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Felix hates the buzzing fluorescence of the hospital. The liquid sounds. The coughing. The doctor’s office, too. He sits and sits until his butt is numb and it’s late, but everything is the same. He survives but he has to wait and wait. Glenn smiles in that beatific way he’s developed to show that he’s fine with it. Felix thinks the smile is fake and a far cry from his wry smiles and smirks from their youth. But a less petulant part of him wonders what the alternative is? For him to be in despair?
His father talks about waving his checkbook to get him higher up on the donor list, but he’s never been that type to take something from someone else. So they go to doctor’s visits and hospital trips and Glenn smiles, each time a little weaker.
It’s his turn to take him and he hates it. He hates that it’s not something tangible he can fight with his fists or his words. He can snarl at as many doctors as he likes, but it won’t change anything. It won’t match their blood types, either.
After the appointment, his father takes Glenn home and offers Felix a ride.
“If not to dinner, then how about I drop you at your apartment?”
It’s an olive branch, but one Felix snaps with his boot.
“No,” he says.
Glenn cocks his head to the side and gives a ghost of his usual smile. He almost looks like himself. Almost.
“C’mon, Fee. I’m going to try and talk dad into getting McDonald’s.”
He sees his father whip his head to the passenger seat.
“Glenn, the doctor says--”
Glenn’s cracking up and it makes Felix feel a little better, but not good enough to get in the car. He shakes his head again. He takes these moments where his brother acts like his normal self, when he’s not tired or trying to put on a brave, optimistic face and keeps them to himself. Grasping onto them until this is all over. One way or another.
No one says anything else. About what day it is.
After the car leaves, he walks away from where the specialist’s office is and turns down the crosshatch of roads that make up the city where he now lives. It’s that alien time when dusk fades fully to night where there are still some commuters bustling down the street, but the nightlife has also begun to stir. Girls in spiked heels linking arms with their friends as they weave around tired people in business casual.
He can’t name the way he feels as he meanders down the street, hands in the pockets of his coat. It’s weirdly warm for February, but he figures that it’s because of people even richer than his father punching holes in the ozone layer with their own greed.
His stomach grumbles and burns in a reminder that he hasn’t eaten all day. He had gotten the text from Glenn that morning asking him to come and the appointment ended up stretching the whole day. His father has talked about getting a machine for the house and that’s something Felix can agree with. Sitting there for hours even if Glenn insists that they can just drop him off or to come pick him up later when the waiting got to be too much.
But Glenn was always noble like that.
He wasn’t like Felix, who had rages throughout his youth. When teachers would smile at his surname the first day of school when they saw it, remembering Glenn. Honor student, star athlete Glenn who tutored people who needed it. The way their smiles would fade when they saw that Felix wasn’t at all like that. He cursed and sat in the back, offering his opinion and then getting sent to the office for it. Felix who was encouraged to skip class so he did, standing under the bleachers while Sylvain smoked, breathing in the smoke as if it were his own.
He finds a bodega, intent on getting a bottle of juice and some fruit or something. Some sort of solidarity with Glenn, who can only eat certain foods and not any of the greasy burgers or burritos from all-night stands like he used to.
It would be easy to resent Glenn, but he never has. Comparisons are other people’s problems, not theirs.
He’s long since learned that he’ll never live up to such a brother (canonized saint while still alive), so he’s sought to carve his own path. Living away from home in a tiny, post-war apartment working nights at the gay bar two train stops away where he had spent so much of his time in college. He’s Felix. Glenn is Glenn.
The lighting reminds him of the hospital. Of emergency trips there, when his father panics and calls him at his place, telling him to come. Different from the doctor’s office or the specialist center, but they’re all bad. All the same. Felix stares at the fruit on display: oranges, apples, bananas. None of it looks appealing.
He settles on a bag of spicy chips and a tall can of iced tea from the refrigerated section. It’s the same sort of meal he would eat when he was a teenager, counting out his change in the palm of his hand and going in. Waiting patiently while Sylvain flashed both his fake ID and a charming smile to get beer for them. Drinking with him on the hood of his car, just the two of them in a way that was almost a date. Almost.
Felix waits for the cashier to notice him, but he doesn’t. The guy is maybe around his age and is concentrating more on the book he’s reading. He’s snapping gum that’s the same purple of his hair. Felix is tempted to snatch it off his tongue and stick it there.
He has a boombox set up next to him, playing something deep and resonant.
“Hey,” he says.
The guy lifts his eyes from the book and stares at him.
“What?”
“I’m ready to check out.”
“I can see that.”
A playful sort of smile twists his lips. Felix doesn’t want to deal. Wants to wipe that smirk right off of this guy’s mouth.
“I’ve had a shitty day,” he says.
“Oh, my bad,” the guy says. “I hadn’t realized we’d reached the quota.”
Felix taps his fingers noiselessly on the curved side of his can.
“The quota?”
“Only one person gets to have a shitty day while the rest of us skip through the fields of lollipops, yeah?”
He scowls, in less than zero mood. And where does this guy get off? Smirking like that and drawling out sardonic bullshit as if Felix is just in a bit of a tiff. As if he isn’t worried about his brother. As if this day isn’t what it is or wasn’t what it was.
