Reed & Roden

4 / your name

The blue-green lines across his chest are starting to show, and for an ace swimmer, that isn't a good sign.

Still, he doesn't care. Roden needs a distraction from thinking, from feeling, from hurting. Even though he knows he probably shouldn't be in the water when he can't even fucking breathe properly, he needs to save himself from drowning the last time he was here. He needs to redeem his safe haven in these ripples of blue.

But he can't even do a lap before he's suffocating.

"Jesus Christ, Roden!" he hears faintly, the sound resonating alarmingly loud but still too silent for him to reach. He's flailing, he's thrashing, he's gasping for air while dots surround his vision. It's cold. Is he out of the water? "You're so fucking stupid, breathe, come on."

Knox is the only person who can insult Roden at a time like this for being reckless and stubborn. He pats his best friend's back and yells, "Get them out of your chest, goddammit. Spit them out!"

The flowers seem to have heard him. They climb up Roden's throat until he's retching purple tinged with red.

"I told you not to do it," Knox hisses, angry but worried. His hand smoothes out the bare planes of his back comfortingly. "You just had to, didn't you? Thank God I was watching. I told you."

Roden pants for air. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I can't do this. I can't swim."

"No shit. You have training tomorrow for the championships. What the hell are you going to say to your coach?"

"I can't swim," Roden says again, slower this time as the words process themselves into his brain. "I can't fucking swim, Knox."

His best friend is grasping his face in seconds. His clothes are dripping and water droplets surround his face. "Look at me and listen, Rodes. It's been a week. You need to do something. She's killing you."

"It's not her fault," Roden whispers, heartbroken as he shakes his head. His eyes brim with tears. "It's mine."

"Get the surgery."

"No."

Knox lets go of Roden's face to stand and grip the strands of his hair. Roden knows Knox's patience is running thin. "Shit, do you think you're going to fall out of love at some point, Rodes? That's impossible, alright, it's—it's going to take months. Years. Time that you don't have because this Disease is fucking killing you!"

Roden's crying, he's crying because he doesn't know what to do and it hurts. It hurts so much.

"What do you think Reed will feel, huh?" Knox bends down and levels his face to Roden, still sprawled out on the floor. The features of his face are drawn together in anger and frustration. "She's going to want you to have the surgery, you idiot, and you can't let her live with that kind of guilt."

"She doesn't ever need to know."

"Fucking hell, you're so stubborn."

Roden's hand comes up to grip his best friend's shirt in obvious desperation. "Let me be stubborn, Knox," he murmurs. Pleads. "Let me think about what to say to Coach. Let me refuse the surgery."

Knox stares into those sea-greens.

When he doesn't find what he's looking for, he clenches his jaw and shakes his head. "Punch me in the face instead. That hurts a lot less than you asking me to let you die."

*

He met Reed back when he was young and stupid and had an infatuation on one of the seniors from the swim team in high school.