A Fine Line of Smoke - 2. The Change

By the end of their first term, the shift did not come all at once.

If Tommy had been asked, later, to point to the exact moment when something began to feel wrong, he would not have been able to. It was not a single incident, not a dramatic collapse or a clear, undeniable change, but rather a series of small, almost forgettable details that gathered quietly at the edges of his awareness until they could no longer be ignored.

At first, it was just absence.

Brian missing a class here and there was not unusual in itself. He had always moved loosely around rules, arriving late, slipping out early, offering explanations that were just convincing enough to avoid consequence. Teachers expected a certain level of inconsistency from him, and Brian, in his way, delivered it with practiced ease. So when he didn’t show up for a morning lecture, or when his seat remained empty during an afternoon session, no one reacted immediately. It fit the pattern they already understood.

Tommy noticed, though.

He noticed because he had grown used to the opposite. Used to Brian dropping into the chair beside him with an easy familiarity, used to the quiet interruptions, the murmured comments, the sense of presence that had become so constant it no longer felt like something separate from his day. The first time Brian wasn’t there, Tommy told himself it meant nothing. The second time, he told himself the same thing, though the thought came more deliberately, as if it required effort.

By the third time, he stopped pretending it didn’t matter.

“Where’s McFadden?” someone asked casually during lunch, more out of idle curiosity than concern.

“Probably got himself detention again,” another boy replied with a shrug.

There were a few laughs, the kind that followed Brian’s name easily, as though trouble was simply another part of his identity.

Tommy said nothing.

He kept his gaze on his tray, though he had not taken a single bite.

. . .

When Brian did appear, it was in fragments.

A glimpse of him crossing the courtyard at a distance, his stride slower than usual, his shoulders held a little tighter than Tommy remembered. A brief moment in the corridor where their paths almost crossed, but Brian was pulled away by someone else before Tommy could speak. There was always something—some interruption, some excuse—that prevented a proper conversation, and each time, Tommy told himself he would catch him later.

Later kept moving.

When they finally spoke, it was brief and strangely uneven, as though the rhythm they had fallen into had slipped just slightly out of alignment.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Tommy said quietly, the words coming out more direct than he intended.

Brian blinked, caught off guard for a fraction of a second before the familiar ease returned. “What? No, I haven’t.”

“You haven’t been in class.”

“Yeah, well,” Brian shrugged, adjusting the strap of his bag, “not exactly new, is it?”

The answer should have been enough.

It would have been, a few weeks ago.

But something in the way he said it felt… off.

Tommy studied him for a moment longer than usual, noticing things he hadn’t before, or perhaps things that had changed just enough to become noticeable. There was a faint pallor to his skin, a subtle lack of color that didn’t quite match the ease in his voice. His movements, though still confident, carried a hint of hesitation, as if his body wasn’t entirely keeping up with him.

“You look tired,” Tommy said.

Brian let out a soft laugh, dismissive. “That’s because I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t sleep as much as you do, Harrington.”

It was said lightly, almost teasing, but it didn’t settle the unease that had begun to take shape in Tommy’s chest.

“You should,” Tommy said, quieter now.

Brian’s gaze flickered toward him, something unreadable passing briefly through his expression before he looked away. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”

There was a pause.

Then, as if deciding something, Brian reached out and nudged Tommy’s shoulder lightly. “Don’t start worrying, alright? It’s not a big deal.”

Tommy hadn’t realized how visible it was.

“I’m not—”

“You are.”

Brian smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Relax, Tommy. I’m fine.”

The word lingered longer than it should have.

Fine.

Tommy nodded, though the agreement felt incomplete. “Okay.”

But it wasn’t.

. . .

The rumors began not long after.

They did not arrive all at once, nor did they come from any single source. They moved through the school the way most things did—quietly at first, carried in half-finished sentences and lowered voices, growing clearer with each retelling until they became something almost solid.

“He’s been going home a lot.”

“I heard it’s something serious.”

“No, it’s just—like, family stuff or something.”

“Then why’s he missing so many classes?”

