A/N: We're still in the flashback from 2 years ago :')
Milo looked like he wanted to hit me, shake me, scream at me, do something to me, but he didn't. He just sat there on the train beside me with a steely glare, his hand on my thigh and squeezing tightly like I would try to run if he didn't hold onto me. His hand was hot, large, and the grip was a little painful with how tight it was but I didn't care. I didn't care at all. The mix of the weed, my definitively broken arm, the adrenaline; it was all mixing in a big vat of messed up slush in my belly and I was full.
I think my blood dripped onto the blue linoleum floor of the train, people standing far away from me with concerned looks on their faces. I smiled up at them as I cradled my arm against my chest, the incongruous expression making them step further away.
Hah. See, even strangers don't want anything to do with me.
Milo's hand tightened on my thigh and I winced, my best-friend suddenly seeming to notice what he was doing. A short gasp left his mouth, his hand moving off my leg, hovering in the air for a moment, lost. He ended up dropping it to hold onto the dangling end of my belt, like a leash, or an anchor and I smiled at that.
Milo's head finally turned to look at me when he saw the quirk of my lips in his peripheral vision, his brown eyes molten with how heated his stare was. His clean-shaven jaw was locked, and I could hear his teeth grinding, the sound grating to my ears.
"Milo..." I said slowly, my friend glaring harshly at nothing in particular as the train stopped. Milo abruptly got up from the seat, tugging on my belt. When I stood up, he grabbed onto my uninjured bicep, dragging me off the train.
I didn't say anything as I trailed behind him, watching his broad back push through the other people getting off the train, making sure they didn't bump into the injured boy he was holding onto with a vice-like grip. At this rate, I would probably be bruising on my 'good' arm, but I wouldn't mind it, not at all.
It took a short tram ride to get to the hospital, but when we got there some nurses immediately rushed towards me at the sight of my broken and bleeding arm. They ushered me to a bed, Milo removing his hand from my arm stiffly, and I whimpered at the loss of contact that grounded me, instinctively reaching out for his hand again. I let out a pained noise as my sudden movement only strained my broken arm, but I had latched onto Milo's wrist, pleading.
Please don't leave me.
Milo stared into my eyes, normally placid face still apart from a downward twitch of his mouth.
"S-Stay?" I stammered, breaking my gaze from him to look at a nurse, who nodded, allowing Milo to accompany me. They had to - I probably looked like a mess, not quite right in body and mind, and I needed Milo.
Milo, who I should have called.
That's probably why he's mad, huh.
Milo stepped closer to me, standing at the edge of my bed, close to the wall, not wanting to get in the way of the nurses and doctor who inspected my arm. Now at the hospital, with doctors and nurses drawing my attention to my broken arm, it seemed to hurt more and more. I twitched in the hospital bed as my arm throbbed, Milo's had moving to link his fingers through my good one, squeezing silently.
'I'm here,' is what his hand told me, warm in my palm.
I'm not leaving.
Everything hurt, and they gave me painkillers, which made me feel a little better. One of the nurses put an oxygen mask on my face, the plastic digging into the bridge of my nose a little, the elastic strap definitely going to create a dent in my sweat-soaked hair. Milo held my hand all the way until the doctor said that it needed surgery, and since I was 16 it could go ahead as long as I was okay with it and understood the risks. It would have been best to clue my parents in, but they were deep in some jungle or bush or somewhere not here. I just nodded, telling the doctor I understood, and they wheeled me away, Milo's hand slipping from mine.
***
When I woke up, groggy and disoriented, my aunt was in the room with her youngest child sitting in her lap. They were talking in hushed tones, my aunt telling the little girl about all of the beepy things in the room, commenting lightly on the stale, sterile smell of the room which the girl didn't like.
Death, that's what hospitals smelled like to me.
I was hardly dead right now, though, as my aunt noticed me trying to sit up, quickly plucking her child up under the armpit and placing her on the chair as she got up.
"Culver! How are you feeling? Let me call for the nurse," my aunt said in hushed tones, smoothing back the hair on my forehead which clung and probably smelled.
"Where's Milo?" I asked, voice raspy as I looked down at my empty hand. "How... How long has it been?"
"It's morning," my aunt said gently, frowning. "Milo called us last night, we only got to see you after you got out of surgery."
"Where did he go?" I asked, my aunt giving me a small smile, patting my good arm tenderly.
"He went home. His mother picked him up. He, uh, said that he'll be back later today, though," my aunt said, my smile beginning to mirror hers, though strained with discomfort. My arm didn't quite hurt, but I suspected that I had been dosed with painkillers that seeped into my veins via the drip jutting out from my skin.
Not the kind of piercing I was contemplating getting. Tongue, yes, and maybe nipples if I was feeling really adventurous, but not an IV stud. They did nothing in bed besides keep me incapacitated.
And alive, I supposed.
My aunt asked me about how I was feeling again, until the doctor and nurses came in. The surgery went smoothly, but it would take a few months to heal completely. So, for now, I had to do with a pale blue cast that was begging to be graffitied, and a whole lot of pain killers.
My aunt had to leave in the early afternoon to pick up her other children from school, my littlest cousin giving me a kiss on the cheek before they left. With how smoothly the surgery went and how I was feeling quite fine, the doctors just wanted to monitor me for a few more hours, and I could leave later that evening, given that someone could take me home.
Milo came about forty minutes after my aunt left, his face as stormy as it had been the previous night, though his eye bags were significantly worse. He looked like he hadn't had a great night's sleep, and he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, seemingly not bothered to have found anything else. He was still stupidly handsome, though, even if he looked like he hadn't slept since conception. Lucky bastard.
