slow motion, in reverse

---

what if I split this yearning open and held it to the light? I doubt either of us would
survive that kind of truth. / that breath right there, the seventh shot, all this love, all this love,
do you see it now? your silhouette, black hole and sweet smell and line break after the metaphor.

think: room to breathe. or finally breathing. 

think: a letter with no address, because every word is your name.

— Natalie Lim, how do you tell someone you’ve written a poem about them?

---

The livehouse hasn’t opened yet. The stage lights hum in warm amber, casting long shadows across the empty floor. There's the faint scent of dust and old amps, a ghost of something citrus from the cleaning spray Zeal used on the bar.

Freodore sits at one of the high stools nearby, hunched over a page in his notebook. His pen moves in quick strokes, diagramming a hinge that might only work in theory. Zeal wipes down a row of glasses without looking up, his laptop open on the counter and he’s squinting into it while absently moving through their opening chores. In the background, someone coughs into their hand.

Today, it’s Seible who notices it first.

Freodore hears his voice call out gently, “K-chan?” and then urgent footsteps.

Freodore hears the second cough, short and dry. It will be the first of many tonight. Freodore has quietly made peace with Kaelix privately dealing with whatever he’s been sick with awhile. Just an end of winter cold, he’d often say. Or he’d blame something he was mildly allergic to, what he may or may not have had for lunch. There were a few days Freodore would spend scolding him for willfully eating things he isn’t supposed to, but he’s let it slide lately because of how busy they’ve all been.

Before the third cough, Kaelix heaves a little, and that’s when Freodore looks up.

Kaelix is hunched near the front door, tall frame braced against the wall, a hand covering his mouth.

The fourth cough sounds rougher—wet at the end before he hears Kaelix attempt to clear his throat and Seible’s “Wh-what’s going on?” that gets no answer, except for a bright yellow shape fluttering down near his shoes.

Zeal blinks, the glass in his hands forgotten. “Kaelix?”

Freodore pushes off his stool. His pen rolls off the table.

Another cough. More petals, yellow and fragile, curl as they fall from Kaelix’s mouth.

“Shit,” Zeal mutters, already circling the bar.

“I’m fine,” Kaelix says, voice rough but trying for breezy. He waves a hand, then grins, thin, a little forced. “Guess I’m allergic to slow afternoons?”

“You’re not fine,” Zeal frowns, now close enough to catch his elbow. The expression on his face doesn’t change much from the slight displeasure it shows, eyebrows furrowed slightly, trying to find the answers to a question no one’s asking yet. Eventually, he ends up just saying:

“Freo, walk him home.”

Freodore hesitates, eyes on the petals on the ground.

“I’ll find someone else to cover tonight,” Zeal adds, already turning toward the office at the back of the livehouse.

Seible casts a quick glance at Freodore, then gives a short nod, catching the undercurrent without needing it spelled out. He falls in step behind Zeal without hesitation. “I’ll help him track down a couple of extra hands, don’t worry about it!” he calls back brightly, voice light as ever. He waves them off cheerily, but Freodore catches the way his eyes linger for a beat longer as Kaelix begrudgingly gathers his things and gets into his coat, before turning towards the door Zeal disappeared into.

Freodore grabs his bag from the bar counter as well, pulling on his own coat and scarf, joining Kaelix at the door. It had been a couple of minutes, and so he thinks at first the coughing spell was just momentary, but just as Freodore opens the door for him, Kaelix coughs again, more violently than the last.

Petals scatter. Still, he tries to talk around it as the doors to livehouse close behind them. “Fun party trick, huh? Breathe in dust, exhale a whole floral arrangement.”

Freodore shakes his head, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes at how he can make light of something like this. He also fights the urge to point out that Kaelix isn’t exactly coughing up anything other than just the same bright yellow petals.

Managing to keep himself in check, he tries to step toward Kaelix, intending to reach out to steady him by the waist, intent on supporting him as they walk. Kaelix recoils slightly with a flinch, opens his mouth, perhaps to apologize and say he didn’t mean to, but he’s instead doubled over with another coughing fit and that keeps them both sufficiently distracted.

The breath from his lungs leave his body in a shudder.

Freodore draws his hand back, expression unreadable, he tightens it around his bag strap instead. “Let’s go,” he says.

Kaelix wheezes a weak chuckle. “The drama of it all, right? Coughing up flowers on the sidewalk.”

Freodore doesn’t answer.

Kaelix relents. “Okay, okay.”

They head out onto the street together. Kaelix walks tall but slower than usual. Freodore stays close to his side, just out of reach, tracking every breath.

 

 

The walk to Kaelix’s apartment is silent, maybe even a bit tense. It’s only two stops from the station nearest the livehouse.

Evening drapes slowly over the street, the last of the sun catching on windowpanes and old neon signs warming to life. The city somehow sounds far away from here, just a few cars, someone closing up a shop, a dog barking from a balcony two floors up. It’s winter but the snow hasn’t fallen yet.

Kaelix walks like he always does: gloved hands in his coat pockets, eyes scanning the street ahead or around them in faint interest of what he might see, like he’s just getting back from a break out back behind the livehouse and not, in fact, coughing up flowers on the streets they walk past.

Freodore stays close.

Kaelix glances sideways, his voice light. “Maybe it’s seasonal. Like, I don’t know, a sign that spring’s coming early or something?”

Freodore throws him a harsh look.