Tommy overheard pieces of it everywhere—in the corridors, in the dining hall, in the spaces between lessons where conversations slipped more easily into speculation. No one seemed to know anything for certain, and yet that uncertainty only made the rumors spread faster, filling in the gaps with guesses that shifted depending on who was speaking.

Tommy tried not to listen.

He told himself that if it mattered, Brian would tell him.

That thought stayed with him longer than it should have.

. . .

The night Brian came to his bed again, it felt different before a single word was spoken.

There was no quiet confidence in the way he stood there, no easy grin waiting to pull Tommy into whatever plan he had come up with. Instead, there was a stillness to him, a pause that felt unfamiliar, as though he had come without knowing exactly why.

“Harrington.”

Tommy opened his eyes immediately, something in the tone of his voice cutting through the edge of sleep more sharply than usual.

Brian didn’t move closer this time.

He stayed where he was, just within reach of the faint light, his outline softer, less defined.

“Come on,” he said, though the words lacked their usual certainty.

Tommy pushed himself up slowly, studying him. “Where are we going?”

Brian hesitated.

It was brief, almost imperceptible, but Tommy saw it.

“Nowhere,” Brian said finally. “Just… outside.”

Tommy nodded, already moving.

They slipped through the dormitory as they always did, but the rhythm felt off, the silence heavier. Outside, the air carried the same cool sharpness, but it didn’t feel as freeing as it had before.

They didn’t climb anywhere that night.

They didn’t push boundaries or test limits.

Instead, Brian led him to the edge of the field, where the grass stretched out beneath the dim glow of distant lights, and sat down without a word.

Tommy followed, lowering himself beside him, leaving just enough space between them to feel intentional.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Brian leaned back on his hands, his gaze fixed somewhere ahead, unfocused in a way that suggested he wasn’t really looking at anything at all.

“You ever get tired of it?” he asked after a while.

“Of what?”

Brian gestured vaguely toward the buildings behind them. “All of it.”

Tommy considered the question, though his attention was less on the answer and more on the way Brian’s voice seemed to sit differently in the air.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I don’t think about it much.”

Brian huffed softly, not quite a laugh. “Figures.”

Another silence followed.

Then, more quietly, almost as if the words had slipped out without permission, Brian said, “I’ve been going home.”

Tommy turned to look at him. “I heard.”

Brian nodded once, his expression unreadable. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

The question settled between them, heavier than Tommy had intended.

For a moment, it seemed like Brian might answer. Then he looked away.

“Just stuff,” he said, the same words he had used before, but without the same ease. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

Tommy didn’t respond right away. He could feel the distance in it—not physical, but something quieter, something that had not been there before.

“I’m already worrying,” he said finally.

Brian let out a slow breath, his shoulders rising and falling before he shook his head slightly. “Don’t.”

“I can’t just—”

“You can,” Brian cut in, not sharply, but firmly enough to stop him. “Just… leave it, yeah?”

Tommy fell silent.

The words sat there, unresolved.

For the first time since they had started this—whatever this was—he felt like he had reached a line he was not allowed to cross.

After a while, Brian shifted, leaning back until he was lying flat against the grass, his gaze turned up toward the sky.

Tommy remained sitting for a moment longer before mirroring the movement, the cool earth pressing lightly against his back.

They lay there side by side, not touching, not speaking, the space between them filled with something neither of them could quite name.

Above them, the sky stretched out, vast and indifferent.

Brian exhaled slowly.

“I’m fine,” he said again, more to the air than to Tommy.

Tommy closed his eyes briefly, the words settling somewhere deep, where reassurance and doubt tangled together in a way that made it impossible to separate them.

He didn’t argue.

But he didn’t believe it either.

And somewhere in that quiet, uncertain space, something had already begun to change.

