Riley said, "As much as I hate giving up… you know that, right, Hugo?"
His voice came out small, worn thin at the edges, like he had been holding it in his mouth too long and it hurt to let it go. I didn't answer. I remembered that silence well—the way it lay heavy between us, pressed flat against the walls and the floorboards. The version of me in that bed barely stirred, half-asleep, half-drowned in whatever I had poured into myself that night.
Watching it again, I thought, fuck my weak tolerance, fuck the state I had let myself fall into. Why then, of all the hours I'd been awake for him? Why did he choose that hour, that place, that body of mine limp and blind to what he was saying? I had always been awake around him. Always listening. Always ready. Why that time?
"Hugo?" Riley asked again. "Why aren't you answering me? Are you okay?"
The boy I was, made a sound, some dull hum that didn't mean yes or no. Riley exhaled through his nose, a tired sound that trembled slightly.
"I tried not to think about doing it," he said. His hand moved to his pocket, slow and deliberate, like every gesture had become a confession. He pulled out a tiny clear packet with four white pills inside. The plastic crackled as he held it up in the low light. "Eddie gave me these," he said. "Said one is plenty to make me feel on cloud nine. Two enough to start seeing good things—joyful, he said. Three would send me to hell. Four…" He paused and gave a soft, humorless laugh. "They don't know anyone who lasted after the third."
He tore the packet open with his teeth, the sound quick and small. One pill dropped into his palm. He swallowed it dry. His eyes watered—not from the pill, but from something far older. He tried to wipe his face with his sleeve, but the tears kept running.
"I can't look after you anymore," he said, voice breaking. "And you were the only reason I waited another day in this life, because I knew you still needed me. But I can't even show face anymore."
He pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes and took another shaky breath. His shoulders trembled when he exhaled. The bulb above him cast a weak circle of light that touched the corner of the bed but never reached me.
Then he got up. His movements were slow, unsure. He walked the two steps toward the bed and sank to his knees beside it. The floor creaked under his weight. He leaned forward until his chest rested against the side of the mattress, the lower half of his body still folded on the floor. His head found the space beside mine. His cheek brushed the sheet.
"Hugo," he whispered, voice rough and wet, "why do you have to sleep now?"
He stayed like that for a long time, breathing unevenly against the side of my face. I could smell him—the salt of sweat, the trace of cigarette smoke on his clothes, the faint sweetness that came from the cheap soap he always used. His hair tickled my temple whenever he shifted.
The boy on the bed didn't move. His breath came slow and steady, ignorant of the body kneeling beside him. Riley's tears darkened the pillow where his cheek rested, spreading in small circles that caught the light.
He murmured something under his breath, too quiet to catch. His hand twitched once, then went still. The packet slipped from his fingers onto the floor, landing with a soft, papery sound.
Watching it unfold, I wanted to tear through the memory, to shake that younger version of myself awake, to stop Riley from swallowing anything at all. But the scene held me in place, the past refusing to bend.
And in the silence that followed, the only sound that belonged to me was the one that escaped without thought— a broken whisper from the present, low and hoarse.
"Fuck."
I took slow steps toward him, toward the version of Riley crouched beside my sleeping body. The floor pressed cold through the soles of my feet. The air felt heavier the closer I drew, as though the room itself had learned to hold its breath.
He was clearer than he had any right to be. My memory had given him this clarity, had polished away the bruises and the blood, kept only what it wished to remember. His face was clean, soft around the edges, the color of early sunlight when it first touches skin. His hair—light, unruly—fell over his eyes, catching the dull light with threads of gold. His lips were parted slightly, the shape of someone caught between confession and surrender. The piercings at his ear glimmered, tiny pieces of silver that trembled when he moved. He looked like he did on the good days—the ones where laughter existed without price.
I crouched beside him. His features stayed unbroken by pain, too gentle for the room that held us. It unsettled me, this mercy my memory had offered him, to preserve him at his kindest inside a night that had been nothing but loss.
He raised his head slowly from where it had rested beside mine. His eyes, usually bright with stubbornness, looked hollowed and tender. "You know what?" he said quietly. "Since you don't hear me, this is probably going to be the last time I see you. And it's going to be about a couple of hours, maybe, when you wake up and find me here, and that will also be the last time you'll see me—the last day."
