"That Place Only We Know (Part 1)"
(Five Years Later)
The great windows of the lecture hall let in the pale hush of a late New York afternoon, rows of bodies hunched over notebooks, laptops, and cooling paper cups of coffee. On the small stage, backlit by an enormous screen, a renowned director with a shock of white hair and a reputation for arrogance leaned forward, gesturing emphatically.
"But you can't faithfully adapt a novel," he said, sweeping an arm. "You must betray it. Gracefully. With purpose."
A chuckle went up across the auditorium, but one voice didn't laugh.
"I don't think betrayal is the right word," came the reply, calm and measured, yet warm at the edges.
Heads turned.
Bobby sat near the center of the room, elbow propped on the foldable desk, his fingers lightly grazing his chin. He was older now, twenty-six, but the years had burnished rather than dulled him. His face had sharpened in some places, softened in others. His body had filled in, long limbs now muscular, defined by a quiet dedication to routine. But his beauty had never been about symmetry or perfection. It was the sort that made people look twice, then not stop looking at all.
He didn't smirk anymore. The brash sarcasm was gone, exorcised like a demon that had overstayed its welcome. What remained was confidence without arrogance. Stillness, where there once had been fire.
"Oh?" the director replied, intrigued. "What would you call it?"
"Translation," Bobby said. "Or maybe reincarnation."
A few heads turned. Someone murmured, "Oh shit."
The director tilted his head, amused. "Enlighten me."
Bobby nodded, settling into himself. "Books live in the mind. Cinema in the body. But that doesn't mean the soul has to be lost. You don't owe the structure fidelity. But you owe the feeling. Otherwise, you're just using the book as scaffolding to build your own ego."
A low gasp. A few stifled laughs. Even the director blinked.
"Well," the man said, eyebrows rising, "someone's been raised on Truffaut."
"Actually, on Bergman," Bobby replied, lips curling slightly. "With a touch of Tarkovsky. Depends on the season."
The room laughed again, but the tone had changed. Now, they were watching the two men more closely, not as teacher and student, but as two directors of thought, circling each other.
The director leaned on the podium. "Then you'd argue that adaptation is sacred?"
"No," Bobby said, shaking his head. "I'd argue that it's intimate. Sacred implies distance. But an adaptation is a kind of touch. It should be personal, close. Like reading someone's diary and answering in a dream."
The director stilled.
For a long moment, nothing moved. Then he laughed, genuine, warm, and tinged with something like surrender. "I'll say this much, kid. If you ever ruin one of my books, I'll forgive you."
Bobby smiled faintly. "I'd ruin it with love."
Another round of laughter, more appreciative this time. The tension had broken, but something lingered beneath it, a quiet respect, sharpened like a blade kept in the velvet of civility.
The director turned back to the screen, gesturing. "Let's continue, before this one takes over my class."
But his voice had changed.
Not threatened.
Impressed.
The lecture ended shortly after, richer, somehow, for the quiet clash of minds.
Outside, spring and city grit, the kind of breeze that lingered on the skin like yesterday's memory. Bobby and two classmates strolled toward a nearby café on 6th, tucking themselves into a booth in the back. They talked about the lecture. About films. About how no one really knew what the hell they were doing, but everyone was trying to make it look like they did.
Bobby listened more than he spoke, his fingers trailing the rim of his cup. He liked the hum of conversation now, the way thoughts overlapped like threads. He liked his life quiet, mostly.
Then the door banged open.
"Jesus, Dean," one of the girls laughed. "You trying to break it?"
Dean didn't answer. His face was flushed, breath short, eyes wild with excitement. He jogged over, fumbled something from the inside of his coat, and dropped it on the table like it was evidence in a trial.
A flyer.
Bobby blinked. He hadn't even touched it, and already the sound in the room dulled, like water had rushed into his ears.
"There's a talk in Astoria next week," Dean said, gesturing. "Nick Morrisey. He's doing a Q&A and a signing for that new book. It hit The New York Times list like two weeks ago. Holy shit, man, the book is unreal. I didn't even realize..."
But Bobby didn't hear the rest. He was staring at the flyer, a black-and-white image of a man leaning against a bookshelf, sleeves rolled, eyes calm and unreadable. The title arched across the page like a wound stitched shut with careful hands.
