Chapter Text
You recall the night you first met Toby. It was a complete accident, really. But as cliche as it is, you like to think it was fate doing you good for once.
You work at an upscale cafe in downtown Denver, one of the only ones that’s open til 10 PM. Normally, you work from 12 to 8 (because you can’t wake up early to save your life). But today, you agreed to pick up another hour and work overtime. It's just for some extra cash to get you by after your landlord raised the rent.
Now that it’s half past nine, you’re getting ready to close up the place, cleaning the windows with a wet rag and a squeegee.
The shop is dead quiet, the only people here being you and a recurring customer you’ve had for the past week. Most customers here are the same, with their fancy clothes, but his effortlessness has always stuck out like a sore thumb to you.
Pale skin, messy brown curls cut in a short shag, coffee eyes bordered by dark circles and framed with thick eyebrows, and a bit of stubble on his chin. Always in a black turtleneck and some dirty Wrangler jeans. He sounds typical on paper, except for the fact that he’s got some kind of disfigurement on the left side of his face by his mouth — a large gash deep enough to expose his gums and molars — something that instead of grossing you out, has you wondering what could’ve happened to him. You don't worry too much because it looks somewhat healed and he doesn't seem to be in constant pain, but you’ve still never seen anyone with such an injury. Usually he comes in with a mask or bandage to hide his gash. But not tonight, no.
Sometimes, he has you staring. He doesn’t look up from the horror novel he’s reading to stare back. Maybe he knows you’re just curious and not judgemental at all. It’s hard not to be curious when he’s always there at night, cooped up in the corner with a Stephen King classic. This is the latest he’s ever stayed though.
“Excuse me, sir,” you say, slowly approaching him, rag in your hand. “We’re just about to close in thirty minutes. I can let you stay for a little longer but–”
“Scheisse,” the man interrupts in what you assume in German. His voice is gravelly, almost parched sounding, and it perfectly matches his appearance. He looks up from his book to make proper eye contact with you. “Sorry, uh, looks like I’ve lost track of time.”
“It’s fine,” you say hoarsely before clearing your throat. As you return to cleaning the windows, the man goes back to reading his book.
Several minutes pass, and the man is still there. When you finish cleaning, you start to cough uncontrollably. It’s a wet, sticky cough that makes you feel like there’s a slug in your throat but nothing comes out no matter how hard you heave. You've been coughing episodically for months now with no reason. It comes and goes — most of the time you can breathe just fine — but that barely makes you hate it all the less.
This episode seems to be different though, alarmingly different to the point it leaves you doubling over and wheezing. You retch into your hand a few times, expecting to see nothing come out of it.
Except this time, you find that your palm is wet with blood. Pure, straight up red. You’ve coughed up an ungodly amount of mucus multiple times before, but never blood. Never, ever blood.
You're fucked. This isn’t right.
“Shit,” the man says the moment he sees the blood. He rushes over to help stabilize you, holding you up by the arms. “Y-you okay?”
“What does it look like?” you slightly snap, before shaking your head. You don’t mean to snap at a customer. “I’m sorry, but could you please–” before you can finish, your throat tightens and you break into another fit of coughing. The pain makes it difficult for you to utter another word.
Without you having to speak, he gets the memo. “R-right. Right. I’ll call an ambulance.”
The morning after, the doctors tell you it’s stage four lung cancer. It’s completely inoperable, they say.
It feels like a sick joke to be diagnosed with stage four cancer at the age of twenty-two. At first, you laughed because you couldn’t really believe it. All that from a cough that wouldn’t stop?
Shit finally got real when they tell you that with and without treatment, you only have four months left to live. You choose to opt out of treatment, knowing how much chemo would drain you. Either way, you know your life is going to end even though it had just started.
It took a while for the dam to finally break, but you cried that night they discharged you from the hospital. You cried and cried endlessly for help, for a deity to absolve you of whatever sin you committed for you to deserve this.