He looked at the sleeping me for a long moment, the kind of look that tried to memorize even the smallest things—the breath, the hair fallen over the cheek, the half-smile that didn't know it existed. "But if you can hear me even just a little," he said, "and maybe when you wake up can remember what I'm saying, I hope you realize this wasn't a dream. This was real.
"It's true that I don't know your feelings toward me," he continued, voice trembling but steadying itself on the next words. "I don't know if you have anything toward me. But I like to think that you do. I like to think that when you looked at me the way you did, it was out of affection, and not just brotherhood or whatever the fuck we used to call it. Because the way I looked at you—it was drenched in affection.
"I don't know when or how you became that important to me. Maybe it was the day we found you on the street. Maybe it was when I turned around and came back for you."
He reached over then and pulled another pill from the packet. He turned it in his fingers as though reading something written on its surface. The motion was slow, ritualistic. He placed it on his tongue and swallowed without water. His throat worked once, twice, then he breathed out as though something inside him had settled.
"Like I said," he murmured, "you were the only reason I stayed another day in this life. For every day you showed me that you still needed me, I told myself I had to stay. Because you were never like a little brother to me."
His voice broke on the next words. "I really wanted to get out of here with you."
He wiped his eyes, sniffled, and kept going, as if speaking could still delay what had already been decided. "I really wanted to see beautiful places with you. I wanted to do so many things. I remember we were watching TV once, and there was that food review, the one about the dish you wanted to try. I said, yeah, let's do it. And I wanted to live another day so we could."
He swallowed hard, shaking his head. "But I can't. I can't, Hugo. I can't do it anymore. I'm so tired. There's no other place that's going to fix me. And I don't want to burden you with any of that."
He leaned closer to the sleeping me, voice breaking into a whisper. "The bottom line is—I love you so fucking much. I love you. I'm in love with you."
His words spilled out unevenly, trembling. "You made my days better, that every time you smiled at me, or patted me on the back, or hugged me after a long day, everything else just… fell away. It all collapsed until only the softness of your touch remained."
He stayed there, eyes wet, shoulders shaking, his face turned toward mine in that dim half-light. His mouth quivered as though he wanted to keep speaking but had already said everything.
The version of me lying beside him didn't move. The sheets rustled once as if the memory itself breathed.
And I, kneeling beside them both, felt the room closing in—so quiet it ached, so full it could barely contain his voice.
I reached forward and grabbed my own shoulder—the body of me that lay still in that room, the me inside the memory—and I shook him hard. His skin didn't warm beneath my hand, didn't react, didn't flinch. "Wake up," I said. "Wake the fuck up!"
Nothing happened. The weight of the scene didn't shift. The air stayed heavy, stuck in the same second as before. Riley didn't look at me. He couldn't. He only went on speaking, his voice trembling but unbroken.
"I'm also sorry," he said quietly. "That I'm doing this right now, right here, while you're here. It's probably a terrible thing to wake up to." He gave a weak laugh that caught in his throat. "But you're in my room, and I've got nowhere else to do it. I can't throw you out. My head's fucking pounding, and it's really awful when the pills Eddie said would make me feel good make me feel like nothing. They make me feel like shit. I feel like shit."
He leaned back against the bed, rubbing at his forehead. The sweat on his neck had gathered in a thin sheen, his hair sticking in soft strands against his skin. He looked so alive it hurt to see.
"But Hugo," he said, softer now, "the time we kissed—" His voice caught. He blinked hard, as if trying to keep the words steady. "I'm sorry I brushed it off like it was nothing. I must've made you think I didn't care. I didn't want you to feel like you'd been tarnished with whatever I'm carrying. I just didn't want to drag you down with me. I'm not happy. I never knew how to make you happy."
He fell quiet for a moment, his breathing uneven. Then, with a tenderness that felt out of place in that room, he reached over and brushed my hair back from my forehead. His fingers were trembling slightly, moving through the strands as though memorizing them. He wiped the sweat from my face with his sleeve, his touch hesitant but careful, like he was handling something fragile.
