Chapter 343: Desire pt 2

Nick

"Sir," the second officer said, leaning against the foot of my bed. "The pattern of the bruising suggests multiple blunt-force impacts from a closed fist. A fall doesn’t split a lip like that."

"The pattern of the injuries," I said, my voice dropping into the cold, authoritative tone I used when a medical student questioned an incision line, "is entirely consistent with a fall against a rusty iron drainage pipe. I fell on my face, officer. It happens to the best of us."

Noah was standing right beside the bed, the confusion and anger practically radiating off his skin. "Nick—"

"Don’t," I snapped, not looking at him.

"Someone clearly did this to you—"

"Noah," I said, using the exact tone that had ended every argument we had ever had since childhood. It was the tone that meant I was done listening.

The officers looked at each other, that silent, universal exchange between cops who knew they were being lied to but lacked the paperwork to do anything about it. "If you change your mind about filing a report, doctor..."

"I won’t," I said.

They left the room, the heavy door clicking shut behind them, leaving the space suddenly much quieter and significantly more tense.

"What is actually wrong with you?" Noah demanded, his voice shaking as he stepped directly into my line of sight.

"Quite a lot, apparently," I muttered, gesturing vaguely toward the IV bag dripping saline into my forearm. "Given the state of the medical chart."

"That is not what I mean and you know it!" Noah shouted, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "I called Mum and Dad. They’re on their way here right now."

The remaining drop of goodwill in my system evaporated instantly. A cold, hard knot tightened in my stomach. "You what?"

"You were unconscious for two full days, Nick!"

"I don’t care—"

"That’s not my problem!" Noah yelled back, his face flushing red. "You were completely checked out! And I had no idea my brother was wheeled in with his face bashed in!"

"I do not need them here," I said, each syllable hard and precise. "And I certainly do not need you managing my life."

"Oh, good for you," Noah said, and something in his voice snapped, the long-suffering patience he usually kept intact finally reaching its absolute limit.

"Because I didn’t do it for you, Nick. I didn’t call them for your benefit. I did it because I was terrified. Which, clearly, is a concept you can’t even comprehend."

"Noah, don’t—"

"No!" Noah shouted, pulling himself up to his full height. He looked larger than usual, his shoulders square with the weight of someone who had been swallowing every single slight for years and had just decided to spit them all out at once.

"No, I’m talking. I rushed up to this floor because a nurse told me my brother had collapsed. My brother. The same person who has spent the last fifteen years making sure I feel like an absolute failure. The person who took my girlfriend without even asking, who has called me every pathetic, small name he could think of since we were kids. And I still came running. Because that’s what family does."

He stopped, his chest heaving as he let out a long, ragged breath. His voice dropped into something quiet and small, which somehow hit much harder than the shouting. "I genuinely don’t know why I still bother with you."

The response formed In my brain instantly, sharp, targeted, and designed to find the exact weakness in his argument. It was the habit of a lifetime, the defense mechanism I used to keep him from ever seeing that he had actually touched a nerve.

I opened my mouth to deliver it.

The door didn’t just open; it practically exploded inward against the rubber stopper.

What entered the room wasn’t a person so much as a loud, brightly colored event.

Cyan stood in the doorway.

His hair was a wild, messy halo around his head, and he was wearing a pair of massive, translucent pink sunglasses that matched absolutely nothing in the room while simultaneously matching everything about him.

He was completely operational... rings on nearly every finger, a chain glinting against his dark collar, and his earrings clicking together as he moved.

Behind him, the same old regal looking man from before stepped into the room, looking entirely unbothered by the chaos.

He was carrying a bouquet of genuinely enormous, expensive-looking flowers in one hand and a wicker basket of completely unclear contents in the other.

His expression was that of a man who had performed this exact routine in multiple hospitals across the continent and simply regarded it as part of his salary.

Cyan took three steps into the room, his eyes moving between Noah and me, instantly capturing the high-voltage energy of two people who had been approximately four seconds away from saying something completely irreversible.

"Did I happen to arrive at a horribly bad time?" Cyan asked. He used that specific, airy tone that made it perfectly clear he knew exactly how bad the timing was, and that he was deeply enjoying it anyway.

My mouth closed instantly. Every single instinct in my body completely reorganized itself around the single fact that he was standing five feet away from me, fully present, fully himself, and looking directly into my face.

Without even making the conscious decision to do it, I immediately adjusted my posture in the bed, pulling my shoulders back. It was utterly humiliating, and I couldn’t stop myself from doing it.

Noah turned around, his leftover anger instantly short-circuiting into pure confusion. "Cyan?"