Kaelix grins, it’s a faltering one, but at least it’s genuine. “Listen, if I start sprouting branches, you can have naming rights to the first bloom. I’m sure you’d give it a little flair. Preferably in Latin.”

“I’m not naming your lung flora,” Freodore says with a sigh.

“Your loss.” Kaelix shrugs. “Could’ve been famous. ‘Kaelix Magnoliae,’ ‘Kaelix Deboniae’ or something.”

They climb the stairs in silence after that. Their boots thumping over concrete, third floor landing dark except for the soft light spilling under a neighbor’s door.

Kaelix unlocks his place with a flick of his wrist and shoulders the door open.

Inside, the apartment is warm, well-kept. Some posters are curling a bit at the corners on the walls—bands, old movies, one of a night sky over some place Freodore’s pretty sure doesn’t exist, there’s a picture of all four of them on the side table by the front door. There’s a jacket slung over a chair, another pair of boots by the wall, his guitar is resting on the floor, held up by the couch.

Freodore lingers in the doorway.

“I’ll help you get settled,” he says.

Kaelix shoots him a look, halfway through kicking off his boots. “Freo. I’m alright.”

“You’re not.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“You are coughing up flowers.”

Kaelix smiles faintly, brushing past. “I’m adapting.”

Freodore follows him in anyway, toeing of his own shoes already. “Get ready for bed. I’ll order something. Water?”

“I don’t have a choice in this, do I?”

Freodore shakes his head.

Kaelix rolls his eyes, although he’s smiling before he disappears down the hall, the sound of running water following a moment later.

Freodore orders food. It’s nothing complicated, just a bit of soup and rice and whatever looks warm. He fills a glass from a dispenser in the kitchen. He takes his time setting his things down, scanning the apartment again. It all looks… normal. Maybe even comfortable, in that neat Kaelix way some people don’t quite expect from him. Freodore isn’t sure what he’s looking for exactly, but nothing seems out of place. And there’s nothing that says anything’s wrong.

The knock at the door pulls him out of the quiet.

He accepts the takeout, thanks the courier, and brings it to the kitchen. Steam curls out from the containers as he unpacks them. The warmth smells grounding, almost a comfort—ginger, broth, and hot rice.

He starts dishing it into different bowls. Reaches for the cabinet under the sink to toss the packaging.

The trash can isn’t closed all the way and he nudges it open fully.

Inside, beneath crumpled takeout paper and a discarded tea bag are petals.

Soft and yellow, now dulled, brown at the edges, the delicate curl of them collapsed inward. Wilted.

So, not from today.

Freodore frowns, his hand tightening slightly on the edge of the counter.

He hears movement from the hall. The sound of Kaelix’s toothbrush tapping against glass.

The trash lid shuts with a soft click.

Freodore wonders how long this has been happening.

 

 

Dinner starts quiet.

Freodore sets the bowls down on the low table in front of the couch, careful not to crowd Kaelix’s usual seat. The lights stay dim. Neither of them bothers turning on the overhead—just the soft golden lamp by the window, pooling dim light over the floorboards.

Kaelix sits gingerly, hoodie loose around his shoulders, hair damp at the ends from washing his face. He leans forward to take a spoonful of soup, but he barely finishes it before the first grimace.

He gets up, muttering something that might be a “sorry,” and disappears down the hall again.

Freodore hears it all. The hollow thunk of the bathroom door and Kaelix’s harried coughing echoing in the tiled room.

He doesn't follow and just shifts slightly in his seat. He waits.

Kaelix returns a few minutes later. He doesn’t say anything. Just settles into his spot again, movements a little slower this time, an empty bowl brought from the kitchen now resting beside him on the table.

They don’t acknowledge it, but they both know what it’s for.

The food grows lukewarm.

Freodore stirs his soup and says, after a moment, “I’ve been trying to fix that modular hinge from the back hallway at the venue. The one that jams when the door gets too humid.”

Kaelix nods once, slowly. Doesn’t speak.

Freodore keeps going. “Tried three versions. Still doesn’t sit flush when the temperature shifts. Might need to shift the weight point.” A pause, he frowns a little. “Or admit it’s a design flaw and start over.”

Another cough. Softer, this time. Kaelix tips a hand over the empty bowl. One petal lands. Then another.

Freodore glances at him, then looks back at his bowl.

“That band from last week,” he says, “the one with the synth player who kept tripping over his cables—they had a good tone.” He picks up his spoon again, voice even. “A bit washed out, but it was nice.”

Kaelix breathes out softly. It might be a laugh.

Freodore’s words come slow, uneven. He isn’t built to carry the conversation on his own when he’s not in front of a crowd, and they both know this, but he talks anyway.

About a girl who left a pick in the cash box. About a cymbal that cracked in a way that sounded nicer than before. About a song from a band two weeks ago whose bridge got stuck in his head and refused to leave.

Between each thought is a pause. Between each pause, another petal.

Sometimes, he shifts slightly, face drawn in from the effort it takes not to wince. But he doesn’t say he’s hurting. He doesn’t say anything at all.

Freodore doesn’t ask.

He just sits with him, filling the space between coughs.

By the end of the meal, Kaelix has barely eaten a quarter of his bowl. The petals in the smaller one are piling softly now, honey-like, fragile, the scent mixing in with the room’s linen and fresh laundry.

Freodore finishes his food and gathers the dishes in silence.

Kaelix leans his head back on the couch. Eyes closed, breathing careful.