He leaned closer, pressing his lips against my forehead. The kiss was light—barely there—but it stayed longer than I expected. His mouth lingered as though he was trying to leave behind the memory of warmth, something that could outlast him. For a few seconds, the world felt suspended, caught in the silence between his breath and mine.
When he pulled back, his hand rested against the side of my face. His thumb traced the edge of my cheek before falling away, leaving behind the ghost of a touch that I would carry long after he was gone.
Then he looked at me again, and his voice cracked as he whispered, "I'm sorry."
"I was always happy with you," I said, voice cracking. My throat ached with the sound. "I was always happy with you," I told the room that could not hear me.
But he didn't hear. He was still talking, lost inside the memory's walls, still trapped in that moment that could no longer hear me.
"I guess it won't be that bad when I'm gone," Riley said. "I'm useless anyway."
"It's awful without you," I whispered. "It fucking sucks without you."
He exhaled, long and uneven. His eyes stayed on the sleeping me. "I hope you talk to Harry," he said after a moment. "Don't treat him badly, man. That guy loves you. And don't be upset with Eddie when he says the shitty things he says. Just… take care, Hugo, okay?" His jaw trembled when he added, "I love you so much. And it makes me even sadder that this love couldn't even save me."
His hand shook as he reached for the packet. He pressed another pill to his lips—the third—and swallowed. The motion was slow, deliberate, final.
I pressed both hands to my head, my nails digging into my scalp. My pulse throbbed so loud I thought it might shatter the air. He confessed to me. He said it. He said he loved me. He had feelings for me all along, and I didn't know. I didn't know, and he chose the worst time—God, the worst time possible—to tell me that.
I turned back to the body on the bed—my body—and shook it again, harder, desperate. "Wake up," I shouted. "Please, get up! No, no, no—Hugo, wake up!"
The sleeping me didn't move. Riley's hand fell to the floor beside the empty packet. And the room stayed the same, frozen under that weak light, while my voice broke itself against the silence.
My sobs tore out of me before I could stop them. The sound came raw, unshaped, an animal breaking its own throat. I pressed against the frozen air, clawing at it like it might yield, might let me through. "Move," I begged. "Please move—wake up, just move." But nothing shifted. The bed, the floor, even the light—everything held still, fixed in that unbearable calm.
I turned toward the boy on the bed, toward myself, shouting, "Get up! Get up, please!" The words fell flat against the air, sound without weight. The world around me began to unravel, threads of color bleeding into one another, the corners of the room losing their shape. My chest constricted until I thought I might tear open from the inside.
It was as if everything that made me had been dragged to the edge and pulled apart. I felt it in the hollow behind my ribs, in the way my breathing faltered between sobs. The truth clawed through me—how I had always thought Riley's care was nothing more than kindness, protective affection, the same way one keeps someone alive out of guilt or duty. I never believed he could have loved me. Not like that.
I had never known love that spoke loud enough to echo. No one had ever looked at me and said it out loud, not without leaving soon after. The people who claimed to care for me had done so quietly, always in halves, always in the dark corners of their lives where it didn't cost them anything. And now—the one time I was loved, truly loved—it arrived ruined, confessed through dying breath. It was never whole. Riley chose to leave in the worst way a person could.
His eyes fluttered once, then stilled. His lips parted as if to speak again, but the sound never came. He shifted, dragging himself slowly to the floor, his arm folding awkwardly beneath him. His body looked unbearably light, as if it were slipping out of itself.
One white pill left, a moon he never reached.
I went to him. My knees hit the floor, and I lay beside him, our shoulders almost touching. The air between us was warm, thick with the smell of sweat and whatever the pills were doing to his body. His breathing came shallow, uneven. The light made his skin look translucent, veins tracing faint blue patterns beneath.
A thin line of red slipped from his nose. It caught the light for a second before falling onto his shirt. I reached for him, but my hands met nothing. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't wipe it away. I couldn't hold him.
All I could do was cry—louder, harder, until my throat burned and my body shook. I was useless. Every sound that left me came too late, and every movement fell short.
He lay there, breathing less and less, while I stayed beside him, drowning in the truth that love had come only to destroy both of us.
