Warning: Character death
All the Days of Love
As a doctor, a few years past the brink of retirement, Kyle had spent most his life inundated, day in and day out, with the sounds of machines pinging and screeching, humming, whirring, puffing and respiring. Years of constant mechanical chatter had desensitized him to it. He'd stayed attuned to the emergency sounds, the frantic trill of blood pressure dropping, or the plaintive, prolonged cry of the heart monitor as it stopped receiving the electrically charged signs of life. But the everyday, normal sounds—those he had long learned to neglect.
But not anymore. Now he listened to every beep, every chirp, every wheeze from the machines stemming out of Oliver's skin, cords that kept him plugged into this world even as the darkness dragged him deeper down, the color fading from his skin as that certain gleam faded from his eyes. It was a temporary life they lived now, but they knew it would end eventually. They weren't holding on for nothing, for the mere chance to extend. They waited with purpose.
Oliver had someone to meet before the end.
Holly had broached the subject of induced labor first. Kyle had told her it was too early; she hadn't yet concluded the third trimester, and at her 'advanced' age, any deviance from the norm was too risky.
But even if she had been younger, or further along, if it had been the right time, or even overdue, he knew he would have raged against it—the deliberate decision that would enforce a finality on his life with Oliver. It was selfish of him. He knew Oliver's wishes. He didn't need to be a doctor to see how his suffering increased with each passing day. Which is why he kept those thoughts to himself, why he raged silently.
When he finally got the call, he felt like cursing, like screaming and pounding his fists into a wall, but kept his tone light, excited, even, so as not to disappoint his daughter.
"Pop, she's coming."
"Right now?" He could hear Holly doing her breathing exercises, working through her contractions.
"Eric's—" Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. "—driving me to the hospital now. Gotta go! See ya soon!"
He clicked off his phone and sat down next to Oliver's bed.
"Soon?" Oliver asked.
"Yeah." Kyle's fingernails dug into his leg painfully. "Soon."
He spent the next few hours by Oliver's side, gently stroking his hand, while Oliver slept on and off, waking every once in a while to turn his head and smile at Kyle, softly squeezing Kyle's fingers, as if he were the one who needed to do the reassuring, the comforting.
Kyle still wanted to punch a hole through the wall. But he only smiled back, hoping he was more of a comfort to Oliver than he felt he could be.
Finally, an orderly knocked on the door, then wheeled in their daughter, a small pink bundle in her arms.
"Hi," she said, smiling brightly.
Oliver raised his arm then let it fall back to the bed. "Hey... precious." He inhaled. The machines pinged and beeped. "And... new precious."
Kyle stood, reflexively checking the readings to make sure that everything was still okay.
"I'm fine," he heard Oliver say. He turned back to Holly and the baby. Holly looked tired, but overjoyed. His heart wanted to share in that joy, but he... couldn't. Not yet. Not today.
Holly tore her eyes away from the baby and looked up at Oliver. "Do you wanna hold her, Dad? She's not too heavy."
She scrunched her face in a familiar way that made Kyle's heart pound with anguish. She had picked it up from Oliver, a child's act of mimicry that eventually became her own. It hurt, but he cherished it too, knowing how rare and special those glimpses were. He saw Oliver in Jacob so easily, so very easily, with so many familial features passed down from father to son, but Holly didn't have the benefit of those natural traits. She had learned the quirks all on her own.
Kyle curled the backs of his fingers onto his mouth, pressing them against his trembling lips to stop the tears from flowing again. It hurt too much to cry, took too much of his time and thoughts that should have been spent elsewhere, on joy and happiness for a new life, for a new granddaughter.
He suddenly realized—this one wouldn't get the chance to learn Oliver's tics. He'd be gone, and she wouldn't have any part of him at all to call her own.
"What's... her name?" Oliver asked, his voice thready and cracked.
Holly smiled and brushed her finger over the baby's thin patch of dark hair. "Aurora Rose."
"From the..." He took a thin, wheezing breath. "...fairy tale."
Kyle wracked his brain, trying to help Oliver remember where the name came from, but Oliver beat him to it.
"Sleeping... Beauty..."