A Bad Education.
By Nick Morrisey.
Bobby's breath caught, just a little. Not enough for anyone to notice.
He didn't blink.
Time bent. Or maybe memory.
Then, the smile came. Soft and private.
A ghost at the edge of his mouth.
He could feel it coming. Stirring again.
The past.
*
(Present Time)
It was 5:12 a.m.
The sterile white of the hospital waiting room had bled into blue. Blue walls. Blue cushions. Blue-tinted lights. Nick sat hunched forward, elbows on his knees, hands knit tightly together. Across from him, Bobby sat slouched in the plastic chair, legs splayed out, eyes vacant. His hoodie was pulled low over his brow, his fingers gripping the collar and tugging it up until it nearly touched his chin, shielding his neck.
The fluorescent lighting drained their faces of warmth. It made Bobby look younger, somehow, shrunken. It made Nick look ancient. The only sound was the occasional crackle of the intercom. Someone's muffled sobbing from behind a curtain. The relentless ticking of the wall clock.
Then, the door swung open.
Nick straightened. Bobby flinched.
The doctor entered quietly. Tall, dark-skinned, mid-fifties, with reading glasses hanging around his neck and a tablet clutched to his chest. He didn't smile. Didn't try to soften the news with euphemisms. He looked at them the way a surgeon might look at a wound, delicately, professionally, aware of the edges.
"You're here for Adrian Parker?" the doctor asked, his voice low and calm.
"Yes," Nick said, rising to his feet.
Bobby remained seated.
The doctor nodded and glanced at the tablet. "It was an ischemic stroke. It appears to have originated in the right hemisphere of the brain, which affected motor control on his left side. He's lost movement from the waist down, and there's also partial paralysis along his left arm and facial muscles."
Nick blinked, his body going very still.
The doctor kept speaking. "We were able to administer tPA fairly quickly, but the damage was...extensive. He's stable. Conscious. But he's not able to speak clearly yet. We'll be monitoring brain swelling, but the next forty-eight hours are critical."
Nick nodded slowly, his voice quiet. "And…long-term prognosis?"
"It's too soon to say," the doctor replied gently. "With rehabilitation, he may regain some function. But there's a possibility he'll remain paralyzed from the waist down. We'll know more as time goes on."
There was silence. Nick didn't look at Bobby. But from the corner of his eye, he saw it. Bobby, tugging his hoodie higher. Fingers twitching against the collar, like they were hiding something more than just skin. A red mark, perhaps. A bruise.
"Can we see him?" Nick asked, not looking away from the doctor.
"He's in observation right now. I'll let you know when visitors are allowed in."
"Thank you," Nick said.
The doctor nodded again. "I'm sorry," he added, and then left.
The moment he disappeared through the swinging doors, the air seemed to shift. Nick turned slowly toward Bobby, who was already standing, his gaze fixed on the floor.
"I'm gonna use the bathroom," Bobby said quickly. His voice was too casual. Too clipped.
Nick opened his mouth, but Bobby was already walking. Hoodie still high. Shoulders hunched. Fleeing, not stepping.
Nick didn't call after him. Instead, he sat back down. His hands trembled once, and then he stilled them by clasping them together again. Eyes fixed on the place where Bobby had been.
The waiting room swallowed the silence again.
It was cold inside the men's room, its silence broken only by the occasional distant footstep from the hall or the slow drip of a leaky faucet.
Bobby sat in the corner stall, perched on the edge of the closed toilet lid, his head bowed between his knees. His hands were curled tightly in the fabric of his pants, the seams near his knees turning white from the pressure. His breath was shallow. His hoodie, oversized and worn, was cinched tight around his face like a curtain. The quiet in his body was not peace, but recoil. A bracing against something larger.
After some long minutes, he stood.
He didn't flush. He didn't make a sound. He just walked out with the soft hush of his sneakers, dragging slightly as if his feet belonged to another person entirely. The mirror greeted him like a judge. He looked at it, but didn't look at himself. The sink sputtered to life beneath his hands. The water was too cold. His fingers turned red beneath it, and he scrubbed harder than necessary, scrubbed like the cold might reach deeper, like it might cleanse something the eye couldn't see.
And then he reached for the hand dryer.
Nick was there.
