Chapter 29
29
It’s storming again by the time Becca’s nurse finally convinces him to go home in the early hours of the morning. Rainwater spills over the edges of the concrete overhang and creates streaming rivulets that splatter against the pavement at the hospital entrance as Ezra steps outside, shivering in his thin jacket. He spends a few minutes just looking at it, wondering if maybe he should go and stand under one of the heaviest spots to let the water drench him clean.
Someone says his name, half muffled by the rain.
Jonathan is getting to his feet, leaving behind one of the cramped folding chairs by the valet station, and looking tired and a little worse for wear. He gives Ezra a look touched with uncertainty at the corners of his eyes and his mouth, and Ezra’s chest clenches, guilty and miserable.
Of course he’d waited. He wasn’t going to take the chance that Ezra would bolt home without taking responsibility for how shitty he’d been earlier. Ezra braces himself, his head already racing to find the right words for an apology he already knows will be useless.
“I’m sorry,” he starts, but Jonathan shakes his head, coming over to meet him until they’re close enough to talk without shouting over the rain.
“Later,” he says.
“But—”
“Later,” Jonathan repeats firmly. A promise, not a deflection. He studies Ezra’s face for a moment, and then softens. “Are you okay? How’s Becca?”
“Becca’s fine,” he says. “They’re keeping her until the twenty-four-hour mark, probably. Kicked me out because she needs better sleep, apparently.” He hesitates. “You haven’t been here all night, have you?”
Jonathan cocks one brow. “I’m your ride home,” he says. “I wasn’t going to leave you here.”
Because Ezra doesn’t owe him enough apologies. “God,” he says. “I am so sorry.”
Jonathan shakes his head. “I went home for a bit,” he says, which probably means he was there long enough to charge his phone, if that. “Aaron let me know she was being admitted overnight. But he’s going to be tied up at your parents’ house most of today, and I figured if I didn’t come and get you, I wasn’t sure how long it would take to track you down and have a conversation.” His mouth pulls up on one side, humorless. “You can be hard to get hold of when you want to be.”
They’re less than an arm’s length apart, but Ezra feels every inch like a chasm. He wants Jonathan to be the one to cross it, to fold him back up in the embrace Ezra had shoved out of earlier. Goose bumps shiver their way over his skin, from the chill of the air and the intensity of Jonathan’s eyes, and his fingers shake with the urge to rub at his arms, as if he could scratch away the feeling.
How to fix this. If it even can be fixed.
After what feels like an eternity, Jonathan sighs, pushes his fingers through his hair—it stays where it’s been shoved, a sure sign that he probably didn’t sleep and definitely didn’t shower—and says, “Okay. Let’s go.”
Ezra doesn’t move. He must have heard that wrong. “What?”
“You look like you’re going to keel over,” Jonathan says, matter-of-fact tone softened by the look in his eyes. “You’re running on fumes, and you’re clearly—” He gives Ezra that little half smile again. “You’re not doing great, whether you want to admit it or not. You need a shower, and something to eat, and something to drink that isn’t coffee or alcohol, and then you need to sleep for about eight hours.”
Ezra blinks. This isn’t being yelled at. This isn’t even being dragged into a car to be dropped home and dumped. “I—” he says, and stops, confused by the sudden lump swelling back into his throat. “I’m—” he tries again, but his voice catches.
Something unreadable crosses Jonathan’s face, and then he steps forward, closing the space between them like it’s nothing, like the impossible task of reaching out is no harder than breathing. He puts a hand on Ezra’s arm, the barest ghost of a touch.
“Hey,” he says, urgent and concerned. “Hey—Ezra, okay, you’re scaring me now.” He puts his other hand on Ezra’s cheek, firmer contact, tilting Ezra’s face up to his. “Talk to me,” he says. “Are you okay?”
Ezra has been brushing away Are you okay? with smiles and winks and sarcasm and shrugs since he was too young to even know he was doing it.
He can’t do it anymore.
The sound that comes out of him hurts, low like the dying moan of an animal worked to its limits. He crumples in on himself, doubling over as if applying pressure to his belly will keep his insides from spilling out onto the damp concrete. That horrible sound leaves him again, and again, and then he’s crying, choked, desperate sobs racking through him until there’s nowhere else to go, nowhere he can put the writhing, visceral force of what’s inside him except here.