Cyan didn’t answer him, instead he launched himself forward.

Before Noah could even take a defensive step back, Cyan threw both arms around his neck. The hug was total, unreserved, and forceful enough to lift Noah’s sneakers slightly off the linoleum floor.

"Oh my GOD!" Cyan shrieked straight into Noah’s hair, squeezing him until Noah’s ribs cracked audibly. "You are SO incredibly CUTE! I have missed your little face so much! You look like a little—" He pressed his cheek hard against the top of Noah’s head, muffling his own voice. "A perfect little THING!"

"What—" Noah wheezed, his arms pinned to his sides as his feet dangled. "What—I can’t breathe—Cyan—"

Cyan pulled back just enough to catch Noah’s face between both of his ring-covered hands, squishing his cheeks together until Noah’s lips puckered like a fish.

"I have been deprived of this specific face for far too long," Cyan declared, examining him with the intense, obsessive scrutiny of someone assessing a very rare, highly beloved pet. "Still completely perfect. Incredible. How do you do it?"

"I don’t—" Noah gasped, his face still trapped in Cyan’s palms. "What are you doing here?"

I watched the entire display from the bed, my jaw tightening until the joint behind my ear throbbed with a dull, white-hot ache.

Lovely, my internal narration noted with cold venom. He is currently mauling my brother. In my hospital room. Right in front of my face. This is perfectly fine.

Noah finally found his footing, smoothing down his shirt while his eyes darted frantically between Cyan and me, the questions visibly assembling themselves in his expression like a massive pileup on the highway.

"Cassian’s private ward is three floors up." Noah stammered, pointing a finger toward the hallway.

"I am fully aware of where Cassian is," Cyan said, his tone shifting just a fraction, a tiny pause catching in his voice. Then he looked back at me, his sunglasses slipping down his nose just enough for me to see his eyes. "I came here to see Nick."

The room went completely silent as the information settled.

Noah looked at me. Then he looked at Cyan. Then he looked back at me, his mouth opening as a much larger, far more dangerous set of questions began to form behind his teeth.

"Everyone out," I said clearly. The authority came back into my voice all at once, cold and cutting through the small room. "Now."

Noah blinked at me. "Excuse me?"

I was already throwing the white blanket aside and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed.

My body immediately launched a strenuous, agonizing protest, the room spinning violently for a half-second as my feet hit the cold floor.

My hand found the metal IV stand, my knuckles turning white as I stabilized myself, before I forced my fingers to let go. I walked straight to the door.

"Out," I told Noah, holding the heavy wood open. "Thank you for coming. I mean that, Noah. Now leave."

"Nick, you’re literally running a fever—"

"Goodbye, Noah." I gave him the look—the exact, unyielding expression that had ended every conversation I had ever wanted to end since we were boys.

Noah read it perfectly. He stopped, looked at Cyan one last, lingering time, and let out a sharp breath. "I want a full, complete explanation for this later," he muttered, stepping past me into the corridor.

"Goodbye," I repeated, and shut the door firmly behind him.

I kept my palm flat against the heavy wood for a long moment, my forehead almost touching the grain as I waited for the hallway outside to go quiet.

My body was very clearly delivering its final opinion on this level of physical exertion two days after a total system collapse, and it wasn’t a pleasant one.

I turned around slowly.

Cyan had already made himself entirely at home.

He was sitting flat in the middle of my hospital bed, having apparently decided it was a perfectly reasonable place for a visitor to be.

His expensive shoes had been kicked off onto the floor, and his sunglasses were pushed up into his wild pink hair. He was leaning back against the pillows, staring up at the acoustic tiles.

"Nice room," he said to the ceiling, his voice light and casual. "Though the sheets are a truly terrible color. Whoever chose this specific shade of gray for a recovery ward has an incredibly bleak worldview."

I stood by the closed door, simply looking at him. It was the exact looking of someone who had been running twenty different versions of this specific moment through his head for three long weeks, only to discover that the real version was completely different in every way I had prepared for and exactly the same in the one way that actually mattered.

Cyan turned his head, his movement slow, until his eyes found mine across the small space of the room.

And then he smiled.

It wasn’t the sharp, performative smirk he used when he was trying to provoke me in the hallways. It was the real one.. the quiet, soft expression from the rooftop right before the rain had started to clear.

"You’re finally awake," he said simply. The satisfaction in his voice was warm, genuine, and completely undisguised.

I looked at him from the door, my body still running its quiet fever, the aches and the accumulated damage hummed away in the background, entirely forgotten the moment he took my full attention.

"Yeah," I said, my voice still rough, stripped of its usual armor. "I’m finally awake."