Still and steady, leaning with his hands in his pockets. Watching him in the mirror. Bobby paused, frozen like a deer at the edge of a road. He tried to sidestep him, but Nick didn't move. And when Nick reached out, gently, wordlessly, to pull down the fabric of Bobby's hoodie, Bobby reacted without thought. He slapped Nick's hand away, a sharp, cracking motion.
Nick didn't flinch. His arm hung where it had been, motionless, like it had absorbed the blow without judgment. Bobby's breathing quickened, flared wide in his chest.
Nick didn't move. Just waited.
Slowly, like a dog conditioned to fear the leash, Bobby's shoulders softened. The tremble in his spine eased, and his head bowed once more.
Nick reached again.
This time, Bobby let him.
The fabric peeled down with the slowness of ceremony, and then the bruise was there, dark and spreading across the pale skin of Bobby's neck, a cruel constellation of purples and yellows, angry and raw.
Nick's breath caught. His eyes narrowed, not in accusation but in sorrow. In recognition. He reached forward, and with a feather-light touch, ran his fingers over the bruise. It was a touch that said I see you without saying a word. A touch that was as much apology as comfort. Bobby's eyes shimmered. His breath hitched. And then, all at once, his body gave out. Not violently, not dramatically, but as though the thread holding him upright had been quietly severed.
He collapsed into Nick's chest.
Nick caught him easily, wrapping his arms around him. Bobby curled inward, small in the circle of his arms, his face pressed into Nick's shoulder. No words. Nick stroked his hand through Bobby's hair, over and over, the way one calms an animal in pain, or a child who has cried too long. And still, no words. The hospital air was quiet again. But now, it was a different silence. The kind that knows something just cracked open. Something true. Something that hurt.
After a long silence, Bobby's voice cracked against Nick's shoulder, brittle as old paper. "What now?"
Nick didn't answer right away. Bobby felt him take in a slow breath, then another. His palm ran down Bobby's back in slow circles, grounding him. "We rest," Nick said gently. "We go back to the house."
Bobby nodded. He didn't have the strength to argue. They didn't talk. They pulled apart and walked silently to the parking lot.
Nick drove back with both hands on the wheel, his gaze fixed ahead, the road lit gold, slicing through the dark. The car was warm, the vents humming, but Bobby shivered anyway. Not from cold but from the kind of exhaustion that seeps into your bones when grief and fear keep trading places inside your ribs. He rested his forehead against the passenger window. The glass was cool, grounding. Outside, the night sped past in blurs of moonlight and trees, the occasional flicker of another vehicle's headlights slicing across his face.
Bobby stared at his own reflection in the window, distorted by the glass, pale and hollow-eyed. He could still feel the belt's leather tightening around his neck. He could still hear Adrian's voice, whispering threats into his ear. And it hurt. It hurt more than the bruise itself. He thought about the way his own feet had moved without question, pounding down the corridor faster than he thought he could run. How his hand had gripped Nick's arm with a strength he didn't know he still had. "He needs you. Something's wrong."
He hated Adrian.
And he loved him.
He wanted to hit him, to scream into his face until the walls cracked. But then again, when Adrian had collapsed, Bobby's body hadn't hesitated. It was as if some primal thread still tethered them together, a line that pulsed with something other than forgiveness. Something like blood. What if he dies? The thought flared through his mind like a match.
What if that was the last time they ever spoke. He pulled his hoodie back up around his neck. Nick glanced sideways at him but didn't say anything. Bobby knew he looked like hell. He felt it, too. Inside out. Unwashed, unraveling.
They turned onto the narrow road that led to the house.
The gravel crunched beneath the tires. As they pulled into the driveway, Bobby looked up at the stars. They looked so indifferent. Like they'd been watching all of this happen, twinkling like it was none of their business. He wanted to believe going back to the house meant something. That maybe Nick was right and rest was the first step. But what did you do when the place you were returning to had already begun to rot from the inside?
He pushed open the car door and stepped out. The porch light flickered above them like a tired eye. He didn't know if he was walking into a home or a ruin. But he followed Nick inside. Because it was all he had left.