The change did not arrive with urgency or spectacle, and perhaps that was why it felt so disorienting when it finally settled into something undeniable. It unfolded gradually, almost politely, as though the world had decided to shift around Tommy without asking him to notice, and for a while, he allowed himself to believe that nothing had truly altered. Brian had gone home before; that much was not unusual. There had always been a certain looseness to the way he moved between school and whatever existed beyond it, slipping in and out of routines with a confidence that made it seem like he was never entirely bound by them in the first place. So when his bed remained empty for a night, then two, then several more, Tommy told himself it followed that same pattern, that it would resolve in its own time without needing to be questioned.

But time passed, and Brian did not return.

It was the permanence of it that eventually made itself known, not through any formal announcement but through the quiet accumulation of absence. His uniform no longer hung at the edge of his bed. His belongings remained untouched in a way that suggested they were not waiting to be used. The small, habitual disruptions he had once brought into the dormitory—the late creak of floorboards, the low whisper that carried Tommy out of sleep and into the night—had disappeared entirely, leaving behind a stillness that felt too complete to be temporary. It was not simply that Brian was gone; it was that the space he had occupied no longer expected him back.

The school, as it always did, filled that silence with explanation, though never in a way that felt sufficient.

At first, it was spoken lightly, as though it were a matter too minor to warrant concern. He had gone home for a while. Family reasons. Nothing unusual. The kind of phrasing that discouraged further questions by offering just enough detail to close the conversation. Most people accepted it without difficulty. Brian had never been entirely predictable; his absence, in that sense, fit neatly into the version of him they already understood.

Tommy tried to accept it too.

He told himself that when Brian returned, things would settle back into place, that whatever had shifted would correct itself as easily as it had begun. He held onto that thought longer than he should have, even as the days stretched into something less certain, even as the absence began to feel less like a pause and more like a quiet rearrangement of everything that had once felt stable.

The rumors did not begin immediately, but when they did, they moved quickly, carried through the school in fragments that grew heavier with each retelling. They surfaced in the spaces between conversations, in the lowered tones that signaled something not meant for teachers’ ears, in the casual way boys repeated things they did not fully understand but felt compelled to share anyway. At first, the words were vague—he was really sick, someone had said, not in the ordinary sense, but something more serious. Then, gradually, the language sharpened, as though the truth, or something close enough to it, had begun to take shape.

Leukemia.

The word reached Tommy without ceremony, spoken by someone who did not notice the way it landed, who did not understand that for him, it did not belong to rumor or speculation but to something immediate and personal. It did not feel real at first. It sounded like something distant, something that existed in hospitals and textbooks, not in the same world as midnight walks and quiet laughter and a boy who had once stood beside him and said not everything had to be about what happened if you got caught.

He did not react outwardly. He did not ask questions or demand confirmation. Instead, he carried the word with him, turning it over in his mind as though repetition might make it make sense, might transform it into something he could understand without feeling the ground beneath him shift.

What unsettled him most, though he did not admit it even to himself, was not just what the word meant, but how he had learned it.

Brian had not told him.

The realization settled slowly, like something sinking beneath the surface until it became impossible to ignore. They had shared so much—time, space, moments that felt, in their quiet way, significant—and yet this, the one thing that mattered more than anything else, had reached him through strangers’ voices, distorted and incomplete. It left behind a sharp, quiet ache that had nothing to do with illness and everything to do with distance.

For nearly a week after Brian stopped showing up to school entirely, Tommy kept expecting him to reappear. At first, it was easy to believe there would be some ordinary explanation for it. Suspension. Family issues. Another one of Brian’s impulsive disappearances that would eventually end with him slipping back into class late, grinning like nothing had happened.

But the empty desk remained empty.

And eventually, Tommy stopped pretending he wasn’t paying attention to it.

The call happened late in the evening from the hallway payphone outside the dormitory common room, after prep hour had ended and most of the boys had already disappeared back into their rooms. Tommy still remembered the weight of the coins in his palm, the way he had stared at Brian’s home number written inside the back cover of one of his notebooks before finally dialing it.

The ringing felt endless.

When someone finally answered, it wasn’t Brian.

It was his mother.

Tommy had spoken to her only once before, briefly, during a school event earlier that school year. Even then, he remembered her as warm, quick to smile, the kind of person who made conversations feel easy. But her voice sounded different now—quieter somehow, worn thin around the edges.