And then arms fold around him, pulling him up, and Ezra can’t do anything except reach out and cling, fisting his hands into soft fabric that stretches out under his fingers, burying his face in a shoulder that smells of sweat and smoke and rain. He presses his face tight against the warm fabric and takes in gasping breath after gasping breath, each exhale leaving him even more breathless, choking for new air and missing every time.
“Sweetheart,” Jonathan is saying, too kindly, too gently. His voice is close to Ezra’s ear, his hands a lifeboat. “I’ve got you. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Ezra keeps crying. He can’t stop.
He cries through Jonathan walking them back to his car, bundling him into the passenger seat, and fastening his seatbelt for him when Ezra’s hands shake too badly to do it himself. He cries the entire drive home, one of Jonathan’s hands clutched in both of his until Jonathan says, “Easy, love, I have bones in there,” and then, “Okay, okay, it’s okay,” when Ezra can’t make himself loosen his grip. He cries when Jonathan parks the car and coaxes Ezra out and up the porch steps, not even suggesting that he walk Ezra up to his apartment, just unlocking his own front door with the hand not holding Ezra’s tight.
He cries, and he keeps crying, and finally the world falls away.
It’s the shock of cool water that finally brings him out of it, the pounding, high-pressure impact of the spray too steady to be rain. Ezra hitches a shaking breath, and then another, and slowly blinks himself back to awareness, connecting the picture-sound-sensation wires of his brain back to the receptors of his body.
He’s sitting on the floor of Jonathan’s shower, fully clothed except for his shoes. Lukewarm water is pooling in the tub underneath him and soaking into his pants and underwear, just cool enough to be uncomfortable. Jonathan’s wedged into the tub behind him, wrapped around him like a life preserver and humming a wordless, half-familiar melody that’s barely audible over the rush of the water, his thumbs rubbing even circles over Ezra’s arms.
“That’s a nice song,” Ezra croaks, his throat raw.
Jonathan’s hands still, and he starts to pull back, as if to turn Ezra to face him. Cold air rushes into the space where their bodies separate, and Ezra clutches at his hands, holding him in place with an embarrassing, desperate noise. Jonathan freezes for an instant, then murmurs, “Okay, here,” and gives Ezra a nudge, guiding him to turn until he’s as much in Jonathan’s lap as he can be in the cramped, narrow space, his legs folded up over Jonathan’s hips. He keeps one hand pressed between Ezra’s shoulder blades to help him balance, the other cupping the back of his head, fingers moving in a slow, steady pattern against the short hairs at the nape of his neck. Ezra lets himself be pathetic for a few more minutes, pushing his face into the familiar crook of Jonathan’s neck, even though he has to bend his own uncomfortably to manage it, grounding himself in the warmth of Jonathan’s skin.
“Better?”
Ezra nods.
“Okay.” Jonathan shifts under him, and the spray of water at Ezra’s back gets a bit warmer. It makes him shiver anyway, but Jonathan just murmurs something wordless and soothing, squeezing the hand at the nape of Ezra’s neck. “Can you give me some sign of life?”
Ezra feels wrung out and lighter, like someone has opened him up and scraped out everything infectious and festering inside him and left only healing flesh behind. He takes a deep breath, inhaling warm skin and steam and a little bit of water, and slumps a little more heavily. He has to swallow three times before he trusts his voice. “Yeah.”
“Good,” Jonathan says. He turns his head, just enough for his cheek to brush Ezra’s. “You scared the hell out of me.”
Ezra closes his eyes again. They feel swollen, too big for his eyelids. He wants to rub at them, but lifting his hands feels impossible. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
It isn’t, and they both know it, but Jonathan seems willing to give him a few more minutes of grace. His thumb traces a slow pattern between Ezra’s shoulder blades, and Ezra’s tear-soaked brain slowly catches up to the sensation of sodden clothing clinging to his skin. The tightness around his chest registers next, what he’d been assuming was anxiety resolving into the recognition of his waterlogged binder. He forces himself to sit back, dragging his eyes open. “I need to—” he manages, and then breaks off with a cough.
Jonathan looks up at him, and then down at the hand Ezra has dropped to his own chest. For a moment Ezra thinks Jonathan might get the wrong idea. “Oh—fuck. Sorry, I didn’t even think— How long have you been wearing that?”