The door creaked shut behind them. The silence that greeted Bobby inside wasn't peaceful. The walls of the beach house, once golden with late-afternoon light, now stretched in long shadows. Furniture stood, unmoved and waiting. Bobby paused at the foot of the stairs. His eyes flicked upward. The hallway above yawned open, too still. The memory of Adrian's body crumpling, the rasp of his breath, the helpless fear, it hung. Something about going back up there, back to the space where it had all cracked open, made Bobby feel like he was climbing toward grief.
He didn't move.
Nick, already halfway to the kitchen, turned and caught the tremble in Bobby's stillness. His face softened, voice low and warm, careful. "It's okay," he said gently. "I'll take care of the room. You shower. Use our bathroom. I'll make us something to eat."
There was something sacred in the way Nick said it, an offering, not a command. Bobby gave a nod that was almost a bow. He turned and began to ascend, slow, one step at a time, his hand grazing the bannister like he might fall. Upstairs, he moved like a wraith through the hallway. The bathroom door inside Nick and Adrian's suite opened with a click. He stepped in, switched on the light. It buzzed to life, revealing his reflection in the mirror. Bobby didn't look at it. Instead, he peeled the hoodie off with slow, aching arms, the tank top underneath clinging damply to the sweat on his chest. His fingers fumbled with the drawstring of his pants.
He stepped into the shower and turned on the water.
The first spray was cold. It shocked his lungs open. But soon the heat curled around him, dragging the tension out in threads. He stood there for a long time, the steam rising, washing everything away, the hospital, Adrian's slackened face, the sound of his own screams when he called for Nick.
When he stepped out, skin pink and flushed, the mirror was fogged over. A ghost without a face. He wiped it with a towel and stared for just a second. He didn't look like him anymore. And he didn't know when that happened.
Dressed now in sweatpants and a clean white tank top, his hair still damp and curling around his ears, he padded barefoot down the stairs.
The kitchen light was on.
Nick stood at the counter, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, methodical in his movements. He was slicing fresh tomatoes, layering them over toasted bread already stacked with turkey and melted cheese. He moved with the kind of quiet intimacy that came from knowing someone, how they liked their crusts, how many pickles, just the right dab of mustard.
Bobby stopped in the doorway, leaned a shoulder against the frame.
And watched him.
There was something hypnotic in the way Nick did things. His hands, those calm, careful hands, moved like he was crafting more than just a meal. Bobby's throat tightened. There was something erotic about it, too, not in a loud or obvious way, but in the soft slide of domesticity. The way Nick's fingers brushed the rim of the plate. The way the lamplight hit his forearms. The way his hips swayed almost imperceptibly as he reached into the fridge, pulled out a lemon soda, popped the cap without a word.
He looked up. "Come. Sit," Nick said.
Bobby obeyed without thinking, sliding into the stool at the counter. His skin still glowed faintly from the shower. He pulled his damp curls out of his eyes and watched Nick set the plate before him.
The sandwich was perfect.
Every ingredient precise.
The way Bobby liked it.
Fuck.
He blinked. "Thanks," he said quietly.
Nick smiled, but his eyes lingered. Bobby took a bite, and the warmth of it hit something inside him. It tasted like safety. There was a pause. A silence between them that wasn't empty, but filled with small things. The sound of the refrigerator humming. The tap of Nick's fingers against his own glass. The way Bobby chewed slower now, watching Nick watch him.
For a moment, everything stood still. And in that stillness, the echo of pain subsided just enough for tenderness to bloom. Not spoken. Just there. Living in that quiet act of nourishment.
Nick wiped his hands on a dish towel and placed it carefully over the edge of the sink, as if tidying even this detail might make the world feel a little less ruined. He looked at Bobby, who had finished half the sandwich and was now staring at the untouched other half like it might speak.
"I'm gonna head upstairs," Nick said softly, "Clean up your room. Make the bed. Open the windows…get the air moving."
Bobby nodded, not looking up. He murmured something, maybe thanks, maybe okay. The stool creaked as he shifted his weight, folding into himself as Nick's footsteps began their retreat, up one stair, then another. Soon the soft, uneven rustle of Nick moving about above became the backdrop to the hush of the house. The plates on the counter sat in a kind of still-life tableau, remnants of care, of trying.