The petals rustle when Freodore stands.

 

 

After dinner they watch a movie together.

They’ve done this countless times before. Sometimes all four of them, most of the time just two, nursing tea and something warm between themselves after a long day at the livehouse, but not lately. It’s been busy these last couple of months and admittedly, Freodore’s has kept himself occupied with work because he never did like getting distracted from it in the first place. Always one thing or the other to turn his attention to.

The movie plays, sound low, flickering light painting their faces in dull color.

It’s one they haven’t seen before. Freodore doesn’t remember picking it. He barely remembers pressing play.

Kaelix sits to his left, legs stretched out, a blanket tossed over his knees looking as though it got there by accident. His hoodie sleeves are pulled over his hands, and he’s stacking the petals on the armrest of the couch, yellow stark against worn fabric.

Freodore’s eyes are on the screen, but the story blurs. The dialogue is just sound. He registers tone, but not its meaning.

He glances sideways again. Kaelix balances another petal with exaggerated care. It's not a perfect stack because they're too soft, too curled at the edges, but somehow he’s making his little mountain of petals work.

Freodore has heard of people with this. Not many and not in a lot of details. He’s read scraps, overheard things in alleyways and quiet corners of the livehouse, friends of friends of friends. No one really talks about how it ends. Maybe they don’t want to, or they don’t get the chance.

Something aches behind his ribs. A cold, slow ache, like metal warping under pressure.

He looks again.

Kaelix is watching him now, not the movie.

And when their eyes meet, Kaelix smiles. It’s lopsided, a little breathless, but gentle. “Look at you,” he says. “Actually getting emotional about the sad part.”

Freodore doesn’t look away and his frown deepens.

He hasn’t cried in years. Not since he was much younger, when the world felt too big and his voice was too small to fill any space meaningfully. Whatever allowed that cracked open part of him to exist back then had long since sealed.

But the concern in Kaelix’s face now, quiet and unspoken, seen in the flicker of worry poorly disguised beneath the usual tilt of his humor, his smile, presses something loose.

Something sharp and very old swells in his chest.

He turns his gaze back to the screen before he has to name it.

Kaelix goes back to his petals.

 

 

Kaelix gets up before the movie ends. Freodore isn’t sure if he zones out when that happened too but he remembers it being hushed, barely a mutter of “back in a sec” and then he can hear him padding into the general direction of the bathroom, soft scuff of his socks on the floor fading. A door clicks shut.

Freodore watches the screen for a few minutes longer, not really seeing it.

When the credits start to roll, he pushes off the couch and starts cleaning up.

He rinses the bowls, glasses and their utensils and stacks them neatly by the sink. The little pile of yellow petals Kaelix left on the armrest of the couch gets tipped gently into a bin soon after.

He passes the closed bathroom door on his way to the kitchen again. Still shut, the water running. He wipes down the counter and tries not to think of the retching noise or the attempt in vain to also flush the toilet the same time the sound comes through.

By the time he finishes tidying, the bedroom door is closed too. Kaelix must have gone straight there from the bathroom without saying good night.

Freodore stands in the middle of the living room, coat still draped over the chair, the space dim and settled. He could leave now, maybe he should.

When he closes his eyes to think, he hears Kaelix’s measured, labored breaths on the couch as they watched the movie, the way his lips would tremble every time he’d draw in a breath hoping that what he’d exhale shortly after wouldn’t be a petal. He thinks of the weeks, months he’d taken his bright laughter and the glint in his eyes at face value when he says, “you’re worried for nothing, Freo. Idiots don’t get sick!”

Freodore opens his eyes. He moves past the bedroom door and finds the wardrobe, not making a sound. He sees Kaelix’s resting form in the bed, blankets pulled up all the way and doesn’t comment. He rifles through the clothes slowly, fingertips grazing worn cotton and soft flannel, smelling faintly of Kaelix’s laundry detergent and his cologne.

He picks a shirt he knows Kaelix doesn’t wear anymore. A ratty old one, stretched at the shoulders and the one pair of sleep shorts that are actually his. Then he turns to the bathroom with the clothes.

He flicks on the small light above the mirror and steps in. The air’s still humid from Kaelix’s shower, the mirror fogged at the edges. He doesn’t linger too long in the shower and doesn’t wash his hair, wanting to dry off quickly. He pulls on the clothes, resting previously on one of the racks in the bathroom. Predictably, he drowns it in, but at least the shorts fit just fine.

Freodore opens the mirrored cabinet.

The toothbrushes are where they always are, Kaelix’s shoved inside a cup to the left, Seible’s blue toothbrush with its newer bristles in another one, Zeal’s, green, still looking pristine next to it.

And Freodore’s. Red, in the same cup as Kaelix’s.

He brushes slowly, each motion feeling mechanical. He avoids his own gaze in the mirror. Rinses his mouth, wipes the water off on the corner of a towel. He places the brush back exactly where it was.

Then, without meaning to, he glances down next to the sink, to the small basket of trash resting half-full.

And then Freodore freezes.

On top of the tissues and crumpled wrappers, nestled between the edges of a discarded paper box, are flowers. Whole, yellow flowers, still vibrant.

The blooms are small, no larger than a thumbprint, with delicate, flared petals that fan outward resembling tiny bursts of sunlight. They're light enough to carry on a breath, but sturdy enough to hold their shape, even here.

The bin is full of them.

Freodore’s breath catches, and he stares at it for a long moment.