Holly laughed. "Yeah. She is, isn't she? A beauty? It seemed to fit. And I knew you'd remember, Dad. How many times did I make you watch that movie with me when I was a kid? It seemed like we were popping in the BD everyday."
Oliver's ashen face broke into a smile. "I... loved it."
Kyle didn't know how they did it. How they could talk and laugh about such things without collapsing to the floor in total misery. As if this wasn't the most wretched goodbye. It was taking every fiber of his own strength just to stay upright, to hold himself back, to not throw himself onto the hospital bed with Oliver and just hold him, hold him until they could both just drift off, together. Or to knock all the furniture over in a rage.
"Kyle," Oliver said, lifting up an arm. "Help me up."
Kyle moved to him, gingerly supporting his back, propping extra pillows behind him so that he could sit.
Oliver reached out his arms. "Now... gimme my girl."
Holly handed the baby to Kyle, who in turn placed her in Oliver's weakened arms. Those beautiful blue eyes, faded and cloudy, lit up for the first time in weeks. Oliver beamed as he took in the sight of their new granddaughter; his whole body seemed to radiate.
"Hello there... little one," he said, smiling.
And Kyle understood. Now wasn't the time for sadness or anger, for goodbyes. He leaned down and kissed the baby's forehead, then did the same to Oliver.
"She is beautiful," he said, his hand resting gently on Oliver's shrunken shoulder.
Oliver smiled up at him. "Like her... grandpop."
"Yeah," Kyle agreed, and Oliver and Holly laughed, and everything was normal and good for those few precious moments.
After a couple minutes, Kyle could feel Oliver's arms straining, and he gently lifted the baby out of his arms. Oliver protested, weakly, but they both knew he couldn't handle much more exertion. While Kyle cuddled Aurora close to his chest, Holly gingerly sat up from her chair and leaned over Oliver, hugging him with little force, then kissing him on his cheek.
"Thanks, Dad, for waiting for me. For her. It means so much."
Oliver smiled, but Kyle could see the tears gathering in his eyes. Kyle handed the baby back to Holly and called in an orderly to take them back to the maternity ward.
He kissed Holly on the top of her head. "I'll call you later, sweets."
"Okay, Pop."
Rubbing his hands together, Kyle turned back to Oliver. His eyes were closed, his face slack.
"Kyle... I'm ready," he said, opening his eyes. His voice was flat. Tired. "Can you... take me home now?"
Kyle nodded, swallowing hard.
It took more than a few minutes to detach Oliver from the machines, but soon enough he was free of wires and tubes and the mechanical noises. It was final now. They only had a few hours left, at the most. But they would be out of the hospital, and that in itself was a blessing of sorts. Kyle never wanted to see another hospital again. His life's dream had morphed into a nightmare over the past few months.
Once back home, Kyle pulled Oliver out of his wheelchair and lifted him onto their bed. He stroked his hands through Oliver's hair, letting his thumb linger on Oliver's temple. Oliver sucked in a breath, but it caught in his throat, his body not quite used to breathing on its own.
A look of panic flitted through Oliver's eyes that broke Kyle's heart.
"Kyle. I..." He coughed. Kyle gripped his hand. "I regret... so much. Every moment... every day... I wasted without you."
"Ollie, stop. Stop. It's okay." He cupped the back of Oliver's head. "It's too long ago for regrets. Don't concentrate on that. What's four years after forty? A drop of water in the ocean. Think about everything else, everything that came after, everything that erased that."
"Can't. It's staring... me down... that one black mar... the hurt... I caused... our hurt..."
"Oliver. Know this. Know this." Kyle breathed in and out quickly. "I don't regret anything. Not a single day of our life. Our life. It stopped being just mine the moment I met you, and it never let up. And I don't regret a thing."
He hoped to God that Oliver believed him, that he didn't see the doubt in his eyes. The lie.
Because it wasn't true. Kyle shared in Oliver's regrets, and added more of his own on to the pile.
Now that they had mere minutes left, every day they spent apart seemed a waste. He'd been torturing himself for weeks over all the times he wouldn't give Oliver the time of day, for some stupid reason that couldn't possibly have been worth it. All those months before they finally reconnected, when he rejected Oliver, when he didn't take Oliver back the very moment he declared his love for Kyle. All those denials, all the very important reasons for his reluctance... they meant nothing now, except that Kyle had been a fool.