Ezra makes a face, trying to express You don’t want to know, and shakes his head. His shirt comes off easily enough, but it takes both of them working together to peel his binder away from his wet skin. The rush of air as he takes in a full, deep breath almost makes him dizzy, and he has to steady himself with one hand against the shower wall. Jonathan strips his own shirt off, letting it drop to the floor of the tub with a heavy splat, and Ezra lets himself be gathered close again, pressed skin to skin.
The beat of the water against his back is soothing, and the steam makes him feel sleepy and safe. He wonders if he could get away with closing his eyes again, just for a few more minutes.
“Hey.” Jonathan taps his arm gently. Ezra blinks himself back to awareness, lifting his head from where he’s slumped back onto Jonathan’s shoulder and looking down at him. He’s still wearing his glasses, Ezra realizes with surprise, and his eyes are almost impossible to see behind the droplets coating his lenses. “When I said you should sleep, I didn’t mean on the floor of my shower.”
“I know,” Ezra mumbles.
“And you’re really, really going to regret it if you don’t drink about a gallon of water before you crash.”
Groaning, Ezra closes his eyes, and this time drops his head intentionally. Jonathan gives a soft, barely there laugh, and his hands fall to squeeze Ezra’s waist. “Come on,” Jonathan says. “I’ll help you.”
Ezra has never once, for an instant, deserved this man.
The feeling of drifting is gone as he lets Jonathan pull him up to his feet, helping Ezra balance against the wall as he reaches over to turn off the water. Ezra still feels thickheaded and weary down to his bones, but there’s a new alertness now, like a fuzzy satellite signal that’s just angled itself to send picture and sound into crisp resolution.
“Easy,” Jonathan cautions, catching his arm when Ezra wobbles as he steps out of the shower.
“I’m okay,” Ezra says, and is a little surprised to find that he actually means it.
Jonathan gives him a slightly skeptical look, but he lets Ezra go. Ezra doesn’t argue, just strips out of the rest of his soaked clothes and accepts the towel he’s given, then follows Jonathan down the hall to the bedroom and lets himself be bundled into a pair of sweatpants and a Henley a size too big in the shoulders and arms. He sits on the edge of the bed and drinks a glass of water, then manages to eat half an orange before his hands start shaking, nausea creeping back in around the edges of his stomach.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Not for leaving the orange unfinished. Jonathan takes it out of his unprotesting fingers, setting it back on the plate on the bedside table, and looks at him steadily. “I know,” he says. “And we’re definitely going to talk when you don’t look like you’re going to pass out.”
Ezra opens his mouth to protest, to at least insist that he give Jonathan his bed back and go home, but Jonathan just looks at him, and the argument dies in his throat. “Okay.” His head feels clearer, but he’s exhausted down to his cells, and he feels loose-limbed and wobbly as Jonathan nudges him firmly under the blankets. “Wait, my phone—I should check on Becca. And—oh, shit, Sappho—”
“Is fine,” Jonathan interrupts. “Ollie’s got her. I checked in with him while we were at the hospital. Your phone is dry and on the bathroom counter.” He pulls one of the blankets up from the foot of the bed and tucks it around Ezra’s waist. “And probably dead at this point, but I’ll plug it in for you. And I’ll text Aaron and let him know that he can call you here if Becca sends any updates to your family chat. Okay? Now go to sleep.”
He gives Ezra a firm but gentle shove, and Ezra’s head hits the pillow against his will. It’s soft and welcoming, and he immediately wants to sink even deeper. “I could take the couch,” he tries to offer, but his eyes already feel heavier.
“I’m not dignifying that with a response. And you’re not kicking me out of my bed or whatever you’re about to try arguing next. I’m coming back as soon as I get your phone and hang up your binder so it doesn’t die a sad, wet death on the floor of my shower. And then probably get us some more water because that was not enough for you to not wake up feeling hungover as hell.”
Something swoops and flutters in Ezra’s chest. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to think too much about it. “You’re too good,” he mumbles.
There’s a pause, and then Jonathan’s fingers slip into his hair, the softest ghost of a touch. “I am so fucking mad at you,” he whispers. “But believe it or not, you deserve a little good.”
Ezra doesn’t know what to say to that. He turns his face into the pillowcase, breathing in Jonathan’s shampoo and cologne where it’s sunk into the fabric. He’s dimly aware of cool lips pressing a kiss to his forehead, chaste and sweet, and then, at last, sleep pulls him under.