“Hello?”

Tommy tightened his grip on the receiver. “Mrs. McFadden? Um… this is Tommy. Tommy Harrington. I’m from school.”

There was a brief pause on the other end before recognition settled in.

“Oh. Tommy.”

Something in the way she said his name made his chest tighten immediately.

“I was just calling to see if Brian’s okay,” he said carefully. “He hasn’t been in class. And there have been rumors…”

Another silence.

Long enough this time that Tommy began to understand the answer before she gave it.

“He’s in the hospital right now,” she said softly.

The words landed strangely, almost without shape at first.

Hospital.

Tommy swallowed. “Is he… okay?”

“We’re hoping so.”

Hoping.

Not yes.

Not of course.

The hallway suddenly felt colder around him.

“He wanted to come back to school sooner,” she continued gently, as though trying to soften something impossible to soften. “But the doctors want to keep him here for now.”

Tommy pressed the receiver more tightly against his ear. “Can I talk to him?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. He’s probably asleep right now, and mobile phones aren’t allowed in the protective isolation room.”

The disappointment that followed felt sharper than it should have.

“Oh.”

“But…” Her voice shifted slightly. “He’d probably like seeing you.”

Tommy looked down at the floor tiles beneath him, worn smooth from years of footsteps. “Really?”

“Yes.” This time the warmth returned faintly to her voice. “You’ve always been important to him.”

The words stayed with him long after the conversation ended.

She gave him the hospital name carefully, along with directions that Tommy repeated twice under his breath so he wouldn’t forget. There were rules too. Visiting hours. No flowers. No physical contact unless permitted. Only a limited number of visitors at a time because of infection risks.

Tommy listened to every detail with the strange intensity people reserve for things that suddenly feel life-altering.

The next Saturday, he took the bus alone.

The ride itself blurred together afterward into fragments—the grey stretch of highway outside the window, the cold vinyl seat beneath him, the sound of other passengers talking quietly several rows ahead. He remembered checking the folded paper in his pocket repeatedly, even after he already knew the hospital address by heart.

What stayed clearer was the feeling.

The slow dread building beneath his ribs the closer he got.

Because until then, some part of him had still believed this might somehow become smaller once he saw it for himself.

That Brian would look tired, maybe thinner, maybe pale—but still recognizably untouched beneath it all.

Still Brian.

But by the time Tommy finally stepped through the hospital entrance, the world they had shared at school already felt impossibly far away.

The hospital did not resemble any place Tommy had ever belonged to. It was too controlled, too precise, the air filtered and contained in a way that made every breath feel deliberate. The brightness was different from the natural light of the school, harsher, more exact, as though it left no room for shadows or uncertainty. Even the silence felt altered, stripped of the familiar textures of life and replaced with something clinical, something that seemed to exist solely to hold things in place.

He had not been certain he would come. He had not known what he would find, or whether he was prepared to see it. But the need to understand, to replace rumor with something real, had carried him there despite himself.

They did not let him enter the room.

There was glass instead.

And beyond it, Brian.

For a moment, Tommy struggled to reconcile what he saw with what he remembered. The difference was not dramatic in the way he might have expected; it was not a transformation so complete that it erased recognition. Brian was still unmistakably himself in the shape of his face, in the way he held his gaze, in the quiet steadiness that lingered beneath everything else. But the details had changed in ways that made the familiarity feel fragile.

His hair, once carelessly kept just beyond regulation, was almost gone. What remained was kept short, not enough to soften the starkness of it, leaving his head exposed in a way that made him seem both older and more vulnerable than Tommy had ever seen him. His skin had lost its usual warmth, replaced by a pallor that seemed almost translucent under the fluorescent light. And then there were the three thin tubes emerging from his chest, secured carefully and leading into machines that monitored and delivered things Tommy could not fully understand.

He stood there longer than he intended, separated from Brian by a barrier that felt far more significant than its physical thickness. It was not simply a wall; it was a boundary that defined everything that had changed, everything that could no longer be crossed in the ways it once had been.