The temperature dipped half a breath; the air thinned the way it does when churches empty.
I closed my eyes. My body felt hollowed out, as though something had reached inside and scooped everything from within me—grief, breath, even thought. The exhaustion didn't creep; it collapsed over me, slow and heavy, until I no longer knew where pain ended and stillness began.
The air changed. It shifted with a low pressure that made my ears ring. When I opened my eyes, the room was gone. The smell of Riley's soap, the warmth of his skin, the trembling of his breath—gone. I was back on the floor of the hotel room. The carpet pressed against my cheek, rough and dry.
I couldn't move. My arms felt anchored to the ground, as though the grief had turned to iron inside my veins. I stared ahead, my breath coming unevenly, my chest raw from what I had seen. The light in the room looked wrong, yellow and too steady, like it belonged to another world entirely. My eyes burned, but no more tears came.
I felt anger begin to bloom beneath the weight of it all. Not sharp anger, not loud—something dull, buried deep. Anger that turned inward, gnawing, whispering enough. I was hurt, tired, empty in every way a body could be emptied.
Then Corvian's voice broke through. Smooth. Amused. Almost theatrical.
"Oh wow," he said, the syllables stretching like he was tasting them. "This is tough."
I didn't look at him. My face stayed pressed to the floor, eyes open but unfocused. My pulse thudded weakly against the carpet.
He went on, his tone lilting, casual, cruelly entertained. "The way he confessed his love to you… I almost felt bad. Sheesh." He chuckled lightly, the sound cold and effortless. "I got the chills. I can't imagine what you must be feeling right now."
I still didn't answer. My throat wouldn't let me.
He crouched down, or maybe he just leaned closer—I could hear the shift of air, the change in proximity, the weight of someone watching. "I almost, almost, want to apologize for that."
The words slipped into the room like smoke, staying long after he spoke them.
I stared at nothing. The image of Riley lingered still behind my eyelids—the tilt of his head, the softness of his voice when he said I love you. It clung to me like the scent of fire after it's gone out. My hands twitched against the floor, seeking anything that would bring me back to myself. Nothing did.
Corvian exhaled through his nose, a sound too close to laughter. The silence that followed settled thickly around us, and I wished—more than anything—that he would stop speaking, that the world itself would stop, that I could sleep forever and never wake again.
I pushed my palms against the floor and tried to rise, but my body wouldn't listen. Every muscle trembled, the air around me tilting in slow waves. When I finally managed to sit up, the world spun so violently I thought I would pass out. My throat burned with the sour taste of grief. It rose fast—sharp and nauseating.
I staggered to my feet, my knees buckling beneath me. The carpet blurred beneath my eyes. I reached the bathroom, slammed a hand against the doorframe, and fell to my knees before the toilet. My stomach twisted. I heaved until bile clawed its way up my throat and the only thing that came out was air. My body convulsed again, dragging every sound from my chest until I was coughing, choking on it.
When it was over, I stayed there, bent over, forehead pressed to my arm. My hands shook against the porcelain. The taste of acid and salt filled my mouth, my breath coming in short, uneven bursts. Then the sobs came. Not quiet ones. The kind that broke through bone.
I broke open, loud and uncontained, as if something inside had split open. Each breath felt heavier than the last, my ribs struggling to make space for it. I couldn't stop. I pressed my arm over my mouth to muffle the sound, but it kept coming, deeper, rougher, until I was gasping.
My vision blurred through the tears. The tiles swam beneath me, slick with sweat and spit. I wanted to stop, to breathe, to pull myself back together—but there was nothing left to pull. Everything that made me felt scraped raw. The bathroom filled with the sound of my crying, a sound that didn't belong to a person anymore, but to something hollowed out and grieving itself.
Corvian, 3180
The sound of retching carried through the thin walls, followed by silence, and then a cry so raw it seemed to split the air apart. I stayed where I was—outside the door, watching the faint shimmer of light from beneath it tremble with each breath he took.
There was no reason for me to linger. I had heard humans cry before. I had watched them break themselves to pieces for less than this. Yet something about it rooted me in place.
