A/N: Hi there! Missed me? Well, if you didn't, I can only hope that you've missed Adam and Lawrence… Because they've missed you! And they really want you to read this chapter now, so please ignore my rants!

3: Don't Tell Me This Can't Be Done

Lawrence prefers not to wake up these days. He has to ask his nurses every day not to give him any more drugs, because if they do, he'll sleep around the clock, even though he knows better, simply because that's a simple thing to do.

Sleeping is the momentarily bliss he gets. From the fear, the boredom, the reality he's missed so much but that he's not sure if he'll be able to go back to.

And sure, waking up is painful today, too. The itching in his healing ankle is still almost unbearable, everything hurts and the pain in his scar isn't hot and compact anymore, but sour and pricking, like something slimy and cold that's loosely wrapped around his leg.

But Lawrence notes, even when he's only half-awake, that he hasn't had any nightmares tonight.

And it's right after that that he notes the thin little arm that's still draped around his waist. Still.

Lawrence loves him. He loves him so much that even the pain disappears, everything that's cold melts away and he gets to be human, human with warm blood and living, pounding heart, but that's just for a moment.

Because when that moment is done, he has to roll over to his side, look at Adam's face, so beautiful, so beautiful with the parted lips and the pale shadows under his eyes, the gloomy light of dawn that shines through the blinders, and for some reason, that's what reminds Lawrence that this won't last.

It's just a moment.

Before the bathroom, all Lawrence did was collecting moments. Moments when the world was durable.

Moments when Diana smiled so her eyes sparkled. Moments when Allison laughed at something he said, moments when a patient woke up after surgery, whispered a faint thank you and the twenty year-old intern inside Lawrence got warm inside.

He needed to take the moments separately, because if you put all the moments together, they became his life. And that's when things got so hard.

And now, it's another moment that Lawrence has to collect, because it's a moment alone, and he needs to keep it in mind to be able to withstand what he'll have to say when Adam wakes up.

Lawrence runs his hand over Adam's cheek. A smile ghosts across his face, but it disappears quickly.

He wants his life to be one big moment from now on. He wants to lie here and watch Adam sleep, and that's it. Dealing with reality is too hard, that's why he built a whole fake world when he realized he'd have to grow up, and it was very convenient, but he will never go back to that world. It's even scarier than the reality after the mess it got him into.

Lawrence will learn how to face the hard things now.

So it's with a feeling of pride and a heavy heart that overrules it that he gives Adam's cheek another stroke before he shakes his shoulder and watches his eyelids flutter open.

Adam almost looks at Lawrence like he wonders what he's doing here. But it doesn't take long before he smiles sleepily, shifts the hand that's still on Lawrence's waist.

"Hey, man," he grumbles and finally takes his hand away.

Lawrence is still heartbroken, sure, but he does have to smile when Adam does.

"Hey."

Pause.

"Do the cops know you're here?"

Adam chuckles wearily and uses his now free hand to rub against his eye.

"You don't think I got out of there on my own, do you?"

Lawrence chuckles inwardly, tries not to move closer to Adam but does it anyway.

"No, I mean… Do they know that you're here? With… With me?"

Adam shakes his head almost straight away.

"No. They don't."

Lawrence nods slowly.

"Adam…"

The letters in the words get thicker and thicker, heavier and heavier until they're flat on Lawrence's tongue.

It's so hard to say. So hard to make himself believe.

So hard to imagine a life where he can be around Adam, looking at him without touching him, strengthen the barricade he just wants to tear down. More than anything in the world right now.

"Adam, you know that we can't…"

Another pause. Adam doesn't look as shocked as Lawrence thought he would.

"We can't keep… Keep doing this."

Adam nods now. Smiles faintly, and it's just a brief flicker of his gaze that displays any kind of reluctance. Maybe he already knew.

"Yeah. I know."

"I mean…" Lawrence goes on and puts his hand on Adam's waist without even noticing it. "In the bathroom… I know that we had to do it, it was… It was basically unavoidable, but it can't happen again, I… I want to make it work. With Allison. She deserves that much."

Adam nods during his entire rant. And he still doesn't look sad at all.

Adam is so smart. He'd never admit it, but he is. He knew all along that Lawrence would never be able to keep things up with him, never be brave enough to go through hell and not having the safe world he built for himself to go back to. Even if that's the world he should be avoiding right now.