"Couldn't get your beauty sleep last night?" I teased as my best friend walked in, hands stuffed in the pocket of his pants. "You should get the doctors to hook you up with whatever they doped me with. Knocked me right out for the night."
"Don't joke around, C," Milo said, voice snapping like an elastic, smarting my skin. His eyes widened at his tone, and he frowned at himself, shoulders stiffening.
"Why so serious?" I asked, doing my best Joker impression while patting the space on the bed beside my legs. Milo stared at the spot for a second, before robotically planting himself there, taking his hands out of pockets to brace on either side of him. I smiled lightly, picking up the marker that I had asked a nurse to give me that had dropped onto my lap. I had been doodling on my cast before Milo walked in - quite terribly, considering my dominant hand was the one in the cast.
"Come on, you can be the first to sign it," I prompted, uncapping the marker and flipping it between my fingers like a joint, extending it towards Milo, who was silent. Glum. Angry. Scared. "Milo. Sign it."
I grunted as I moved my plastered onto my lap, Milo twisting his body around as he gingerly plucked the marker from my fingers. He ran the pad of the index finger on his left hand slowly along the rough ridges of the plaster, following the jagged lines I had shakily drawn across its surface. A lightning bolt, or at least, what was supposed to be one. It ended up looking a little like a deformed bird, which had made me laugh.
A broken dove; not quite right, all empty in the core and jagged at the borders.
Milo's hand that held the marker hovered over my cast, not quite touching down. Giggling, I turned my eyes away from his hesitant pen and to his face, about to ask him what he was planning to draw, suggesting that he should draw a penis if he didn't have any ideas.
I couldn't seem to find my words, though, when I saw his face. He was completely silent, but two tracks of glistening tears trekking down his cheeks, his eyes red. He stared at my cast, his left fingers stuck on the point of the lightning bolt-cross-bird, the tears from both eyes melding into one at his chin, a drop dangling there as his jaw shook.
He opened his mouth to say something, but no sounds came out, the tear drop dropping onto my scratchy white blanket and leaving a darkened circle on my thigh.
"Why'd you do it?" Milo whispered suddenly with a tremor of an accent after retracting his left hand from my cast to wipe his tears, though his eyes still remained glossy and red. It was eery, the way his face looked impassive as tears slid down his cheeks. My stoic friend, trying to hold it together but not quite being able to.
There were so many things Milo could be referring to, and I smiled distantly, cocking my head to the side.
"For instagram, obviously," I said, Milo letting out a strangled noise from the back of his throat. Shrugging, I flicked the cap of the marker between my fingers, watching as it dropped onto the bunched-up blankets, sliding off into a dark crevice somewhere in my lap.
"Why did you do it, C?" Milo asked again, head dropping as his torso seemed to fold in half, my friend sinking down until his face was pressed into my uninjured shoulder. I froze, feeling the wetness of his fresh tears soaking through the piss-ugly hospital gown, and I hesitated before bringing my hand up to rest on top of his head. At the weight on his crown, Milo's breath stuttered, and I was sure the plastic wristband on my arm scratched at the skin of his neck.
"I just misjudged a jump, that's all," I said softly, indulging myself to run my fingers through Milo's short hair, the tufts a little spiky since he had only cut it the day before. "Overestimated my ability to fly, I guess."
Milo let out another wordless sound, not taking his head off my shoulder. I didn't move him either, just content, momentarily, with carding my fingers through his hair. It was comforting, I think. To feel him. For a second, I thought - yes, I still love him - but that was silly. I had always loved Milo. He was my best friend. Of course I loved him. I squashed the feeling down, like I did with all of those other feelings.
"There was no way you could've made that jump," Milo said, pulling back. I sighed at the loss of the weight of him resting on my shoulder, but allowed my hand to slide limply from his hair. "You should've known that."
I did.
"I mean, it was pretty ballsy of me, I admit," I said, Milo frowning.
"So why?" Milo said, glancing at my cast again. "If you didn't make it... If you didn't catch that ledge, if you landed any differently, you could've... you would've..." Milo didn't seem to be able to make it through whatever he wanted to say, growing pale, the tormented look on his face deepening.
Maybe I wanted that. The 'could've' or 'would've'. Whatever that was.
"But I didn't," I said simply, pulling my mouth into a wide smile and gesturing to my cast to stop myself from doing something else. "Now sign it, you crybaby. Baaaaby."
Milo looked like he wanted to say something, to press me and push me, but swallowed it down, resigned but not at rest.
"Don't call me that," Milo finally breathed out, shoving my shoulder without any force, careful of my bruised body. "What do you want me to draw. C, you know I can't draw any better than you can."
"It's called abstract art, you asshole," I huffed, gesturing at my shoddy lightning bolt bird. "See? Abstract."
"You mean abominable," Milo said, rolling his eyes.
"Abstract."
"Abysmal."
"Absolutely beautiful."
"Absolutely terrible."
"It really is, isn't it," I conceded, giggling from the depths of my heart, the sound unbidden.
"Mm. Absolutely fucking terrible," Milo reiterated with a little curl of his mouth. "Okay, I've decided. You went for abstract, I'll go for realism. I'll draw a portrait of you."
I gasped, throwing my hand to my chest.
"How awfully narcissistic, having my face on my arm! I love it. Draw me like one of your French girls, Milo," I said gleefully, leaning back into my pillows. Milo just huffed, sniffling a bit, before putting marker to plaster. I just watched him, eyes trained on his absolutely terrible work of art as everything seemed to slot into place.
I'll be alright if you're here.
Never leave me, please?
And he didn't, at least not then. Not when I stole the marker off him so he would stop drawing his absolutely terrible caricature of me, drawing one of him right beside it.
And it was absolutely beautiful.