(Liam's POV)
I woke up in the dead center of the night, the brutal, intoxicating high of yesterday's recovery completely vaporized. The lingering remnants of the virus were still actively buzzing beneath my skin, a toxic current of static electricity that made my nerves raw. A sudden, violent shiver crawled like jagged ice straight down the vertebrae of my spine, and my chest felt slick with a cold, clinging layer of sweat that made the flannel sheets feel like an absolute trap.
The bedroom was cloaked in an ominous, suffocating obsidian darkness, broken only by the cold, bluish glow of the television set casting long, distorted shadows across the ceiling. My heart rate immediately began to accelerate. I rotated my neck with a frantic, uncoordinated jerk, fully expecting to see Aaron's familiar silhouette anchored to his usual outpost beside the mattress.
But there was nothing. Just a cavernous, terrifying emptiness where a physical presence should legally be. The plush cushion of the chair was completely hollow, the blanket he had been using folded with a stark, cold precision on the backrest.
"Aaron?" I croaked, the single word scraping against my raw, inflamed vocal cords like sandpaper. It was barely a whisper, carrying a fragile, pathetic note of pure uncertainty.
When the indifferent silence of the apartment didn't break, a tight, sickening knot of instinctual panic violently twisted in the pit of my stomach. The oxygen in my lungs suddenly felt too dense to breathe. I forced my heavy, aching limbs to move, violently kicking the damp blankets off my legs and sitting upright on the edge of the mattress. My mind was running a hundred miles an hour down a dark track.
Did he leave? Did his dad call him back? How could he possibly walk out of this fortress in the absolute dead of night without saying a single word to me?
"Aaron!" I shouted again, throwing the full force of my damaged throat into the dark, desperately praying for a raspy grunt or a sarcastic remark from the hallway.
But the silence that greeted me was thick, heavy, and completely suffocating, making the absolute phantom of his absence feel like a physical weight crushing my bare shoulders. The dark rooms around me felt entirely foreign, a hollow shell stripped of the vibrant energy we had built just hours before.
Then, breaking the oppressive quiet of the flat, a soft, metallic click echoed through the darkness—the unmistakable, sharp sound of the front door latch uncoupling. A massive, blinding flare of desperate hope exploded in my chest, my head snapping toward the door frame. I stood up on unstable knees, my hands gripping the wooden bedpost for balance, utterly convinced that it was him—that he had just stepped out to grab ice, or breathe the fresh air, and was finally returning to keep watch over my recovery.
But the second the human silhouette crossed the threshold into the dim, flickering blue light of the television, my heart didn't just sink—it entirely shattered against my ribs.
It wasn't Aaron. The stature was entirely wrong, the movement too light, too deliberate. It was Linna.
She stood frozen in the doorway, her dark eyes wide and completely puzzled as she took in the horrific sight of me—disheveled, shivering violently, and soaked through in my own sick sweat. A wave of profound, complicated concern immediately washed across her features, but looking at her, a terrifying realization hit me: the euphoric, protective comfort I had felt all day was completely tied to a person who wasn't in the room.
"Linna...?" I breathed, the electric excitement that had just hyper-charged my system instantly waning, leaving behind a cold, hollow disappointment that made me feel utterly detestable. It shouldn't be this way. She was my girlfriend. I should have felt a massive wave of pure relief and safety the second she crossed that line, but my fractured brain could only loop a single, desperate question on an endless track: Where the hell is Aaron?
"Hey, Liam," she said softly, her voice a low, soothing melody as she stepped further into the dark room, her boots making a dull thud against the hardwood. "I heard you screaming from the porch. You were calling for someone... is everything alright? You're burning up."
"Where is Aaron?"
The question burst from my lips like a violent reflex before my rational mind could intercept it, the raw, bleeding urgency underlying my tone entirely exposing the desperate panic I was trying to mask. I didn't ask how she got here, or why she was visiting in the middle of the night; I just needed the structural geometry of my world fixed.