It has to be some kind of cruel atonement for something you did wrong in the past because you never smoked, and almost no one in their twenties just gets diagnosed with terminal lung cancer out of nowhere.
You were met with silence because no one was there to listen to your prayers. You didn’t sleep that night.
The next time you see the man, you don’t tell him about your diagnosis. Hell, not even your co-workers know yet either.
But you learn that his name is Toby. You thank him for calling for help the other day. But Toby doesn’t say anything, he just twitches his jaw slightly and nods in acknowledgement. You appreciate it all the same because “you're welcome” can come in different forms.
It’s the same scene as last time. You’re closing up the cafe and Toby is still there, now halfway through the same novel he was reading days before. This time, he wears a dark grey hoodie over his turtleneck and his jeans are replaced with flecktarn camo pants. You notice it just now, but Toby likes to have his face exposed around you, and only you. He either forgoes the bandages or pulls down his mask the minute you’re alone with him.
“Do you, uh, maybe wanna start seeing each other?” Toby asks, completely out of the blue while you wipe down some tables. His head twitches and he cracks one of his knuckles, a habit of his you’ve gotten accustomed to.
You ponder the question briefly. Admittedly, your love life has been dry. Tinder hasn’t been cutting it for you lately; you can’t even get into the talking stage with most people here in this shitty, boring city. With the little time you have left, you decide that it'll be fine to take a risk for once. Plus, you find Toby kinda cute, gash and all.
“How old are you?” you ask, cleaning the table he's sitting at.
Toby flips a page absentmindedly. “Twenty-five.”
“Huh.” Three years your senior. You believe it, somewhat. Toby looks his age, but you’re still dumbfounded because you expected him to be younger. You reckon it’s just the boyish way he acts sometimes.
“So, if I'm n-not too old or u-ugly for you, w-what do you s-say?” Toby says with slight humor in his tone. You notice that Toby stutters sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. Usually when he’s nervous, like earlier when he told you what name he’d like for his order.
You pause, dropping the rag on the table. You still feel a little hesitant at the prospect of hooking up with Toby – who’s a little different from other guys you’ve met – but you’d be lying if you said it doesn’t intrigue you all the more.
Toby heaves a short, sharp sigh. Sometimes, he just has the patience of a toddler.
“Well?” he says, a little snippy this time. You don't mind, you've served customers with worse attitudes before.
“Sure,” you finally say. “Why not.”
Toby grins. His smile is lopsided thanks to his gash, but you love it all the same. “Deal. I’ll pick you up from here o-on the weekend. This Friday night, I mean.”
Three nights later, Toby has you sitting on his lap, making out with him in the back of the rugged 1993 Jeep Cherokee that he calls home.
You noticed earlier that Toby keeps an assortment of hatchets in the trunk. When you ask him about them, he tells you they’re for work. He doesn’t tell you what kind of job he has, but you just know that he works with his hands. His calloused hands, bitten at the fingertips, often hidden behind leather gloves. They could only belong to someone who does dirty work. You like how his hands feel when he touches you without his gloves on. It’s almost the same satisfaction you get from having your head gently scratched.
But when Toby kisses you, it’s a whole other story. You liken him to nettles because while he’s completely oblivious of how much he hurts you, it still stings all the same. You’re sure that Toby tries to be gentle, but sometimes he uses a little too much teeth, nipping you til your lips are stained with blood you can’t tell came from who. And when he kisses you, he takes your breath away when you’re at a time where you need it most and he doesn't know. He likes to leave you dizzy, stumbling over your own thoughts.
When you think you’ve had enough of him and his stinging kisses, you gently pull away and slide off his lap.
“Sorry,” Toby apologizes, although you’re not entirely sure he means it when he gives you a smug grin. He runs his thumb across your bottom lip, wiping away some blood. “Haven’t kissed a girl in years. I-I assume they like it hard? At least that was what my ex liked …”
“It’s okay. Don't be sorry.” You breathe hard, clutching your chest. You stop to try and pace your breaths before speaking again. “There’s always time … time to learn.”