“Yeah, whatever,” he says brusquely. “Just ring me up.”
To his surprise, he does. Maybe it was something in his voice or maybe he remembered he was at work. Felix has never been the type to complain to a higher power, but this guy doesn’t know that.
“For what it’s worth, hope your night gets better,” he says and Felix isn’t sure if he means it or not.
Back out on the street, he checks the time on his phone only to see that he’s had it off. He powers it back on and starts in the direction towards home. He can walk or take the train, but he’s always hated the underground of the subway with it’s stale air and crushing doors. The weather is fine, though, so he walks.
The moment his phone loads, all manner of notifications blow it up. The device won’t stop vibrating so he puts it in his pocket until it’s done. He can imagine what every message is. Platitudes and well wishes. Messages from his friends.
It isn’t the first time his family forgot his birthday.
When Glenn was first maybe being sick. Felix had woken up to his brother throwing up and gone to school like normal. Sylvain had talked him into going out that night, using the tried and true method of all of them telling their parents they were sleeping at someone else’s house. Even Dimitri, whose eyes went wide as if the SWAT team would descend upon him if he dared to skip class or break the rules, went along with it. While they had been out, a card had arrived for him, making his parents realize what had happened. Calls were made and their plan was unraveled. They had been driven home in Officer Von Bergliez’s squad car, feeling like shit while Dimitri hyperventilated next to him.
Felix doesn’t want to look at the messages on his phone. He’d only have to respond to them. Plans, too. He doesn’t want to go out. Wants to sit in his crappy apartment and eat Takis and drink his iced tea. Happy fucking birthday to him.
It’s only eight blocks to his apartment from the treatment center. Not far at all. Work is further and sometimes he walks there, too.
Someone is sitting on the steps of his apartment building. They’re hunched over, smoking a cigarette and now Felix has to tell them that they can’t smoke that close to the building entrance.
He steps on the first, crumbling step.
“Hey,” he says irritably.
The person looks up, cigarette dangling from their lower lip. Felix’s chastisement dies on his tongue.
“Felix.”
Sylvain takes the cigarette and puts it out on the step he’s sitting on. He slips it back in its pack because it isn’t quite a stub and stands to put the pack in his back pocket.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“You weren’t answering your phone.”
“I was at the doctor’s,” he says. “Glenn.”
Sylvain nods in understanding. He’s always been the one who got it. Death. Dying. Illness.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”
Felix walks past him and takes his key out to unlock the door. Sylvain is behind him, he’s aware of him behind him, but he doesn’t touch him.
“I came to take you out.”
“What for?”
“Fee…”
He opens the door and holds it open for Sylvain. They step into the small lobby and Felix considers checking his mail before deciding against it.
“It’s your birthday.”
“And?”
This time Sylvain reaches out to place a hand on his waist. He’s always been there. Under the bleachers. The hood of his car. The back of a police car. More recently, in his bed. His family doesn’t know, because he hasn’t told them and because they’re too busy with everything else.
“I have dinner.” He lifts his bag from the bodega.
Sylvain makes a face. “That’s not dinner.”
He’s right, but Felix doesn’t want to let him know that. The first time Sylvian went to kiss him, Felix bit his nose because he wasn’t sure why he was getting so close. He thinks that’s kind of indicative of their entire relationship.
“You aren’t punishing yourself,” he continues. “C’mon. Let me buy you dinner.”
He could argue with Sylvain, but he’d likely win. He has words and charm and Felix has nothing but anger and insults. Charm wins over scowling any day. And. He wants to. He thinks he might love Sylvain. Maybe. Everything is stirring in his head and maybe it’s at least partially because he hasn’t eaten.
“Alright,” he concedes. “But I’m not getting dressed up. I’m going like this.”
He’s dressed in old, torn jeans with a sweatshirt and a denim jacket. What he found on his floor when he got the call to come to the doctor’s office that morning. In truth, Sylvain is dressed somewhat similarly only with a flannel beneath his jacket and his clothes look substantially less rumpled.
“That’s fine.”
Sylvain grins and slips an arm around his shoulders. The touch sends a strange feeling through Felix’s body as if he can’t remember the last time someone held him like this. Without meaning to, he moves closer into Sylvain’s side. He sees Sylvain smile, but he doesn’t comment on it.
“Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
Sylvain takes the plastic bag from the bodega from him and wraps the handles around his wrist.
“Your favorite place,” he assures him. Leans down to press a kiss to his temple. Doesn’t even comment on Felix’s unwashed hair. “Kiwi margaritas and enchiladas.”
Felix’s stomach churns again at the mention of food, the hunger more pronounced.. He nods, acknowledging Sylvain’s thoughtfulness without saying anything.
Sylvain doesn’t ask how the appointment went or how Glenn is, because he knows not to. That it’ll make something in him want to snap or strike. Not at Sylvain, but at the situation. At everything.
“Sylvain…” he ventures.
“Yeah, baby?”
He almost doesn’t say anything to that response, but he does. He reaches up with his free hand to link his fingers with Sylvain’s where he rests on his shoulder.
“Thank you,” he says.
“Of course. Happy birthday, Fee.”
Felix doesn’t know what to say so he just leans his head inwards as they walk down the lit up street.