Bobby rose, slowly. He padded through the hallway barefoot. The house felt bigger now, lonelier somehow. Like it was listening. He wandered toward the glass doors that opened to the back porch. He slid one open. The salt air met him like an old friend with weathered hands. The wind was cooler. He stepped outside, and the screen door clapped softly behind him.
The beach stretched before him, ghostly beneath the dawning light. A gull shrieked overhead, but otherwise the world was quiet. Bobby stepped off the deck, feet sinking slightly into the warm sand. He didn't walk with purpose, just drifted. Past the warped chair. Past the overgrown dune grass, long and whispering. His mind still spun in its orbit, Adrian's face pale and trembling, Nick's stillness, the weight of the hoodie hiding the bruise.
Then, suddenly, a wet nose bumped his hand. Bobby flinched. He turned and found a dog looking up at him with absurdly kind eyes and a bright pink tongue lolling out the side of its mouth. Its fur shone like wheat, tail wagging in wide, hopeful arcs.
"Hey," Bobby whispered, startled. "Where'd you come from?"
The dog answered by plopping down on the sand at his feet, tongue still swinging, tail wagging. Bobby reached out, fingers hesitant, and petted the top of its head. The dog leaned into the touch with a grateful groan, the kind of sound that spoke of simple joys Bobby hadn't felt in a long, long time. He knelt beside it, letting the soft fur gather between his fingers, the warmth of the dog's body bleeding into his palms like a reminder that the world could still be warm.
"August!" a voice called in the distance.
Bobby looked up.
Richard was approaching, jeans cuffed at the ankle, a soft linen shirt rolled at the sleeves. He raised a hand in a wave as he neared, a calm, easy expression on his face. "He's a terrible flirt," Richard said with a smile as he reached them. "You so much as glance at him, and he adopts you for life."
Bobby stood, brushing sand off his knees. "He's sweet."
Richard nodded. "And good company. Especially when people forget how to be."
They stood in silence for a moment, both watching as August rolled dramatically onto his back, paws flopping in the air like a sunbather resigned to the weather. Richard's gaze drifted toward the house, then back to Bobby. He didn't ask anything outright. Maybe he could feel the ache hanging from Bobby's shoulders, the heaviness behind his eyes.
"Nick told me...about..." Richard threaded.
"Right," Bobby replied.
"You know," Richard said after a pause, "grief doesn't always show up with funerals and black clothes. Sometimes it comes when something's still alive…but changed. When the version you loved of a person isn't the version you see anymore."
Bobby said nothing. His arms crossed over his chest, hands tucked under his elbows. The sea breeze blew strands of hair into his eyes. He didn't move to brush them away.
"You don't have to say anything," Richard continued, softer now. "That's okay. Just hang in there. Try to survive the next hour. Then the next. And remember, sometimes a good dog is the only therapist you'll need."
Bobby smiled, a small, breathless thing, like something long buried was peeking out.
"He really likes you," Richard said.
"He's probably the only one who does."
Richard looked at him, not with pity, but a quiet kind of knowing. He didn't correct him. Just stepped a little closer and let the silence speak. "Don't be too hard on yourself," he said at last. "Most of us are still figuring out how to be in the world."
Bobby stared at the ocean. "Thanks," he whispered, unsure if he meant for the dog, for the company, or for the mercy of not asking more.
Richard nodded. Then he clapped twice. August popped up and jogged to his side, tail wagging, as if he too knew when his moment was done.
Bobby stood alone again as they walked back along the shoreline. But the quiet didn't feel quite so brutal now. He turned back toward the house. He stepped inside and paused at the threshold. He immediately felt it. Something had shifted in the minutes since he'd been gone. A warmth had crept into the place, soft and subtle, like light filtered through gauze. The kind of warmth that didn't come from temperature, but from presence. It smelled faintly of lemon and clean linens, of ocean air and toasted bread. Nick's touch was everywhere.
Bobby's eyes roamed like they always did when he was nervous. He found Nick in the living room. He blinked. Nick was shirtless, lounging on the couch in nothing but a pair of soft, navy boxers. His hair was damp from a shower, and his skin looked sun-kissed in the low light, scattered with freckles and the faintest hint of age, chest rising and falling with easy breath, as if he hadn't just spent the last few hours standing sentinel over a boy who was slowly coming apart.
Bobby froze.
Nick turned his head, his expression unbothered, and gave a slow smile. "Hey."