Brian noticed him after a moment, his gaze shifting slowly until it found him.

There was a pause, a brief stillness in which recognition settled between them.

Then Brian smiled.

It was not the same smile Tommy remembered. It lacked the effortless sharpness, the quiet defiance that had once defined it, but it remained unmistakably his, softened now by something that suggested effort rather than instinct. It was a gesture offered deliberately, as though he understood what it needed to carry.

Tommy moved closer without thinking, the motion instinctive, as though proximity alone might bridge what the glass refused to allow. His hand lifted before he could stop it, hovering just short of the surface, caught in that familiar, helpless space between wanting and restraint. On the other side, Brian noticed the movement and, after a brief pause, raised his own hand to meet it, his palm aligning with Tommy’s through the barrier. The closeness made the separation sharper, more precise, as if the glass existed solely to define everything that could no longer happen.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then Brian tilted his head slightly, his gaze shifting toward something beside him. Tommy followed it and noticed, for the first time, the small landline phone mounted just within reach of the bed. It felt strangely out of place in a room so controlled, so carefully managed, and yet it was there—offering something that was almost, but not quite, a solution.

Brian reached for it.

The movement was slower than Tommy remembered him ever being, deliberate in a way that suggested even small actions now required consideration. He picked up the receiver and held it for a second, glancing back toward Tommy with a faint, expectant look.

On Tommy’s side of the glass, there was a corresponding phone mounted to the wall.

He hadn’t noticed it before.

He stepped toward it, his pulse uneven, and lifted the receiver with hands that did not feel entirely steady. There was a soft click, a brief stretch of silence that felt longer than it was, and then—

“Oi.”

Brian’s voice, slightly distorted through the line, but unmistakably his.

It hit Tommy harder than he expected.

For a moment, he couldn’t respond. The sound of it—familiar and altered at the same time—seemed to settle somewhere deep in his chest, tightening something he had not realized was already strained.

Brian, lying in the hospital bed, watched him through the glass, one corner of his mouth lifting faintly. “What, you forgot how to talk?”

Tommy swallowed, forcing his voice to work. “No.”

“Good. Would’ve been awkward.”

There was a pause, filled with the soft hum of machines Tommy could now hear more clearly through the receiver.

“You look…” Tommy started, then stopped, the words refusing to settle into anything that felt right.

Brian’s expression shifted, not quite serious, but attentive enough to catch what wasn’t said. “Different?” he offered.

Tommy hesitated. “Yeah. But I dig your new hairstyle.”

Brian huffed a quiet breath, glancing briefly at his reflection in the glass before looking back. “Yeah, well. Not much I can do about that, is there?”

The attempt at lightness was there, but it didn’t fully hold.

Tommy tightened his grip on the receiver. “You should’ve told me.”

The words slipped out before he could stop them.

For a second, Brian didn’t respond.

His gaze flickered, something unreadable passing through it, before he looked away slightly, his free hand shifting against the thin blanket.

“Didn’t think it mattered how you heard it,” he said, quieter now.

“It does,” Tommy replied, more firmly than he intended. “It matters to me. YOU matter to me.”

Brian stilled.

The silence that followed was different from the others—heavier, more deliberate, as though something had been placed between them that neither of them quite knew how to move.

Then Brian exhaled slowly and looked back at him, the familiar edge of a smile returning, though softer this time.

“Hey,” he said, his voice gentler through the line. “Don’t make that face.”

Tommy frowned slightly. “What face?”

“That one,” Brian said, nodding toward him. “Like someone just told you the world’s ending.”

Tommy didn’t answer.

Brian’s gaze held his for a moment longer, then he shifted slightly, adjusting his position against the bed, the movement careful but practiced, as if he had already learned the limits of his own body.

“I’m fine,” he said again, more deliberately this time, as though the repetition might make it true. “Seriously. They caught it early. It’s just… treatment and stuff.”

Tommy’s eyes dropped briefly to the tubes at Brian’s chest before lifting again. “That doesn’t look like ‘just stuff.’”

