Page 35

T ime unraveled.

Morgan drifted, body caught in a loop of floating silence.

Stillness. Consciousness became elastic—stretching, snapping, folding in on itself.

He couldn’t track the minutes like he wanted.

Couldn’t count the hours when the light changed too often.

Fire red—his favorite, pale blue the next, then gone again, swallowed by the dark.

Sometimes he thought he was awake.

Sometimes he was sure he wasn’t.

Death became a thought, sometime between fog and light.

He’d never contemplated his death before. Only others. It wasn’t something that scared him.

Everyone died. Eventually. Everyone stopped breathing and bleeding. Stopped wanting. Everyone became soft and rotting under the ground, feeding the worms and bugs. A biological conclusion. Unremarkable.

I was born with one foot already in the grave. What could be the harm?

The pull was stronger than sleep, sharper than the ragged breaths that rattled his insides. It beckoned like gravity. It would’ve been so easy to let go.

But one thing kept him from finally— finally— giving in.

Lex.

“You need to wake up,” he whispered, more than once. “Please, Morgan. I need you to come back .”

A damp cloth dragged across his forehead. The edge of something wet pressed against his lips—water, maybe. Salty. Orange-flavored. He didn’t know if he swallowed or choked. His throat didn’t work either way.

Even the simplest requests had always been too much.

Once, he heard pacing—Lex’s footsteps, suction-soft on carpet, unsteady and frantic. Then Lex’s voice again, pitched with something Morgan had never heard.

“I don’t—no. No . You listen to me . Tell Gabriel to go to hell. No, Karen, I don’t have the mental fucking bandwidth right now.”

The sound of a phone hitting the wall echoed inside Morgan’s body.

Later, fingers pressed against his ribs. Bandages peeled away—stickiness, pop, air. Fresh ones reapplied. The cloying, overly sweet smell of antiseptic.

“I should take you to the hospital,” Lex murmured. “ I should . But I know you’ll bitch and complain and hate me, so just—just stay awake, okay? Stay with me.”

Then quieter, muffled in something:

“ Please, god, stay with me .”

But his body was a mausoleum—part dead, all unmoving, full of things that should’ve stayed buried. Bones wrapped in wrong . Muscles too quiet.

The only thing he could do was try to find Lex’s voice in the dark.

And every time, it was there.

“Come on , Morgan. You don’t get to scare me and disappear.”

That one stuck.

It anchored him—hard. Pulled him closer to the surface like a hook in the chest, painful in its truth.

It’s night again.

Shadows sharpened into ceiling tiles. The outline of the damn, gaudy chandelier swam into view, soft and yellowed, casting faint halos on the wall. Somewhere close, the sound of Lex’s footsteps—barefoot and uneven—trying not to make noise and failing just enough for Morgan to hear it.

Then—Lex’s face.

Close. Too close and not close enough.

Gray, almost translucent in the low light. His split lip was darker now, crusted with dried blood that he’d no doubt been gnawing at. Those blue eyes were paler, red with exhaustion. Everything about him look so tired.

“You are such a dick,” Lex whispered.

Morgan tried to answer. Tried to shape a sound, a word, something —but all that came out was a ragged, half-choked gasp, more air than voice .

Lex leaned in fast, hand shaking slightly as he cupped Morgan’s jaw.

“That’s progress.” Lex’s laugh wasn’t his. “Don’t—don’t try to talk yet. Just breathe.”

Morgan obeyed.

The first breath was shallow. Tight.

The second hitched something in his chest.

But the third came easier. Strange inside his lungs, tinged with sterility and the taste of iron.

Lex sat back, wiping at his face with the heel of his hand, trying to play casual and failing miserably.

Morgan stared at him.

He didn’t have the words for what he saw. Or maybe he did, buried somewhere beneath the static and haze, stuck behind the weight of being here . Of choosing to crawl back from that pleasant darkness.

Lex’s voice cracked when he looked back to him.

“You were out for almost a day.”

Morgan’s stomach twisted—tight, nauseating, unfamiliar. The closest thing he’d felt to guilt in years. It ate at the same part of him that always, always hated needing help. Hated being seen like this.

It should’ve been the other way around. He was supposed to be the one cleaning blood off Lex, not the one ruining the hotel sheets.

He started to shift.

Lex didn’t let him.

A palm on his shoulder, firm and grounding. A steady pressure. No force—just refusal .

“No hospital,” Morgan croaked.

“I figured,” Lex said, eyes narrowing. “But next time, I’m not giving you the option. I’d rather you be shitty about a doctor than have you in a body bag.”