They lie in quiet clusters, gathered at the corners and tucked between scraps of paper like something spilled by accident—as if someone kept trying to pretend they weren’t there. Some are fresh, still glossy with dew, while others have begun to curl at the edges, fading into a brittle kind of softness. The weight of them more in number rather than their size.

It looks like they’ve been coughed up whole, again and again and again.

The faucet drips once. The light hums above him, buzzing in his ears.

Freodore clicks it off, closing the bathroom door behind him, leaving the hallway dim, only the slant of streetlight through the living room window trailing across the floor.

 

 

Freodore knows where the spare mattress is, has helped pull it out of its hiding spot enough times for himself or for when Zeal or Seible would stay over late after work. The couch is also wide enough for him and he’s slept there before, but he doesn’t think twice about it. He climbs into bed and slips under the blankets next to Kaelix.

He doesn’t have to guess if Kaelix is still awake. As soon as Freodore settles in, he’s already shifted to lie down on his back.

Freodore is much the same, except his arms rest at his sides awkwardly, unsure of where they belong. He doesn’t know if Kaelix’s eyes are open too, but Freodore stares at the ceiling.

The faint outline of a crack in the plaster cuts a jagged line above them. The light from outside bends at its seams.

He doesn't know what he’s bracing himself for. Maybe the shift in weight, the clearing of a throat, the telltale lilt of Kaelix’s voice cutting through the dark like it always does. But it never comes.

The silence stretches. The kind that Kaelix never used to let linger between them without filling it, even with nonsense, or, especially with nonsense.

Freodore lies there, eyes fixed on the crack in the ceiling. He traces its line, trying to stay anchored in something outside his own ribs, but the question sits insistent in the back of his throat.

Before he can think better of it, press it down or shape it into something gentler, Freodore just lets it go.

“How long?”

He finds that his voice sounds strange in the dark.

There’s a pause, and then Kaelix exhales soft and audible. Not at all sharp like before, and not laughing this time either.

“…Don’t know,” he says finally, the quietest he’s ever sounded. “A while.”

Another breath.

“Thought it might go away on its own.”

Freodore doesn’t respond.

He doesn't look. Just keeps staring at the ceiling like if he watches it long enough, the line might start to make sense. It, of course, does not.

The room feels too still, the kind that only shows up late at night, when the world has forgotten it’s supposed to move.

Streetlight filters through the curtains in Kaelix’s bedroom, stretching across the ceiling, across Kaelix’s desk, and the slight rise and fall of the blankets between them. His thoughts can’t settle. Freodore trains his eyes on the ceiling as if it might give him something to hold onto, or like it might explain any or all of this.

His chest aches. It builds slow and thick, crowding him from the inside out. He resents the feeling for how helpless it makes him feel. He’s not the one who’s sick. But maybe this is how Kaelix’s chest feels, too. A weight growing in the quiet, petal by petal, breath by breath.

Without thinking, his fingers drift across under the sheet. They brush lightly against Kaelix’s hand, which rests between them, open and still.

Freodore doesn’t take all of it. He only hooks his smaller fingers around a few of Kaelix’s, holding onto them gently, a quiet pull towards something familiar.

A cough breaks the silence.

Kaelix turns slightly into the pillow, the sound muffled, but Freodore hears the soft fall of petals, and something heavier—a damp sound, something fleshy landing beside them on the sheets.

His fingers tighten instinctively.

“Did you ever think about surgery?” He asks, the words coming out stiff.

He closes his eyes when there’s no answer and the silence once again stretches too long between them.

“Or were you just going to wait until it got this bad?” It comes out sharper than he meant. Not a yell. Just too fast, too raw. The words leave his mouth before he can smooth them over, but he doesn’t let go of Kaelix’s fingers.

Kaelix stills. He breathes, slow and shallow, his chest rising just enough under the blanket. Freodore can feel it through the loose contact of their fingers—an uneven rhythm, like someone trying too hard to stay composed.

“I did think about it,” Kaelix says, voice barely above a murmur. It catches Freodore off guard, not the words themselves, but the way Kaelix says them. They’ve leveled with each other seriously before, but nothing prepares him for the undercurrent of helplessness in Kaelix’s voice.

There’s a long pause, enough for the tension in the room to curl tighter around them. Then Kaelix asks, “Have you ever looked it up?”

Freodore can’t say he’s ever been curious enough to do so. Until today they were all just stories to him, things he didn’t even witness firsthand or even in the sidelines. He could empathize in the moment, but it was also easy enough to leave it at that. Something he’d never had to worry about himself. Freodore doesn’t answer him.

“Do you know what happens when they try to cut it out?” Kaelix asks shortly after. “They’re better at getting it out and there’s a high chance you survive it. But you forget.”

He lets the word sit there for a moment.

“All of it,” he continues. “The person. Your feelings. Everything the flowers were about. They take the roots, and whatever they were attached to doesn’t come back with you.”

His voice is flat now, more than tired. Like the thought has already worn itself down inside his mind long ago. “And I thought…” He swallows, breath stuttering faintly. “If I was scared of the thought of dying to this, I don’t think I could bear the idea of suddenly waking up and just not knowing why I was there in the first place. There were some people who said the first few months, maybe years feel like you were hollowed out to the bone. More empty than in pain. And that you'd just have to power through it, because most of the time it goes away slowly and it gets filled in with other things over time and I just… figured I didn’t want that, I guess.”

