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18
IAN
The elevator stopped at the fifth floor, where the ICU and Alek were. Ian took a deep breath to steel his nerves, then slipped through the closing elevator doors. The nursing station was deserted. No alarms rang. His footsteps echoed against the waxed linoleum floors. At the turn in the hallway, he glanced up at the bubble mirror in the top corner. The hall leading to Alek’s room was empty too.
It was eerie and unnatural.
The curtain behind Alek’s sliding glass door was drawn. What if Alek had died and somehow Ian missed all of the calls? What if behind the curtain Alek’s bed was empty and only his mother was waiting to deliver the news?
He pushed the intrusive thoughts away, opened the sliding door, and pulled the curtain back, exhaling when he saw Alek, turned on his side, facing away from him. His mom brought her finger to her lips, shushing him soundlessly, and gestured towards the door. Ian followed her into the hall.
She put both hands on his shoulders and looked him over, as if he was the one who fell out a window. “Are you good now?”
He wasn’t. He wouldn’t be whole until Alek was. “How is he?”
“He walked, ate lunch, and fell asleep. That’s about all I know. You know how he is.” She paused, probably to decide how much she ought to scold him. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but whatever it is, put it aside and be there for him. He needs you.”
Ian nodded once.
She pulled him into a hug that hit him over the head with a wave of nostalgia like a flip-book flashback of all the times he’d cried in his mother’s arms as a boy. Hard falls, skinned knees, the occasional broken bone. When his dad said he would take him to Disneyland and canceled at the last minute. Ian sniffed and pulled back.
“Keep me updated, okay?” she said.
“Of course.” After she’d walked a few steps, his manners came back to him. “Mom?”
She turned.
“Thank you.”
“You're welcome,E.”
Ian returned to Alek’s room, shut the door, and pulled the curtain closed. He tiptoed around the bed and flinched. The bruises around Alek’s eyes had darkened to an ugly purple and the swelling had smoothed away all of the hard angles of his face. The fingers peeking out from his cast were still pink and purple, but now the skin was shiny and taut.
A deep visceral pain burned inside Ian’s gut. Alek may have hurt him—intentionally even, but the weeks of betrayal, every stab of devastation, the sum total of everything Alek had ever done was nothing in comparison to the pain Ian now felt. He would have given anything and everything to trade places with Alek, to travel back in time to the moment he pulled his arm away and made Alek fall.
Ian pulled a Sharpie from his pocket, removed the cap with his teeth, and bent over Alek’s cast. Once finished, he recapped the pen and sat in the chair beside the bed. While he watched the shallow rise and fall of Alek’s chest, the precious sound of Alek’s breathing blended with the air filtration system into a white noise that had Ian’s head bobbing.
“Mmm. You smell like you again,” Alek murmured.
Ian’s eyes jerked open to find Alek watching him with a drowsy, dreamy look to his heavy-lidded eyes.
“What?” Ian had been nearly asleep. It took a second for Alek’s words to register. “Oh… Yeah. I told you I was going to take a shower—Wait!” Ian had understood him! Alek’s accent was thick but it must have been English, right? Ian didn’t know a lick of Bulgarian aside from Dr. Modorovic’s crash course. “Alek, you’re speaking English!”
“Really?”
It was definitely English, though Alek’s accent shadowed every word with extra inflection.
“Yes, love, really.”
Ian brought both hands to Alek’s face, and kissed him. He meant for the kiss to be a celebratoryyou got your English backkiss, but the two of them could never just kiss, and soon Ian’s dick was telling him to climb on top of Alek. A louder, more responsible voice reminded him that it was probably dangerous to have sex with someone so soon after a head injury.
Ian pulled away and Alek tried to keep him there by the bottom hem of his shirt, but Ian shook his head. “Say something else.”
“I love you. Was that English?”
“I love you, too. Does that answer your question? Your accent is so hot. You can read me an instruction manual and I’ll get hard.”
Alek’s face fell. “I didn’t realize…”