And the years of separation, though tiny in comparison to the years together... it still hurt. It was as if someone had come in and stolen a part of their lives, stolen their memories, memories that Kyle would never retrieve, never be able to cherish. He hated it. Hated Oliver's parents, hated Oliver's fears, hated himself for giving up on Oliver instead of making him love him again.
The regrets wouldn't let up.
He brought Oliver's hand to his mouth and kissed it.
"I don't regret anything," he said again. He sounded believable. He wanted to believe it himself.
"Kyle. I... I let you down."
"It's in the past. Forgotten a lifetime ago."
"No... now." Oliver swallowed, reaching a hand up to stroke Kyle's cheek before letting it fall limply to the bed. "I... gave up. So scared... to live on... such a coward."
Kyle leaned down and kissed him. He pulled up, shaking his head. "You are the bravest man I have ever known, and never so brave as now."
"I... don't deserve you."
"You got me anyway. No escapin' that." He swallowed hard, holding back a sob.
Oliver's dry mouth cracked into a smile. "I always... make you... wait for me."
Kyle's laughter surprised him. "You get to wait this time. No matter where you go, I'll find you. I'll catch up." He tilted his head and sniffed loudly. "Eventually."
He'd done it before. Fought Oliver's demons and his own, cut a path and scrabbled through their thorny patches, shown resilience in the face of insurmountable odds. Giving up—it wasn't in his nature. Being with Oliver... it was all he was built for. All he could envision himself doing. Whether in this life or the next.
He pressed his palm against the corner of his eye, halting any tears that hoped to escape. Oliver's soft voice brought him back to the moment.
"I wanna... dance, Kyle. Do you... wanna dance... with me?"
"Hell yes, I wanna dance with you." It felt strange to laugh, to smile, but it also felt right. Because of all the wasted moments, all the times they had needlessly thrown away their happiness—they had to embrace it now, embrace the fairy tale's end with a celebration, to rejoice. That's just how it was done in those stories.
Carefully, he squeezed his arm behind Oliver and lifted him off the pillows. He rested Oliver's chin on his shoulder, placing one of Oliver's hands on his waist, the other he gripped in his own. They began to sway their torsos, though there was no music in the room, their faces flush together, their eyes closed. Oliver moved his head slightly and kissed Kyle on the cheek.
"We should've... danced more."
"No regrets, remember?" Kyle pressed his cheek closer to Oliver's. "We're dancing now. And we'll dance again. Soon."
He clung to his denials, to his fantasies, visions of fairy tale endings and all the ever afters they would have together. Oliver must have been reading his thoughts as his voice lilted into Kyle's ear.
"Once... upon a dream..."
Kyle bit his lip to stop himself from crying. "You gonna sing for me now?"
"Mmm. Love to."
Oliver began humming a Tchaikovsky waltz quietly, his voice halting and breaking every few seconds, but it was the most beautiful music Kyle had ever heard in his life.
Sitting on the bed, Kyle supporting Oliver's weight, they swayed together slowly, chest to chest, cheek to cheek. Kyle let the tears loose, let them stream down his face and fall on Oliver's shoulder. Oliver's own tears wet Kyle's chin, sloping down his neck and pooling in the hollow between his collarbones. He could feel them drying already, pulling the skin taut with their saltiness, but he willed them to stay wet, to stay as they were, to cling to him forever, those pieces of Oliver, his soul and his laugh and his sadness in those little droplets.
The humming petered out, and he could feel Oliver's breath on his skin growing shallow, slowing.
"I love you," he whispered. Without thinking, he added, "I need you."
He didn't mean to say that, didn't want to say that, didn't want to feel it, because it was true and he wished it weren't. He wished he didn't need Oliver, because what was he supposed to do without him? Continue living? Impossible.
Oliver's fingers gripped Kyle's hand tightly, and then the warm breaths against Kyle's cheek stopped. Slowly, Kyle released his hand from Oliver's grip and lowered him back down onto the bed, his eyes closed, his face... at peace.
Kyle leaned down and kissed his sleeping beauty. But there was no miracle for his kingdom, no lifted curse. The beauty slept on, as silent and cold as a grave.