The words land uneven in Freodore’s chest. Heavy, not loud. The magnitude of Kaelix’s feelings don’t crash into him all at once, but it settles as dust does in a quiet room, unexpected in how much space it takes up once you notice it.

Something sharp twists inside of him and he turns, his whole body moving beneath the blanket, sheets catching, his breath tight as he faces Kaelix’s indecision fully now. The light from the window falls across the edge of his jaw, his brow drawn low.

Freodore is frowning and he knows it.

His fists curl into the collar of Kaelix’s shirt without thought, not in anger, but it’s a demand all the same.

“Who?” Freodore asks, voice low and pointed.

Kaelix blinks down at him, but doesn’t answer immediately.

Freodore’s fists tighten slightly in the fabric. “Who is it?”

Kaelix goes still, gaze dropping to somewhere just past Freodore’s shoulder. For a breath, maybe two, he doesn’t say anything, and Freodore watches him closely, uncertain if an answer is coming or if the question had landed in a place too raw to touch. There’s a faint tension in Kaelix’s jaw, biting back a thought too tangled inside of him to speak out loud. Then, slowly, his eyes lift with a weariness that doesn’t belong on a face usually so quick to laugh or shift in the multitude of animated expressions Freodore has seen on them over the years. Just not this.

Freodore tracks the soft breath that escapes Kaelix’s lips, studies his face because it’s the first time he’s ever met that small, tired smile, Kaelix’s eyes crinkling faintly, softened by everything else he won't say.

“Why?” He asks, tone light, teasing almost, like usual. “Gonna march up to him, slap him across the face and go—You!! Fall in love with Kaelix Debonair now or else!”

And then as if considering it as thing that might actually happen, “Gotta say though, it’d be pretty funny to see.”

Freodore’s frown doesn’t budge. In fact, it deepens, his brows drawing closer as if Kaelix had said something offensive instead of ridiculous.

But it does loosen the tension in his fingers and slowly, he lets go of the collar he’d bunched in his fists. The fabric relaxes between them and Kaelix lets him smooth it out like a wordless apology.

Kaelix tilts his head, watching him now with quiet curiosity beneath the joke. There’s no smugness in it, just a hint of invitation, waiting to see if Freodore will follow the humor or push past it.

Freodore shakes his head.

His eyes lower for a moment, then flick back up, guilt creeping across his features in a way that feels out of place on him. Like it doesn’t quite belong, but he wears it anyway.

“…Sorry,” he murmurs.

He doesn’t say what for. Kaelix doesn’t press.

Freodore swallows once, eyes still fixed on the fold of the shirt between them. “I just… I don’t understand.”

His voice is much more muted now, less clipped, worn down by whatever it was that had pulled him taut earlier.

He glances back up at Kaelix.

“How could someone not love you?”

It slips out feeble and unadorned, as if the thought had finally grown too heavy to keep pressed down any longer. The exhale Freodore lets out after is wet around the edges and so is the breath he takes in the same measure, almost shuddering, trying to steady himself from the impact of his own thoughts.

Freodore searches his eyes for an answer, but Kaelix gaze back only softens further. It’s a look that Freodore’s only caught pieces of before—at the end of long nights, in the quiet before a show, or when no one else is looking. Not surprise or affection, but something steadier, something lived-in, a house Kaelix built with his own two hands.

Freodore sees it, feels it, and something in his chest clicks into place. That’s what he meant. Not just the question, not just the frustration. That look.

Kaelix’s mouth pulls into a faint, uneven smile. “Well,” he says, voice low, “I’m sure he has his reasons.”

Freodore rolls his eyes, not harshly, just enough to let the tension between them shift and his exasperation to show. His hands stay where they are, curled lightly in the soft cotton of Kaelix’s shirt.

“Have you told him?”

Kaelix lets out a breath, a sound between a laugh and a sigh. “No.”

And then, “God, no. Can you imagine? Me? Confessing? I’d trip over the first sentence. I’d probably apologize in the middle of it or too many times. ‘Sorry I like you, I’ll just see myself out.’”

Freodore blinks. “So you’ve been… what, just letting it rot inside you?”

Kaelix shrugs. “That’s a little dramatic.”

“You are literally coughing up flowers.”

“Okay, yeah. Fine.” Kaelix rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think I’d be good at saying it, and if he didn’t feel the same, I didn’t want to make it weird. So I figured… better to just let it sit there quietly and ruin my life in private.”

Freodore stares at him. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” It is probably not, but Freodore needs to get a point across.

“Correct.”

“And a little pathetic.”

“Unarguably.”

Freodore studies him for a long moment. His hands stay at Kaelix’s collar, unmoving.

“What’s his name?” he asks.

Kaelix hesitates, then shrugs with a grimace. “Not telling you that.”

Freodore changes gears. “What’s he like?”

Another pause, but this time Kaelix gives in. “He’s kind. Smarter than me, not as loud. Stubborn too, but he doesn’t usually throw a tantrum about it. He notices everything. Well, most things. Doesn’t talk much, but when he does, it was always to say something that matters.”

“You say that but he hasn’t noticed you’ve been in love with him in all this time.”

“It was cute up to a certain point,” Kaelix admits. “But like I said, he probably has his reasons.”

Freodore’s eyes narrow a little, not done with his needling. “How long?”

Kaelix stares at the ceiling. “…A while.”

“And you never once thought you could say something?”