The sound should have pleased me. There was a kind of music in human agony, in the way they mourned their own undoing as if it weren't self-inflicted. For centuries I had found solace in that pattern—their mistakes, their suffering, their cycles of regret. They were predictable, almost tender in their stupidity. But this one… this one unsettled me.
Perhaps it was because Hugo had never needed corruption; he carried it already. He was born with that soft, wounded heart and sharpened it against the world until it bled on command. His sins were not extraordinary. They were ordinary ones—greed for love, hunger for recognition, the desire to be seen without being judged. He was not wicked in the grand sense, not the way we had been when we fell. His depravity was small, human, practiced in silence. And yet he kept dressing it in meaning, wrapping it in language that made it sound noble.
He never committed evil without first convincing himself it was survival. He lied with sincerity, suffered with pride, and called it purpose. That was what made him different. That was what made him terrible.
I leaned my shoulder against the wall, listening to the sobs grow quieter. There was a strange ache at the back of my throat, something close to irritation, though I couldn't name its root. The sound of his grief did not delight me the way it should have. It pressed against something I hadn't felt in centuries—a kind of recognition, an echo that I had not granted permission to exist.
If I had been crueler, I might have gone in. I might have laughed and told him how pitiful he looked, kneeling before his own weakness, worshiping pain as if it were proof of love. But I stayed. And I wondered why.
Perhaps I lingered because there was nothing left in him to corrupt. He was already devoured, already hollowed by his own heart. There was no victory in breaking what had already been shattered. Only the dull, unfamiliar ache of watching it happen again and again—and realizing I could no longer tell whether I wanted it to stop.
I couldn't allow myself to think that way. It was absurd. Ridiculous, even.
To ascribe meaning to the boy's anguish, to entertain the notion that it could reach me in any way, was unbecoming of what I was. I had walked through cities burning, listened to empires choke on their own hymns, and felt nothing but admiration for the precision of ruin. And yet, here I was, leaning against the wall of a mortal hotel, trying to quiet the pulse of something that had no right to exist.
Still, I could not unsee it—the scene he had been dragged through, the angel of death crouched beside him, tender and doomed. That memory had been gut-wrenching, more so than I would ever admit. Not because of the act itself, but because of the grace within it, the unholy softness of it all. It was unbearable to watch a creature die with such reverence for the one who would survive him.
It had been a very unpleasant encounter, I must say. Not in the way that disgusted me, but in the way that unsettled everything I thought immutable. For a moment—brief, sharp, humiliating—I had felt what I used to call pity. Not for the dying boy. Not even for Hugo. But for the echo that lingered in the room after—the one that made me remember that once, long ago, we too had loved something enough to lose Heaven for it.
I tend to avoid the moments of death. Not because they frighten me—death has never been frightening—but because of him.
The angel of death has a presence unlike any other creature in the order of things. We rarely cross paths, and when we do, the air itself turns reverent. Everything around him slows, as if creation were bowing its head. I have seen the way he moves—calm, unhurried, deliberate—as though he carries both mercy and extinction in the same breath. His silence unsettles even us, those who have long abandoned Heaven's light.
I remember the first time I saw him. The air grew thin, transparent almost, and there he was, standing over a child who died in his sleep. No trumpet, no judgment—just a stillness so complete it silenced the entire street. The angel did not look at me, though I knew he saw. He always does. His eyes are the last thing the dying see before they forget themselves. There is no cruelty in him, and that is what makes him unbearable.
We who fell know what cruelty is. We invented it. But compassion without purpose—that is his domain. That quiet grace he wears, that terrible gentleness, is what makes me turn away whenever he draws near. I do not like being reminded of what we once were.
Tonight, watching that memory unfold, I felt him again. I didn't see him, not fully, but I knew he was there—standing just out of sight, patient as the grave. When Riley's breath began to falter, the temperature changed, as it always does. I could feel him enter, unseen, folding the room into his keeping.
And that was enough. It was gutting. To witness him perform his silent ritual over a boy who had chosen to die for love—what a grotesque symmetry. It reminded me of how easily humans offer themselves to the dark, how willingly they meet their end if it feels like devotion.
So I avoid the moments of death. Not because they disgust me, but because they remind me of what remains sacred—and how far I've drifted from ever understanding it again.