Brian followed his gaze and gave a small, almost amused shake of his head. “Looks worse than it is.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“Didn’t say it was nothing,” Brian replied, his tone steady but not dismissive. “Just… not the end of the world.”

Tommy’s grip tightened slightly around the receiver. “People are saying—”

“People always say things,” Brian cut in, not sharply, but with enough firmness to stop him. “Half of them don’t even know what they’re talking about.”

There was a pause.

Then, softer, almost as if he was choosing his words more carefully than usual, Brian added, “Tommy, I’m not going anywhere, alright?”

Tommy held his gaze through the glass, searching for something solid in it, something he could trust.

Brian must have seen the doubt, because his expression shifted again, something more familiar breaking through.

“Hey,” he said, a faint grin returning despite everything. “I won’t die that easily.”

The words were meant lightly, almost teasing, the same way Brian had always approached things that should have been taken seriously. But they landed differently now, carrying a weight that neither of them fully acknowledged.

Tommy let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, though it didn’t ease the tightness in his chest.

“You don’t get to joke about that,” he said quietly.

Brian’s grin softened, fading into something more subdued. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Maybe not.”

For a moment, they simply looked at each other, the line between them filled with things that did not need to be spoken to be understood.

“I should’ve told you,” Brian said then, almost abruptly, as if the words had been waiting and had finally found their way out. “I just… didn’t know how.”

Tommy swallowed. “You could’ve tried.”

Brian nodded once, his gaze dropping briefly before returning. “Yeah.”

Another pause settled between them, but this one felt different—less like distance, more like something being carefully held in place.

“Next time,” Brian said after a while, his voice lighter again, though not as easily as before. “I’ll give you a proper heads-up before I disappear, yeah?”

Tommy almost smiled. “Yeah.”

They stayed like that longer than they should have, the receiver pressed to their ears, the glass between them no less present but somehow easier to bear with the sound of each other’s voices filling the space it could not cross.

And for the first time since the word leukemia had entered his life, Tommy felt something shift—not into certainty, not into comfort, but into something steadier.

Something that, for the moment, was enough.

The visits that followed took on a rhythm of their own, defined by repetition and small variations that marked the progression of something Tommy could not control. The treatments came in cycles, each one leaving its trace in ways that were both visible and subtle. There were days when Brian seemed more present, when his eyes held something closer to the clarity Tommy remembered, when his mouth curved into a version of his old expression that felt almost familiar. On other days, the weight of it showed more clearly, in the stillness of his posture, in the careful way he moved, in the quiet fatigue that lingered even when he tried to mask it.

At some point between visits, the hair disappeared completely, replaced by a clean-shaven head that altered his appearance so thoroughly it almost felt intentional, as though Brian had chosen to claim the change rather than let it happen to him in fragments. He gestured toward it once, a faint, almost ironic expression touching his face, as if to acknowledge the difference without giving it more importance than necessary. Tommy nodded in response, understanding that there were things that did not need to be spoken aloud.

What remained constant, through all of it, was the separation.

The glass did not change, and neither did the rules—only fifteen minutes of visiting time. The distance between them remained fixed, defining every interaction, every attempt at connection, reducing what had once been effortless to something carefully measured and incomplete. Tommy never grew accustomed to it, never found a way to make it feel normal, no matter how many times he stood there, no matter how familiar the routine became.

And beneath everything else, persistent and unresolved, was a quieter uncertainty Tommy could never fully set aside.

He still did not know where he belonged in Brian’s life now.

Not in the practical sense. He visited. He stayed. Brian looked for him the moment he entered the room, spoke to him differently than he spoke to anyone else, trusted him with pieces of himself that rarely surfaced elsewhere. And yet there remained something indistinct between them, some invisible boundary neither of them crossed nor acknowledged directly, as though naming it might alter the fragile balance holding everything together.

It lingered in the pauses between conversations, in the moments when Brian’s expression softened before quickly turning elsewhere again, in the strange closeness that sometimes felt almost unbearable precisely because it was never explained.