“I thought about it all the time,” Kaelix says, soft now. “Just never felt like it was right to say. Always too many things on the line, you know?”

Freodore breathes out slowly. His hands are still resting against Kaelix’s chest. The air between them is warm, close.

He asks, hushed, “Do you think he’d say yes?”

Kaelix’s mouth twitches almost in the way that seems like he's about to make a joke, but the will to seems to dissipate almost immediately. His brow furrows slightly.

“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “Anything I say would probably just be… projecting, wouldn’t it?”

Freodore doesn’t have another question after that, although he’d like it if he did, he also doesn’t want to push Kaelix too hard, for Kaelix to just say things to him to satisfy his own selfish curiosity.

“There are better surgeons now,” Freodore finds himself saying instead, trying to keep his voice level. “Real specialists. I could look. We could ask Zeal or Seible—I’m sure someone probably knows someone.”

Kaelix is already shaking his head before he finishes.

“Freo, I can’t,” he says simply. “Even if it was just a one percent chance of forgetting, I wouldn’t risk it. I can’t…” His throat works around the words. “I know you know I’ve thought about this. I don’t want to lose the memories that made me feel this way about him in the first place. Any of them. Not even the stupid ones. Not the little ones.”

He exhales, his breath catching a little. “Not the way his voice sounds when he’s trying to explain something he’s excited about. Or the way he looks at me when I say something dumb on accident or totally on purpose. Or that one night he fell asleep on my couch with his head tilted too far back and drooled and I had to throw a blanket over him because he was too stubborn to admit he was tired.”

Freodore blinks, eyes drawn to him now, unmoving.

Kaelix is still looking past him, eyes somewhere between the distant future and a past Freodore suddenly feels like he’s only been in the periphery of rather than actually in it. “Maybe I’m just trying to justify getting sick like this.” His hand shifts slightly to stay outside of the blanket. “But I think I get why I got it.”

Freodore doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he doesn’t try. When Kaelix coughs to clear his throat and a few fully bloomed flowers spill out, it’s Freodore who moves. He catches them without thinking, fingers careful, before he sets them aside on the space between them on the bed, their delicate edges already beginning to curl.

“You know, it was so strange for me when I finally saw what they were.” Kaelix smiles around the thought as he speaks out loud.

“Forsythia,” Freodore supplies, unprompted.

Kaelix blinks, then lifts a brow with that handsome, crooked little smile of his to accompany it. “Oh, aren’t you clever?”

Freodore doesn’t answer, just watches him evenly. The flowers he’d caught earlier rest between them now, startlingly whole—as were the ones in the bathroom bin. Earlier at the livehouse and over dinner and the movie, they had only been petals. Scattered, thin, little things that clung to the furniture, Kaelix’s sleeve, the front of his sweater. But in the last couple of hours they’d been intact, bloomed.

Had it really gotten so bad in just a few hours?

Kaelix either doesn’t notice the shift in Freodore’s expression or chooses to ignore it. He tilts his head back slightly against the pillow, letting his eyes drift toward the ceiling. “It was just so strange, the first time I really saw them. I kept thinking about how bright they were—and that’s coming from a guy whose favorite color is yellow. It was like they hadn’t gotten the memo that they were part of something kind of awful.”

“Kind of…” Freodore trails off and Kaelix just responds with a small shrug.

Freodore watches him without saying a word. Kaelix doesn’t usually linger on moments like this too long but now he lets the silence stretch, tracing the shape of a thought before letting it go.

“But I think I get it, though,” Kaelix says again, quieter. “They’re the kind of flowers that bloom before it really makes sense to. Early in the season when it’s still cold, stubborn and insistent when everything else is waiting. They come out anyway.” His fingers twitch, ghosting over his ribs. “It’s a little pathetic, maybe. But I guess it makes sense.”

Freodore exhales, just the barest sound. “Not pathetic.”

Kaelix doesn’t look at him, but something in his posture softens anyway. “Not my favorite one, not his either probably but I mean, I get why that’s what took root.”

The quiet falls between them again, but it doesn’t feel finished, just paused and held gently between them. Freodore watches Kaelix’s chest rise and fall, the faint sheen of sweat at his temple, the strength it’s starting to take for him to speak at all.

Freodore’s hand moves on its own, palms flat now against his chest, feeling the beat of his friend’s pulse, steady but strained—still there.

Freodore watches his fingers curl gently around nothing, Kaelix’s words gently looping through his head. The faint, honeyed scent of the flowers. The weight of them, the irony that they probably weigh nothing at all. Kaelix’s unspoken fear that even healing could mean, for him, losing everything that made the pain matter.

He turns it over in his mind again and again, as if it was something he could maybe fix if only he had the right parts, the right designs, the right time.

But no version of this feels fair.

He stares at the soft fold of Kaelix’s shirt where his hand still rests and the lingering heat beneath it.

“It isn’t fair,” he says, voice faint at first.

He doesn’t realize it’s out loud.

“None of it is,” he continues, voice trembling.

“How could someone not love you?”

The sound feels like it was forced out from the back of his throat in the dark, spoken with a quiet conviction he hadn’t meant to come tumbling out with his words. His breath hitches. He doesn’t know what part of him is unraveling, only that it’s happening.

Kaelix’s eyes go wide, not out of disbelief, but something softer. His arms shift, slow and steady, pushing the blankets down and then his arms are wrapping around Freodore. One around his back, the other drawing him close.