Bobby looked away quickly, ears pink. "Hey."
Nick patted the spot beside him. "C'mon."
Bobby hesitated.
"I won't bite, Bobby." A playful glint danced behind Nick's eyes. "Unless you ask nicely."
That earned a laugh. A small one, but real. Bobby rolled his eyes, muttering, "Fine," but he walked forward and sat carefully on the far end of the couch, keeping a polite distance between them.
The silence that followed wasn't grave. It was uncertain, expectant.
Bobby's fingers fidgeted with the hem of his tank top, tugging at invisible threads, trying to figure out what came next. "Do you…wanna get wasted?" he asked suddenly, not looking at Nick.
Nick shook his head. "No."
A beat passed.
"High?"
Another head shake. "Not tonight."
Bobby leaned back. He wasn't sure if he felt rejected or relieved. The sofa creaked slightly under his weight.
Nick tilted his head and studied him for a moment. His tone softened. "You always get this quiet when you're not sure if you're allowed to relax." Bobby made a sound in the back of his throat, something between a scoff and a shrug. Nick leaned forward, elbows on knees. "I noticed the Bergman collection in your room earlier."
Bobby's eyes flicked to his. "You went through my stuff?"
"No. Persona and Cries and Whispers. Intense choices for a beach trip."
Bobby looked sheepish. "I like the way he sees pain. It's…quiet. Ugly. Honest."
Nick nodded. "I know what you mean. His characters always seem like they're trying to scream, but they've forgotten how."
Something in Bobby's posture shifted, less defensive, more engaged. "Or they remember, but choose not to. Like screaming would make it real."
Nick smiled. "You've thought a lot about this."
"Well, yeah. It's Bergman." Bobby let a tiny grin crack through his usual seriousness. He leaned his head back, eyes to the ceiling. "He makes silence louder than words."
They sat like that for a while. Stitched with bruises and ghosts finding solace in shared reverence. The TV was still off. Nick watched Bobby in the quiet that followed, watched how the hardness in him softened in inches, not miles. He reached for the remote.
"Let's put one on," he said. Bobby turned his head, eyes curious. "Wild Strawberries, maybe?" Nick suggested. "I think it's the gentlest one."
Bobby nodded slowly.
Nick strolled through the menu and pressed play. And as the opening credits began to flicker across the screen, white text on black, sparse, restrained, they both sat back, side by side.
The film played on, flickering shadows and soft light wrapping the room in a kind of cinematic hush. Nick and Bobby sat like old friends who had never truly known each other, their bodies angled cautiously, like strangers trying on trust.
But trust, like anything holy, takes its time.
The first shift was innocent. Bobby curled slightly toward the opposite armrest, letting one bare foot drift against Nick's thigh. Just a brush. An accidental communion. Nick didn't move. He let it linger. And then he moved subtly closer.
Onscreen, Professor Isak Borg stared into the landscape of his past, his memories a montage of long-lost faces and white summer skies. Silence weighed down the edges of every word, every gesture.
Nick's hand moved slowly, grazing along Bobby's ankle, then resting there as if asking permission. Bobby tensed for a moment. Just a flicker beneath the skin. But he didn't pull away. Nick's fingers pressed gently, finding the sore points, the tender spots. He began to knead slowly, reverently, his touch circling the arch, the ball, the fragile bones beneath. Bobby's body softened inch by inch, his foot surrendering to the rhythm. Nick watched it happen, the dissolving of resistance, the quiet gasps barely drawn in the breath.
Nick looked down at the foot in his lap and marveled. Beautiful. It struck him with the clarity of revelation. Not beautiful like marble, like art. Beautiful like life. Like proof. Bobby's feet were long and elegant, calloused in places, pink around the toes, with nails clipped down a little too short. They were alive with the story of a boy who had walked barefoot through more than most, and somehow ended up here, on this couch, letting himself be touched. Nick let his thumbs trace the pads of each toe. He lingered. Worshipped. Not with grandeur or possession but with a kind of patient awe.
Onscreen, a dream sequence: the old professor stared at a younger version of himself, watching as a casket was carried through an empty street. The lines between reality and memory blurred, grief curling through it like smoke.