Linna stopped dead in her tracks, her hand hovering just inches from my arm. She didn't answer right away. Her gaze dropped slightly, her eyelashes casting long shadows over her cheeks as she visibly weighed the emotional weight of her response. A sudden, subtle shift fractured the symmetry of her face—a quick, heavy flicker of an emotion that made the hair on my arms stand up. It wasn't the petty green flare of romantic jealousy; it was something infinitely heavier, a profound, protective weariness or perhaps an unspoken knowledge that made me feel completely naked. The sheer intensity of it made me intensely uneasy.
"I... I just came over to check on your condition, Liam," Linna said after a heavy, agonizing beat. Her voice was perfectly steady, perfectly gentle, but it lacked the vibrant, effortless enthusiasm that usually defined her cadence. She reached out, her fingers cool and reassuring against my hot skin as she tracked the sweat on my collarbone. "You are completely soaked through, babe. You are shivering. We need to get you out of these damp clothes immediately."
The frantic, spinning panic I felt over Aaron's disappearance suddenly stilled, hit by the cold front of Linna's practical, grounded reality. I opened my mouth to demand an answer again, to push past her deflection, but the words completely dissolved in my throat as I met her steady, unblinking gaze. An ancient, instinctual warning system told me that pressing her on his coordinates right now would ignite a fire we couldn't easily extinguish. The universal bond of shared concern still held us together; she had driven across the city in the dark to nurse me, and I couldn't throw that sacrifice back in her face.
"Okay," I muttered, a heavy sense of complete resignation seeping into my joints.
Without another word, I pushed off the bedpost, my vision swimming in slow, dizzying circles for a brief second before my feet found their purchase on the floorboards. The crisp, biting chill of the night air brushed against my bare skin, a stark, violent reminder of just how physically broken I actually was. Linna guided me toward the closet with an incredible, tender gentleness, her movements perfectly fluid as she selected a clean, dry flannel shirt and soft sweatpants from the drawer, holding them up for me with a quiet, maternal patience.
"Liam, you seriously need to start taking better care of your own body," she whispered as I awkwardly peeled the damp fabric from my skin, her eyes tracking the prominent lines of my ribs. "You spend entirely too much time cooped up in this apartment, trapped in your own head. You need to get outside more often, breathe the fresh air, live in the real world."
"I know," I replied, a sharp, bitter hint of guilt gnawing at the lining of my stomach. I looked down at my hands, feeling the phantom weight of the controller from earlier. "It's just... things have been... devastatingly different lately. The ground keeps shifting under my feet."
Linna didn't offer a response, and for a long, heavy moment, the massive gravity of her unsaid thoughts lingered in the space between us like smoke. I turned my torso back toward her, a sudden, desperate urge to express the absolute chaos of my internal world swirling in my chest, but her posture was rigid, closed off. She didn't want to dig into the marrow of my emotions tonight. Instead, she firmly but gently gripped my elbow, steering my weak body out of the bedroom into the small kitchen area.
"Sit down right here," she instructed, her tone softening significantly as she pulled out a wooden chair.
I collapsed into it, my muscles trembling as I watched her move around the kitchen. She ignited the stove, the blue flame casting a warm, familiar glow over the counters as she began to prepare a small ceramic bowl of broth. The smell hit me immediately—it was nearly identical to the rich, savory aroma of the soup Aaron had served me hours prior. The sensory repetition stirred something deeply complicated, almost painful, within the center of my chest, but I aggressively pushed the feeling down into the dark, forcing my eyes to track the line of Linna's shoulders, trying to concentrate entirely on the girl standing in front of me.
"I'm going to get you some proper fever reducers too," she murmured, her spoon rhythmically clinking against the ceramic as she worked. The steady, predictable sound was incredibly calming, and for a fleeting moment, a real surge of pure thankfulness washed over me. I was lucky. I had someone who cared enough to cross the city, someone genuinely interested in the mechanics of my survival.
