Chapter 14

It's another week before he says goodbye to Kyle. In theory this goodbye would be easier, he would be angry, he was the poster child for misplaced emotions. Rage was better than tears

Ryan can't do anything anymore without a reminder of the fact that yes, he's dying. Every day he gets closer and closer to the end and he can feel it like the noose gets tighter around his neck, crushing his wind pipe. Every time he says goodbye to someone, every time he makes his peace with someone, that noose gets a little less confining.

So he continues his goodbyes, no matter how difficult it is to begin each of them. Though somehow he always manages it. He runs it through his head over and over like a never ending loop. It was better to say goodbye before he was too sick to do much of anything.

Kyle doesn't see it the same way, at first. "you need to stop, I will not listen to a pansy a*s cop out, you can’t just say goodbye ‘cause you’re tired of the battle"

 "It’s not an excuse. I don't wanna go," Ryan blurts out, and god, does he know that it was stupid to say. "I’m just making it clear that after all this is over and done that you understand what you have to do for them.”

“What I have to do for them? For myself? That’s what you think I need to hear, I know that I have to take care of them, I get it, and that’s all fine and dandy until the plan goes to s**t, you can’t prepare us, it isn’t gonna protect us from that searing ache we all know far too well. Of all the things that we have seen, I don’t understand how something so ordinary can destroy you.”

“It’s just the way it works, when-”

Kyle interrupts mid-sentence, “I swear to god Ryan if you say some cliché line about everything happening for a reason I will kill you myself” Ryan almost laughs at this, he would have if it weren’t for the terrified look behind his brother’s eyes.

 “it’s not fair and it is not ok, but that doesn’t change the facts no matter how much you scream and yell. I mean it, you have to take care of them as much as they take care of you because I know you and I know that you will destroy yourself before you see that this had nothing to do with you.’ Ryan has to be stern with him about this. “It’s not fair of me to make you promise that you will be ok, but I’m gonna do it anyways for their sake as much as yours, they can’t lose anyone else, it will break them”

“You are going to break us anyway.” That is the first calm thing Kyle has said so far in this exchange. Those words hurts Ryan more than he thought it would, because it is one thing to know and another to hear someone else say it aloud. 

"yea well life sucks now doesn’t it, but you don’t get to give up,” Ryan doesn’t really remember when he started gritting his teeth and punching his words out of his mouth but he thinks that this is the best way to get it into Kyle’s head “you are not going to abandon your family, they are all you’ve got and you are all they have too, so before you surrender remember who you’re hurting ‘cause it sure as hell isn’t me you are getting back at.”

“I get it ok, I get it, I promise” then Kyle is exhausted with being mad about everything, all the time. It was finally time to rest.   

“Good” everything else does not matter after that because Kyle gets it. Ryan does not need to say that he loves him, or that he trusts him completely, because Kyle gets it now.