Bobby shifted again, his other leg draping softly across Nick's lap. Nick smiled to himself, heart thick in his chest. He looked at Bobby, truly looked, and saw the slackening of his jaw, the weight falling from his brow. His eyes had fluttered shut sometime between dreams and memory. His breathing had deepened.
He was asleep.
Nick swallowed. The end credits rolled. The music droned quietly like a lullaby, the screen bathed in monochrome grace. Nick didn't move. He didn't want to. He reached down and gently tucked Bobby's legs across his lap, one arm settling behind his back. With his other hand, he cradled Bobby's ankle, thumb stroking circles over the tender skin.
The house was silent. The ocean breathed in the distance.
And in that little room, beneath the hush of foreign syllables and the echoes of black-and-white ghosts, a new language was being born, not spoken, but felt. A language of skin and warmth. Of grief softened by tenderness. Of two men who had known too much of silence, now learning how to fill it, slowly, wordlessly, with each other.
Nick scooped Bobby into his arms like one would lift something irretrievable and delicate from the edge of ruin. Bobby stirred only slightly, murmuring half a dream against Nick's shoulder, his arms limp, his breath hot against the hollow of Nick's collarbone. There was something sacred in the weight of him, how it asked to be carried, how it allowed itself, finally, to be held.
Each step up the stairs was slow, purposeful. The house, so recently filled with the shriek of sirens and the ache of silence, now exhaled a new stillness. In his arms, Bobby felt like a relic, worn, yes, but cherished. His body, though lean and resilient, sagged into Nick's with the boneless trust of a child. Nick held him tighter.
He pushed open the bedroom door with his shoulder and crossed the threshold. The bed was made now. Gently, with the solemnity of someone performing a ritual, Nick laid Bobby down. He smoothed the blankets over Bobby's chest, his hands hovering a moment as if afraid to press too firmly. He tucked the edges in softly, like he was protecting a secret from the cold. Bobby's lashes fluttered, then stilled. A hand emerged from beneath the covers, resting loosely over the blanket like a punctuation mark in a poem. Nick stared at it for a beat, then he turned off the lamp, left the door slightly ajar, and walked down the hall toward his own room.
He collapsed onto the bed, burying his face into the cool pillow. His body ached in that hollow, emotional way, the ache that follows adrenaline and terror and tenderness all colliding in one endless night. For the first time in days, his body had the space to remember its exhaustion.
His eyes were beginning to close, sleep pulling him under like a tide, when suddenly.
A knock. Then, two more.
Soft. Hesitant.
Nick lifted his head. Another knock, barely there.
He opened the door to find Bobby standing in the hallway in his tank top and sweatpants, his hair tousled, one foot behind the other like he was trying to disappear into the floor.
"I can't sleep," Bobby said, voice barely above a whisper. "Can I...stay here?"
Nick stepped aside, and that was all it took. Bobby rushed past him like a child evading the monsters of the dark, diving into the bed and pulling the covers over himself in one swift motion. Nick closed the door behind them and returned to the bed, slipping under the covers with careful movements, as if he didn't want to scare the moment away.
They lay there for a while in silence.
Nick could feel Bobby's body curled into a tight coil beside him, his back rigid, shoulders drawn high like an animal still unsure of safety. The silence held, thick but soft, like fog.
Then Bobby shifted. A small, barely perceptible scoot across the mattress. Another. And then a pause.
Nick turned his head slightly and opened his arm.
Just enough.
Just an offering.
Bobby took it.
He slid into the crook of Nick's body like he had always belonged there. His head nestled beneath Nick's arm, cheek resting over Nick's chest, ear pressed to where Nick's heartbeat thrummed slow and sure. His body slowly melted, shoulder relaxing, legs tucking close as if Nick's body were the shore and Bobby had just washed up on it, exhausted from the swim. Nick wrapped his arm around him, his fingers stroking Bobby's shoulder first, then trailing up to run through the strands of his hair, so soft, so human, so his. He did it slowly, again and again, the rhythm lulling Bobby's breath into sync with his own.
They said nothing.
There was nothing to be said.
Outside, the sea whispered against the sand, and the wind curled against the shutters. But inside, there was only warmth. Only breath.
Only the steady cadence of Nick's heartbeat.
And Bobby, cradled against it, finally asleep.
(To be continued...)
Casual Wanderer © 2025
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