Never Let Go
Prompt 097 - Writers Choice
Episode 409
by Severina

* * *

The soup sits cooling on the side table, barely touched.

Justin holds Brian’s hand and watches Brian’s eyelids flutter in his sleep. His own eyes burn - a combination of sleeplessness and stress and anger and the anxiety of dodging the ‘get out of my life forever’ bullet once again -- and he considers pulling back the covers and climbing into the bed. The loft smells, he thinks, of stale air and unwashed sheets and that particular stench that his sense memory identifies as ‘hospital’ even though Justin has blocked most of that time from conscious thought. He knows he should open a window and air the place out. But doing any of those things - climbing into bed, opening a window -- would entail letting go of Brian’s hand, and he’s not ready to do that just yet.

Brian winces in his sleep and Justin winces with him, feels his chest tightening and that gash opening somewhere inside, the one where fear lives, and panic, and worry. He clamps down, grits his teeth and searches for the determination, the persistence, the intense force of will that got him into Brian‘s life in the first place and kept him in it against everything life -- and Brian -- threw at him. Finds it and hangs on.

Tomorrow, he thinks, he’ll go with Brian to the radiation treatment. He’ll attend every motherfucking doctor’s appointment and he’ll make a decent meal every night and he’ll force Brian to eat every single mouthful. He’ll put up with Brian’s bitching and he’ll tell him off when he needs to. And then Brian will get better and they’ll do something fabulous to celebrate, like… like taking that trip to Ibiza.

They’ll be happy even if Justin has to fight and scream and drag them there.

He jerks when he feels Brian’s hand moving in his. Brian’s thumb kneads softly against Justin’s palm, smoothly massaging the places that ache the most. Brian’s eyes are closed and his breathing is deep, but he knows those places almost as well as Justin does. Knows them in his sleep. Knows them in his dreams.

Justin’s eyes shine, but he won’t cry. He squeezes his eyes shut and holds on tighter. Justin thinks he’ll never let go.

* * *

Feedback is always welcome
Severina

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