can't go back to the way things were before.

"You can't what?"

Before you. Before you. Before you.

There is before you, and after you.

Is this the after?

Can't I go back to before?

"I can't let you go," he says, and there is a moment of silence. Keefe's figure doesn't move, and neither does Linh, sobs ripping out of her chest as she realizes who Tam is talking to.

"Oh, Tam," Keefe murmurs, taking a step back into the darkened hallway. His eyes are the only part of him that has color. They are a shimmering blue, and they are all Tam can see as Keefe breathes out, "You already have."

And then he is gone, a whisper on the breeze, a moment where Tam's heart is broken and mended and broken again, and this is after, because before doesn't mean anything anymore.