days like this : falsettos oneshots

An Early Spring Flower

"Aren't you hungry?" Marvin asked softly, reaching across the table for Whizzer's hand — Whizzer, who had only been poking at his meals with his fork for the last week.

"Not really," Whizzer lied, giving Marvin a quick smile, though it was nothing close to reassuring. "I ate before you got home — Cordelia made me taste-test a new recipe."

Marvin nodded, but he wasn't sure he could believe a word Whizzer said, because hadn't he said that last night? Certainly Cordelia wasn't having Whizzer try her food every night, she had Charlotte for that. And was her food really good enough that Whizzer would eat it all? He loved Cordelia, but she just wasn't that great of a chef — yet. Bless her soul, Marvin thought. And if Whizzer really was eating three meals a day, then why had his figure, perfectly carved over the years, lost its shape? Why was Marvin's fella so thin that he almost looked sickly?

"Are you sure?" Marvin asked, watching Whizzer's smile falter for a moment before he nodded, standing up as he did.

He stumbled, catching himself on the edge of the table, eyes on his feet, smile dropping.

"Woah, hey," Marvin said softly, pushing his chair out and rushing to Whizzer's side to steady him. "Are you sure you're alright?"

Whizzer nodded again, still not looking at Marvin. He couldn't, not with the state he was in — the state that he truly knew nothing about.

"Have you been smoking again, Whiz?" Marvin asked, fingers tangling with his boyfriend's.

"God, no," Whizzer laughed, ignoring the burning pain in his chest that came with that one giggle. "Smoking is so '79."

All Marvin could bring himself to do was breathe out a small ha — he was too worried for anything more than that.

"I'm gonna go shower, 'kay?" Whizzer said, smiling down at Marvin and giving his hand a squeeze. "I love you."

"I love you too, my guy," Marvin breathed, watching Whizzer start up the stairs, stopping halfway to catch his breath.

—

For the first time in weeks, Whizzer felt clean. His nightly showers seemed to be paying off.

Sure, he still wasn't feeling all that well, but at least he felt clean. And maybe because he felt clean, he and Marvin could do a little bit more than just lie in bed, talking themselves to sleep. It was perfect, he didn't want that to be mistaken, but... well, sex was nice too. Even if he wasn't feeling top notch.

He pulled his sweatpants on, not bothering to grab his shirt off the counter, trying to ignore to looseness of his pants as he tied them tighter.

When he opened the door to their bedroom, a smile crept onto his lips at the sight of Marvin reading a book, glasses perched atop his nose, waiting patiently for his lover. For a moment, Whizzer just leaned against the doorframe and watched his fella in awe. For a moment, Whizzer thought that maybe everything would be alright.

"Well hey, you." Marvin whispered, glancing up at his book after finishing the sentence he was reading. "Care to join me?"

"Who, me? Well, gee, if you insist," Whizzer smiled, flicking off the bathroom light — Marvin shutting his novel and setting it on the nightstand — and finding himself comfortably sat on Marvin's lap, a giggle caught in his throat. "I love you." He whispered, a hand trailing up Marvin's neck, fingers tangling in his hair.

"I love you, too," Marvin said in an exhale.

As Whizzer leaned in for a kiss and pulled Marvin's glasses from his face, Marvin figured that, for now, he could put aside his concerns about Whizzer's well-being and give into the careful touches that he'd been quietly longing for.

Over the two years they'd been separated for, things were bound to change, and change they did. Marvin just hadn't expected their sex lives to change so drastically, too, but he thought that maybe, he liked it better this way. Fingers fleeting to touch weren't just for sex anymore, but for love, too. They had a lot of missing time to account for together.

They didn't have enough time to account for their missing years, though. Later on, Marvin would wish that he'd known that sooner.

—

It had all happened so fast. Whizzer's lack of appetite and apparent weight loss had had Marvin considering that his boyfriend was suffering from an out of character eating disorder, but it just didn't seem right. For the week and a half before the 'incident' — as Marvin called it when it hurt too much to mention Whizzer by name — that was all he could think about: why Whizzer wasn't eating. He was so wrapped up in that, that he didn't notice the other red flags. And, sure, they weren't the most obvious of red flags, but he should've seen them.

So when he and Whizzer decided to go for a much needed game of racquetball, and Whizzer literally collapsed in the middle of their game, the pieces began to fall into place.

He hadn't been eating, lost weight, had a cough, could hardly move without stopping to catch his breath — Whizzer was sick, and Marvin had turned a blind eye to it.

The drive to the hospital was such an out-of-body experience for both of them — Marvin, worried sick. Whizzer, who finally realized he was dying.

He figured this was the way for him to atone for his sins.

Whizzer had never really cared all that much about the slurs people shouted at him on the streets. He let the scars from the beatings he faced heal. He found that praying didn't work, which didn't matter — he never really considered himself to be a sinner, all he was doing was loving another fella, and that couldn't be that bad.

But as Marvin recounted the eleven long nights
leading up to this day to Charlotte — He won't eat dinner, Charlotte — Whizzer found himself muttering a prayer, as quiet as he could, the cream walls of the hospital boring into the back of his mind.

I've seen this before, Whizzer heard Charlotte's now quite echoey voice say. He didn't hear the rest, though, too distracted by his own thoughts to listen to her any longer.

He rest his head against Marvin's side, eyes fluttering, struggling to keep open. Dying would be swell if it meant I could leave this hospital, he thought before falling limp against Marvin's side, succumbing to sleep.

—

Whizzer's death happened faster than Marvin thought it would.

And of course, it had to happen on the day of all days: Jason's bar-mitzvah.

Marvin's son became a man the day his lover took his last breath, and for some reason, Marvin found that get-wrenchingly beautiful — not that the love of his life had died, nothing was beautiful about that, but the day it'd happened, the meaning of that day... Marvin couldn't put it into words, but something in the back of his head told him that there was some sort of beauty in that whole thing.

For once in his life, he decided to trust his head, and he let the saddest thing to ever happen to him be something beautiful, blooming in his heart like an early spring flower on a winters day.