Freodore doesn’t resist.

His cheek finds the curve of Kaelix’s shoulder, the warm crook of his neck. The scent there isn’t just the flowers or sweat or sickness. It’s soap and fabric and Kaelix himself, worn around the edges and here.

Freodore is still talking.

“He should—” His voice breaks and reforms, hushed and fierce. “He should know you sing better than anyone I’ve ever met. That you’re handsome, and—and your smile is the kind that people remember, even when they try not to.”

His breath shakes. Kaelix’s hand rises to the back of his head, fingers threading gently through his hair, grounding him.

“He should see how you’ve always put your stupid body in front of fights for people who don’t even say thank you. Or how you look at people like you’re afraid they won’t stay and how you still make space for them anyway. That you can cook and like to keep things clean. That you keep snacks in your jacket for the stray cats outside the livehouse. That you remember things no one else will pick up on the first time.”

Kaelix doesn’t interrupt. He just holds him, still and quiet.

“And if he doesn’t love you after seeing all of that,” Freodore says, a harsh whisper now, “then he’s a goddamn fool.”

Kaelix presses his cheek to the top of Freodore’s head.

Neither of them move.

There’s nothing left to design around this. Nothing to repair. Only this: breath, and heat, and the shape of something larger them himself and too big to name trembling quietly in the dark.

Freodore doesn’t mean for this to crack him open, but it does.

In the silence and warmth of Kaelix’s arms around him, the steady pressure of his palm cradling the back of his head like he’s something worth anchoring. It happens in the quiet certainty of it all, how gently Kaelix holds him for comfort, to soothe him, while his own lungs fill with flowers and press up against his heart.

The tears come before he realizes they’ve started. At first, they burn behind his eyes, and then they fall—hot, silent, and without warning.

He doesn’t sob. It’s a softer sound than that, but raw in a way that feels worse.

His chest shakes once. Then again. His face buried in Kaelix’s neck, hands balled weakly in the fabric of his shirt, trying to stay composed and failing in a way he’s never let himself before.

“Kaelix,” He barely gets his name out without choking on the sound, “It’s not fair.”

His voice trembles, quiet and low, afraid of what he’s admitting even as it leaves him.

“It’s not fair to Zeal, or Seible. They don’t know how bad it is.” He swallows, tries to keep the next words from shaking too much. “They’re going to blame themselves. Or think they missed something. And maybe they did, but only because you made it so easy not to see.”

Kaelix doesn’t argue. His hand just stays there, steady at the back of Freodore’s head.

Freodore presses his face tighter into his shoulder.

“It’s not fair,” Freodore says again, and this time it’s rough, splintered on the way out of him.

He doesn’t lift his head, but his voice keeps coming now that it’s cracked open.

“You didn’t tell anyone. You waited until you were barely breathing and until you filled up your trashcan with flowers. And we were right here.”

Freodore lifts his head just enough to look at him, eyelashes damp, catching the glow from the window. The room is dim, soft shadows falling across Kaelix’s face, but Freodore can still see his friend’s eyes, wide and still taking in the sight of him.

“What if he loves you back?”

Kaelix blinks once. Then again. Something flickers behind his gaze, too fast to catch.

“Please try,” Freodore says, breath unsteady. “It might not be too late to tell him. Let someone help you. Let me—”

He stops, seeing the look on Kaelix’s face. He bites his lip, the rest of his words caught on the edge of his teeth.

Kaelix studies him, gaze searching now, eyes tracing Freodore’s expression as though he’s seeing him all at once, not as the quiet constant he’s always been, but as someone new. Or maybe someone he’s been trying not to see too clearly until now.

The clock ticks louder inside the room, in Freodore’s ears along with the ringing inside of it as he waits for Kaelix to finish his wordless appraisal. The curtains shift with the low thrum of the air-conditioning unit, and the room suddenly feels so small. Between them, the space is filled with the faint scent of something aching but subtle in its sweetness, almost like peach blossoms, the very, very start of spring.

Kaelix’s eyes stay fixed on Freodore’s, a delicate thing unfolding behind them, like a page being turned too carefully to make a sound.

And then he says, to Freodore, barely more than a breath, but not a question: “You.”

The look on Kaelix’s face, once guarded, gentles into understanding, relief. His brow smooths. His lips part like he might say more, but doesn’t. The corners of his mouth pull into something that isn’t quite a smile, but carries the shape of one, tired and tender.

Freodore doesn’t say anything for a long moment, having just arrived at the answer too.

“Freo…?” Kaelix ventures, searching.

He feels his own eyes widen in recognition of both his name and the gentle reverence Kaelix has always held it with. Freodore lowers his gaze, shame and guilt flood his chest, hot and immediate.

“Me?”

Kaelix reaches for him with both hands now, cradling Freodore’s face in his palms, thumbs brushing beneath his eyes, where his tears still cling and he’s forced to face this head on.

“Always been,” Kaelix clarifies with a smile.

Freodore should’ve seen it. The way Kaelix saw him. The nights he stayed just a little longer than he needed to, his quiet attentiveness, how he hovered in his orbit as much as he could and knew the right moments to pull back, his jokes that sometimes hit a little too close to something real. It had been there the whole time, clear as day, like sun-steeped flowers blooming stubbornly at the tail end of a long winter, and Freodore had looked right past it.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and his voice cracking, something split down the middle. “I talked a big game about helping you. Like I could fix it…”

His breathes in and out, wet at the edges still. His eyes search Kaelix’s face, making up for every moment he didn’t look closely enough.