“There won’t be a next time.”

Lex didn’t argue.

He only looked at him—lips pressed into a thin line, jaw flexing. Then he nodded, head jerking like reflex than agreement. Like maybe they both had to believe it.

“I’ll get you some water,” Lex murmured. “And then we’ll change your bandages again. You go back to sleep before and I’ll fucking slap you .”

Morgan turned his head to the side to watch Lex. Let himself smile. Just a little.

The room was dim this time, not dark. Soft lamplight casting vivid golds over the rumpled sheets and the too-quiet hush. The kind that made the world feel padded and far away. This time, he didn’t feel like a stranger in his own body. His limbs were his again.

And Lex was still there.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, curled in one of Morgan’s blazers, too tight in the shoulders and arms, too long in the waist. His bare feet pressed to the mattress, legs drawn up like he needed to hold himself together .

Morgan moved, and the springs creaked.

Lex’s head snapped up.

“Hey.”

“Morning,” Morgan rasped, voice rougher than before but functional. The air rattled on the way down, but it stayed in place. He didn’t have to catch it. “No sleep again?”

“I’ve been a nervous fucking wreck. Cut me some slack.”

There wasn’t any bite to it. No venom. Just a threadbare kind of frustration.

Morgan let his head fall back against the pillow. “I’m sorry.”

“Wow. You never say that.” Lex smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You snore, by the way.”

“Stop.”

“Loud as hell.”

Morgan rolled his eyes, but the motion tugged something deep in his neck—he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Lex noticed. Instantly.

His spine straightened, the awkward blazer brushing against his knees. “Don’t—don’t move. I cannot handle something worse happening right now.”

“I am something worse,” Morgan muttered.

His joke didn’t land.

They never did.

Lex’s hands hovered near Morgan’s chest like he wanted to touch him but didn’t trust himself not to press too hard. “Let me look at the bandages.”

Morgan didn’t protest. Not when Lex’s fingers trembled. Too gentle. Not when those tan hands were reverent in a way they’d never been before—like Morgan might splinter if handled wrong. Like he could break, too.

It was new.

Not the care. Lex had always cared—loudly, obsessively, on his own twisted wavelength, all sharp edges and too much. But this?

This was intimate.

Lex peeled the strips back slowly. The soft hiss of gauze separating from skin felt too loud in the silence.

He checked—for blood, inflammation—the same way Morgan would have done if their roles were reversed.

The same way he kept an eye on Lex at the cabin.

Lex had probably looked up all the steps online.

He always did. When something needed to be done, Lex did it .

Even when Morgan didn’t care enough, or didn’t want to.

Lex’s fingers said more than words could—hovering, brushing, adjusting. They barely grazed Morgan’s skin, rough nails snagging where they met stitches. He smoothed a wrinkle in the tape. Shifted a corner of the bandage. Infinitely careful.

When he was satisfied, he leaned down. Pressed his lips—so light Morgan wouldn’t have known if wasn’t looking at him—to the newly dressed wound on Morgan’s ribs.

“I’m so fucking mad at you right now.”

Morgan didn’t know what to say to that. Not yet.

So instead, he reached out. Just far enough to touch Lex’s cheek, to run his thumb along the healing line where Noah’s ring had split skin.

Lex leaned into the touch like it hurt not to.

Like the only thing that mattered was their survival.

Lex’s hand never stopped moving—fingers drifting across Morgan’s chest, his throat, the edge of his jaw.

Eventually, Lex leaned back just enough to look at him.

“I… I did something earlier. And I need you to tell me, it’s cool. Or, you’re good.”

Morgan studied him; the tightness in his jaw, the bunched brows.

“What?”

“Morgan. Please.”

This sounded like another case of no sleep Lex. Overthinking things that didn’t matter in the grand scheme. Probably trying to apologize for what happened before they left for the bar. Beating himself up for just… existing.

Morgan closed his eyes. “Alright. There’s nothing to forgive but. You’re forgiven. Do I need to be more specific?”

Lex didn’t answer. Instead, his mouth found Morgan’s again.

A question, not a demand.

Lex tilted his head slightly, lips parting—giving the space where speech became unnecessary.

Intrusive. Morgan didn’t hesitate. His hand curled around the back of Lex’s neck, guiding him closer, and the kiss slipped from soft to open-mouthed in a single breath.

Tongues met, warm and careful, brushing slow in the quiet between them.

There was no rush. No scrape of teeth or clash of hunger—just the steady press and pull of lips learning each other all over again.

Not better than their first kiss. Not worse than their last.

Something new.