He squatted next to Roy. The pill bottle was empty and definitely used to hold Donna’s Xanax. He didn’t know how many there would have been. The prescription had been for thirty and was months old, but she didn’t take them often. The vodka bottle still had a solid third left in it, but he felt that it had been more than half full. John had opened it weeks ago. He set it aside.

He shoved Roy’s head upright and held it there, gripping his hair, the strands swollen with grease, shudderingly slick between his fingers.

“What the fuck is this? What are you trying to do?” Jonathan shook Roy’s head in his fist with the rhythm of his words.

Roy opened his eyes and worked his mouth to unstick his lips from his teeth. He heaved in a breath as if his lungs were nearly rusted shut. “You . . . You lie . . . d.”

Jonathan let him go and his hands twitched into fists against his thighs. He leaned into Roy’s face and said through gritted teeth, “So. What.”

That woke Roy up. He coughed and battled for a breath. He raised his head, his filmy red eyes glaring back into Jonathan’s—not bold, exactly, but no longer afraid. Accusing. Caught and caged, but safe. As if he knew he was out of reach. Untouchable.

Roy thought he was dying. And he didn’t mind.

A little sick feeling rose at the back of Jonathan’s throat. His heart pounded out of step with anything he felt about Roy. Roy dead was nothing. Roy dead was absolutely fine.

But dead isn’t dying. Dying was a thing, a length of time, a noun, not just a verb, a presence, a third entity in the hallway with them. It had to be dealt with, and it was warm, not cold as they make it out to be. It was a humid, dank thing. He could smell it, feel it stealing all the air around them with its own slow, patient breathing.

Dying can be complicated. Messy. Dying can be tricked into stopping.

Roy’s lids slipped closed, but he hauled them back to halfway. Then, of all things out of place in the moment, a smile pulled at the right side of Roy’s mouth. He was fucking smiling. But his chin trembled, shaking in a horrible effort to hold the smile in place. Whatever that smile meant to Roy, it also hurt him. His eyes shimmered wet, the red of them glowing at Jonathan through the tears.

Watching him struggle with that pitiful grimace, a shiver slid over Jonathan’s back.

Roy grunted to clear his throat. “I didn’t do what you said.”

Jonathan laughed through his nose. A wave of exhaustion made his crouch too painful to hold any longer. He turned and flopped down next to Roy on the floor, their backs against the wall together.