“Kaelix, I—”

Kaelix shakes his head gently, stopping him before he can say anything more, their foreheads brushing. His voice is soft, but it cuts through the tremble in Freodore’s chest with a strange, steady clarity.

“Hey now, I’m the one who didn’t confess.”

Freodore freezes. The words land with a weight that doesn’t crush but hollows, carving out space inside him that had never been touched until now.

But he understands now the kind of fear that overtook Kaelix. The kind that slips in the moment you realize you’ve been in love with someone right there all along, and that nothing might ever be the same if you said it out loud, for better or worse. The fear that naming it might shatter something constant and precious. That trying to change it might mean losing it altogether. Even just thinking about asking for more feels dangerous, like leaning too far over a drop you can’t see the bottom of.

And so you don’t.

You stay close. And you smile and fold your feelings into small gestures and a harmless joke. You don’t say a thing. You keep moving in steady and familiar ways, because maybe that in itself could be enough. That it would be better to carry it in silence than risk setting it down and never being allowed to pick it up again.

Kaelix watches him, and something sad curls at the corner of his mouth. “Freo, it’s not your fault. Maybe I just… I don’t know, maybe I got sick anyway because it just wasn’t in the same way. I know you love me.”

He exhales softly, like he’s letting something go. “And love doesn’t have to carry the same weight in both hands. It’s still love either way.”

Freodore’s brow furrows, the words finally hit differently than the others had, make the guilt ebb away into disbelief. As if Kaelix had just drawn a line between them that Freodore hadn’t even realized he’d already crossed.

His hand lifts to Kaelix’s face, fingertips brushing his jaw, light.

“Don’t say that,” he says quietly, almost like a secret.

Kaelix blinks, puzzled, then tilts his head slightly, eyes searching Freodore’s face. “Don’t say what?”

Freodore’s throat works around the words, but when they come, they’re clear, spoken into the hush that’s settled between them, like the room itself is listening. “That I don’t… can’t love you like that.”

Something shifts in the air between them but it isn’t sudden or loud; it's a breath held too long finally let go.

Kaelix’s eyes widen, his mouth parting around that same breath, of what might have been a question or something else entirely, but he never gets the chance to say it.

Freodore leans up into his space, hands lifting to curl behind Kaelix’s neck, holding him gently because he is something that is precious, sweet, and kisses him softly, like he’s asking. Like he’s waiting.

Maybe for Kaelix to pull back and hesitate and question him and pick apart the order of things. But Kaelix doesn’t.

He melts into it, his hands moving, palm on Freodore’s back bunching up the fabric of his shirt, afraid to let go, the other still on the side of his face.

Their mouths press together, slow, the kiss finding its shape. Kaelix’s breath stirs against Freodore’s lips as he draws him closer, and the hand at Freodore’s back tightens slightly, holding him like he’s afraid the moment might dissolve into light before his very eyes if he doesn't hold it close enough to stay.

The blanket rustles with the shift of their bodies. Freodore ends up half over him, one knee nudged between Kaelix’s legs, not thinking, drawn forward by something he can’t hold back anymore.

Because somewhere between the first time Kaelix started coughing months ago and Freodore convincing himself it was jut a passing thing—between watching him laugh it off night after night, and telling himself Kaelix would ask for help when he was ready—it had already started, building slowly.

It was in the way Kaelix stood a little slower behind the door each evening at the livehouse, how he smiled the same but leaned more often against the wall when he thought no one was looking. And today, watching him fold inward mid-sentence, barely able to hold himself upright while trying to wave Zeal and Seible off with another joke, watching petals fall as if they’d been waiting for an audience, that was when something twisted and held.

The trash bin in the kitchen, the bathroom. The way they laid in bed with Kaelix looking at him with those aching eyes and tried again and again to make it easier for Freodore to look the other way, to convince him that he’d made peace with holding this love on his own, enough for it to simply exist even if it killed him.

It was always there.

In the way, his eyes naturally drifted towards him in a crowded room, handsome and hard to miss, in the way it’s his toothbrush that gets to lean next to Kaelix’s in the same cup in the mirrored cabinet, how it’s his clothes that sit on its own corner in Kaelix’s drawer, how Freodore’s frustration would well up and have no place to go. In the realization that this was someone he couldn’t bear to lose.

And now with Kaelix beneath him, holding him as though he’d been waiting years for this, Freodore feels it settle in fully. Not quite a spark, but a steady thrum in his veins.

He kisses Kaelix’s cheek, then the edge of his jaw and murmurs, “I already do.”

Kaelix stares up at him like the world just shifted under his ribs.

Freodore gives a small, breathless laugh. “I feel like such an idiot. I don’t think I should be allowed to call you that for awhile.”

Kaelix’s smile is quiet, eyes wet. “All I have to say is that emotional transparency isn’t exactly your strong suit.”

“Not yours either,” Freodore quips, brushing a kiss to Kaelix’s temple. “But it’s okay. We’re okay.”

Kaelix pulls him close again, kisses him because that’s all he needed to hear and the worst of it might be survivable now.

Freodore lets himself want it fully. He settles against Kaelix, careful with the places where it still hurts, but more certain in every touch.

Kaelix exhales into his mouth, fingers threading through Freodore’s hair, and says his name like it’s a tether.

And Freodore kisses him softly, again and again like an answer.