Tommy never asked what any of it meant.

And Brian, for all the things he quietly revealed in other ways, never tried to define it either.

. . .

By one of those later visits, Tommy no longer slowed outside the room.

By then, he already knew the rhythm of the place—the brightness that never dimmed, the filtered air that made everything feel distant, the quiet that carried more weight than any noise. Familiarity had not made it easier, only more precise. There was no longer any space for uncertainty, no moment where he could pretend this was temporary or less serious than it was. The glass was still there. The rules had not changed. Whatever distance had been created between them remained firmly in place.

Brian was awake when he arrived, propped slightly upright against a stack of pillows, his posture careful in a way that still felt unfamiliar. The three thin tubes emerging from his chest were secured neatly beneath the edge of his gown, branching into separate lines that ran toward the machines beside him, their quiet, steady hum forming a constant background to everything. Tommy noticed them immediately, just as he always did, and just as before, he forced his gaze away after only a second, choosing instead to focus on Brian’s face, on the details that still felt like something he recognized.

Brian saw him at once.

There was no hesitation in it, no searching glance. His eyes settled on Tommy with quiet certainty, and after a brief pause, his mouth curved into that softened version of a smile Tommy had begun to understand as deliberate rather than instinctive.

Tommy stepped closer and picked up the receiver, the movement smooth now, practiced, as though this had become the natural way for them to speak. The line connected with a soft click.

“You’re early today,” Brian said, his voice carrying through with a steadiness that sounded almost casual.

Tommy leaned his shoulder lightly against the wall, holding the receiver close. “Or you’re late.”

Brian let out a small breath that might have been a laugh. “Still arguing, I see.”

“Only when you’re wrong.”

Brian tilted his head slightly, studying him, and for a moment there was something closer to his old expression—something lighter, easier—before it settled again. “Good,” he said. “Would’ve been weird if you stopped.”

The conversation hovered there for a moment, balanced between something familiar and something newly fragile. Tommy let it sit, but the quiet weight that had followed him since the last visit had not gone anywhere. It pressed gently at the edges of his thoughts until he could no longer ignore it.

“I didn’t get to be there at the start,” he said.

The words were simple, but they carried more than he intended.

Brian didn’t answer immediately. He looked at Tommy for a moment, not surprised, not defensive, just aware, as if he had been expecting this to surface sooner or later.

“I know,” he said.

There was no attempt to explain it away, no effort to soften it. Just that.

Tommy held his gaze, something still unsettled beneath the surface. “I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be worried about,” he added, quieter now.

Brian’s fingers shifted slightly against the blanket, his eyes dropping for a second before returning. “I didn’t know either,” he said. “Not properly.”

The answer changed something, though not enough to make it easier.

“I thought it was nothing at first,” Brian continued, his voice more measured now, as though he was choosing each word rather than letting them come easily. “Just feeling off. Tired. Then they started running tests, and suddenly everything was happening too fast to keep up with. One day I’m at home, next day I’m here. People explaining things like I’m supposed to understand them straight away.”

He paused, exhaling slowly. “Didn’t feel real.”

Tommy listened without interrupting, the image forming in his mind in fragments—disjointed, incomplete, but heavy enough to matter.

“You handled it alone,” Tommy said.

Brian’s mouth curved faintly, though there was no humor in it. “That was the idea.”

Tommy didn’t respond.

The silence that followed was no longer sharp. It felt more like something they were standing inside together, even if unevenly.

Brian shifted slightly, adjusting his position with a small, controlled movement, then let out a breath that seemed to carry the effort of it. “You’re here now,” he said, lighter again, though not dismissive. “That counts.”

Tommy nodded. “Yeah.”

. . .

It became clear, over time, that Tommy was not the only one who made his way there.

The visits came in small groups, never too many at once because of the rules, but enough that the corridor outside Brian’s room began to feel familiar with faces from school—boys who carried themselves differently in this place, their usual ease replaced by something more uncertain. They spoke more quietly, moved more carefully, as though unsure how much of themselves they were allowed to bring into a space like this.