But as she set the steaming bowl down on the table before me, the shadow of Aaron's absence returned with a vengeance, clawing its way back to the front of my skull. The silence from his end was too loud to tolerate.
"Linna?" I started, my heart instantly racing a frantic rhythm against my ribs as I set the spoon back down, the metal clattering against the wood. "Please. Do you actually know where Aaron went? Did he call you before you came over?"
She paused entirely, her hands resting flat on the edge of the table as she leaned forward, looking directly into the depth of my eyes with an intense, unyielding gaze that felt like an interrogation.
"Liam... are you seriously going to spend your entire night fretting over his coordinates?" she asked, her voice dropping into a quiet, vibrating register that carried a heavy, repressed exhaustion.
The frustration that had been simmering beneath my fever instantly bubbled back to the surface, mixing with a deep, defensive confusion. "It's not just 'him' like he's some random guy from class, Linna—he's my best friend! He's my anchor. He was literally right here in this room taking care of me when I couldn't stand up. I thought... I thought he'd at least stay until the morning. I thought he'd always be here."
Linna's strict expression softened just a fraction, a deep, sorrowful empathy breaking through her rigid exterior. She reached across the table, covering my trembling hand with both of her own palms. "I completely understand that, Liam. I know how much history you two share. But you need to radically focus on your own life right now. I know you care about his safety, but look at yourself—you're the one who is currently burning up. You're the one who needs real help. You're the one who is sick."
The raw, bleeding sincerity in her dark eyes made a sudden wave of hot shame wash over my neck. She was entirely right. I was acting like a manic child, obsessing over a ghost while the girl who loved me was actively tending to my wounds. I was completely failing to show up for the person who was actually standing in the room.
"Okay," I whispered, my voice barely clearing my lips as I finally accepted the medicine she pushed toward me. "You're right. I'll... I'll try to focus entirely on getting better."
As she helped me take the small sips of broth and guided the glass of water to my lips, I forced my brain to anchor itself to her movements. I tried to immerse myself in the simple warmth of the food, the gentle cadence of her voice, and the undeniable reality of her care. But despite my absolute best efforts, the nagging, protective anxiety regarding Aaron's sudden departure remained a cold phantom lurking in the margins of my mind.
Once the bowl was empty, Linna carefully popped the small white pill from its blister pack, guiding it into my hand as if I were a fragile child who had forgotten how to function. "See? Not so bad," she said, a gentle, beautiful smile finally breaking through the heavy tension of the night as I swallowed the medicine. "The fever will break soon, I promise."
"Thanks, Linna. Truly," I said, a deep, genuine wave of gratitude smoothing out the rough edges of my voice. But even as I leaned my head back against the plush cushions of the chair, feeling the heavy, chemical fatigue of the sedative beginning to systematically slow my pulse, a part of my spirit remained entirely detached. My thoughts kept drifting back out into the cold dark of the city streets, chasing after the unresolved answers surrounding my best friend.
Linna must have tracked the sudden loss of focus in my eyes, because she let out a quiet, empathetic sigh, her hand gently squeezing mine. "Get some real sleep now, Liam," she murmured, her voice sounding incredibly distant as the darkness began to pull at the edges of my consciousness. "I'll be right here on the couch if anything shifts."
"Okay," I mumbled, my eyelids fluttering shut as my chin dropped toward my chest.
As I finally surrendered to the heavy, dreamless slumber of the medication, the apartment around me grew entirely quiet. The night carried on, filled with half-formed thoughts and hazy, fractured fever dreams. Yet, even in the deep, unyielding embrace of the sedation, the ancient, golden thread of the bond I shared with Aaron remained a stubborn, brilliant flicker in my subconscious—a permanent reminder of the boy who held the other half of my history, and whose return I would be waiting for the exact second the sun broke through the fog.