"I know. It's okay."

"Really?" Lawrence says anxiously.

Adam doesn't blame him at all, but the guilt is so big it's like a cold ball in his stomach.

Adam chuckles carefreely.

"Of course! You have a wife and kid, for God's sake, and in there… We were train wrecks, both of us. We needed it, right?"

Lawrence blushes briefly at the memory.

"Yeah. So… No hard feelings?"

Adam smiles, with something warm and aching in the corners of his mouth that Lawrence hasn't seen there before.

"None."

"And…" Lawrence realizes his hand is on Adam's waist, caresses it slowly. "We're still… Friends? I know it's not under the best circumstances, but…"

Adam's smile gets wider. But the aching thing doesn't go away.

"Of course."

"Okay," Lawrence says in a nervous exhalation. "I just… I don't want…"

"No, no," Adam interrupts him with a waving hand. "I don't think we'd even be able to… You know… Break things up."

So insecure, both of them. Their words make it halfway across the air between them, trembling and fragile, wither apart before any of them even get the context out of them.

That's all they dare to deliver. Because they've just established that they can't give each other all they want to give.

Because if Lawrence actually told Adam that he was terrified that he would lose him, if he would tell him how much he feared the moment when he had to tell him that they can't be together this way, he wouldn't be able to stay away from him. He would grab those slim shoulders, pull Adam up against him and pour his dread and his nervous despair into him with lips, teeth and tongue.

And if Adam told Lawrence about the only thing keeping him sane when he was in the bathroom alone, the name that shone like a flashing sign on the Broadway streets of horror, about the memories that tortured him because he wasn't sure if he'd be able to relive them and were his life support at the same time, he wouldn't be able to act untouched. He would break down into Lawrence's chest, cry like a baby and beg, beg in a way he's sworn he never would.

So Adam and Lawrence try to keep away from each other. Try to block the memories out, memories of thungry lips and searching tongues, a moment of humanity in a place that tried to squeeze all of that out of them, like drops of blood on harshly white snow.

But they don't think about the fact that they're trying to do the exact same thing right now. Suppress something unavoidable, fight the most basic feelings you can have as a human: Showing love to the ones you feel deserve it.

And they forget that it will probably work as well now as it did in the bathroom.

"So…" Lawrence goes on and tries to keep his voice together. "How are you? How are you… Dealing with it all?"

Adam's gaze flutters down again. Just like the last time Lawrence brought his mind to something he didn't want to think about.

The sleep gave him some bliss, too. Not as much as Lawrence's warmth and his tired sobbing did, but still.

And now, that he has to think about it again, he doesn't even have to think about it all, doesn't have to think about the stabbing pain in his guts, the hole in his shoulder that almost seemed to grow as the infection in it spread, the parched tongue that stuck to the roof of his mouth after days or hours or weeks without water.

That's what he's thinking about. And he knows that's just half of it.

So to answer Lawrence's question, Adam has to take the very simplest words he can think of to keep his thoughts this way.

"I'm scared."

Lawrence nods.

"All the time?"

Adam sighs.

"In there… In there I was," he says, not sure about what he's allowed to say to keep them from falling too deep. "I wasn't sure if you'd made it out, and that scared the hell out of me. But… Right now I'm not. Not with…"

He stops talking abruptly. The you that was supposed to be in the end of that sentence hangs between them.

It's completely useless to say it when Lawrence has just established that they can't be together that way, because he can literally feel his chest splitting open, gaping wider and wider as he talks, before his very soul is exposed, completely in Lawrence's hands, and it's scary, but he likes it.

Likes that for a second, both he and Lawrence are as vulnerable as they won't be able to be with anyone else.

It's like they belong to each other.

Before the bathroom, Lawrence collected moments. Moments when the world was durable, because if he took all the moments all together, they became his life. And that's when things got so hard.

And he likes to believe that he learned something from being in the bathroom. The thought that it was all in vain is almost too much for him.

But still, when he can't keep himself for reaching out and caressing Adam's cheek, and when Adam can't keep himself from closing his eyes and drowning in the feeling, he also can't block out the feeling that it's moments like these he's going to start collecting now. Even though there can't be any.

Hehe… I love it when they're in denial! Just because it's so stupid that they even try! :) Anyway, please review!