Tommy watched them more than he spoke to them.

He saw the way their expressions shifted when they first looked through the glass, the moment recognition collided with something they had not prepared for. It rarely lasted long. A quick blink, a breath drawn in too sharply, a hand dragged across the face before settling back into something controlled. They recovered quickly, almost instinctively, as though they had been taught to do so without ever being told outright.

They were boys, after all. They knew, in the unspoken way such things are learned, that whatever broke through in that first second had to be contained just as quickly.

So they straightened. They spoke louder than necessary. They made jokes that didn’t quite land, laughed anyway, and told Brian he looked fine, that he’d be back in no time, that it wasn’t a big deal. They gave him something manageable, something that didn’t require them to sit with the reality of what they were seeing.

Brian met them there every time.

He adjusted himself to match whatever they needed—lighter, easier, more familiar. He smiled, deflected, played along just enough to let them leave without carrying too much with them.

But they were not the only ones who came.

The first time Tommy saw girls from the sister school standing in that same corridor, it felt like something from a different version of Brian’s life slipping into this one. They stood out immediately, not just because they didn’t belong to the daily structure of the boys’ school, but because they carried themselves differently—more openly uncertain, less practiced in hiding it.

They spoke in softer voices, their hands clasped together or held close to their sides, as if unsure where to place them. One of them lingered just outside the room for a moment longer than the others, her eyes fixed on the glass before she forced herself forward.

When Brian saw them, something in his expression shifted again, but not in the same way it did with the boys. There was a gentleness there, something quieter, as though he understood instinctively that they wouldn’t recover as quickly, wouldn’t hide it the same way.

They picked up the receiver one at a time.

Tommy did not hear what they said, but he saw enough.

The way one of them smiled too quickly, the expression trembling at the edges before settling. The way another blinked repeatedly, her voice clearly breaking for a second before she steadied it again. And then, eventually, the way one of them turned slightly away from the glass, covering her mouth with her hand, her shoulders tightening as if she were trying to hold something in that refused to stay contained.

It did not last long.

She recovered, just like the others did, though more slowly, drawing in a breath before turning back, her expression rearranged into something that looked like strength, or maybe something that tried to resemble it.

Brian spoke to them the same way he spoke to everyone else—lightly, reassuringly, giving them something to hold onto that didn’t require them to linger in the harder parts of it. He smiled more for them, Tommy noticed, and softened his tone in a way that felt deliberate, as though he was trying to make the room less overwhelming just by the way he spoke.

When they left, they did so reluctantly, their steps slower, their glances back lingering longer than the boys’.

The corridor felt quieter after.

. . .

One afternoon, Tommy arrived just as a group was leaving—two boys from their dorm and one of the girls from the sister school walking a step behind them. None of them spoke as they passed, but the traces of it were still there, visible in the set of their shoulders, in the way their expressions had not fully settled back into place yet.

Tommy stepped inside and moved toward the glass.

Brian was already watching him, the phone in his hand.

“Missed a busy day,” Brian said once the line connected.

Tommy glanced briefly toward the door before returning his attention to him. “I saw.”

Brian leaned back slightly, careful in the movement. “They try really hard not to make it weird.”

Tommy hesitated, then said, “Some of them almost cried.”

Brian’s mouth curved faintly, though it wasn’t quite a smile. “Yeah.”

“Does that bother you?”

Brian considered it, his gaze drifting for a moment before returning. “Not really,” he said. “Just means they care.”

The word settled between them, familiar and heavy in a way neither of them needed to point out.

Tommy nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

Brian watched him for a second, then tilted his head slightly. “You didn’t.”

Tommy met his gaze. “No.”

There was a brief pause, something quieter passing between them.

“Why not?” Brian asked.

Tommy didn’t answer immediately. The truth did not come easily, but when it did, it felt steadier than he expected.

“Because you’re still here,” he said.

Brian held his gaze.

Something in his expression shifted again, softer this time, more open than before.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I am.”

And for that moment, with the glass still between them and everything else unchanged, it felt like something they could both hold onto without it slipping away.