Time. You hate that word now that you’re running out of it. You realize now that you’ve been living on borrowed time all long. Long enough for this cancer to grow and fester in you, eventually rendering your lungs useless and just an empty husk for a tumor to make a home of. Long enough for the doctors to tell you only have months left, completely in spite of the fact that you just graduated college a year ago and found your own place to live in to escape your shitty parents.
“Hey.” Toby notices that you’re out of it. He puts a hand on your shoulder to ground you. “‘You okay? You w-were starting off into space all weird.”
You blink, shaking your head and snapping yourself out of your train of thought and doom. You turn to Toby to cup his face and caress the freckles on his face reassuringly, before you tell him, “Yes, I’m fine.”
“All good?” Toby checks one more time, just to be sure. “Was I too rough on you?”
“You were fine,” you lie to spare his feelings.
But Toby is perfectly content with that, cuddling you for the rest of the night until he has to drop you back home in the morning.
When you finally come clean to him about your cancer, Toby isn’t happy.
“... And y-you hid this from me for w-what? For what f-fucking p-purpose?” he spits, tripping over his own words. His stutter gets worse when he’s angry.
You flinch and step away from Toby, completely unused to how he raises his voice. He's done it before, but never at you.
“I’m sorry, okay!” you shriek with tears overflowing your eyes, not caring who hears. Nobody would hear anyway, it’s the middle of the night in a dense, unoccupied Colorado forest. “I was scared you wouldn’t want to be around me anymore. That you would get bored of me.” You’re also scared of dying, but you can’t tell him that just yet because you know it would scare him more.
Toby tenses, letting out an exasperated huff. In the glimmer of the moonlight, you see that he’s tearing up too. But he keeps quiet because he’s man enough to not let himself cry, to not take the blame for this just yet and apologize to you for raising his voice.
“I just thought we could h-have something more than just making out and hooking up every few days,” Toby says, much softer this time.
You blink away your tears and inch closer to him. To test the waters further, you brush your fingers past his gloved hands. To your surprise, Toby doesn’t swat you away. “Are you saying that you want us to be something more than just … physical ? Like, you want us to be together, is that right?”
“Verdammt,” Toby swears under his breath. He clasps your hand in yours, squeezing a little too tightly. “You got me there.”
You’re not entirely against the idea, but you’ve only known him for two weeks now. “Well, I want to get to know you better first, Toby.”
“That's exactly what I want, too,” Toby confesses. He gives you that sweet, lopsided smile you’ve grown to love. “I’m sorry for y-yelling at you earlier.”
“It’s okay. I know you didn't mean it,” you say, ruffling those thick, dark brown tufts of his. You forgive him all the same as you would if he accidentally pinched your cheek too hard.
“I just want to spend all my time with you, now,” Toby says in the faintest of whispers, wrapping his arms around your frame. He chronically smells of bonfire smoke and you'd be damned if he ever wears cologne. “Even though y-you say you don't have much time, let's n-not worry too much about the future.”
A future that can't be changed, you silently add. You'll be dying of this shitty disease no matter how much you try to make the process a little better. But at the very least, you can try to die happy. It doesn't have to be a death sentence when you can pass away on your own terms, falling in love with the very same man who helped take you to the emergency room that fateful night.
You think of all the time you'll spend with him, where you won't wake up in the morning alone. Just the mere thought of having Toby there beside you on that bed makes you feel warm, like you're by the bonfire he smells so much of. Predictably, you lean in for a kiss, craving his touch.
When your lips are fully locked with his, Toby leaves you breathless once more. But this time, he doesn’t bite you. Instead Toby holds you close to keep you grounded to this earth. He holds you close to feel your body against him, a reminder that you're here — alive and well — your heart beating as it should be.
Tonight, you successfully tamed the nettles that once stung you. You turned them into your medicine, and you wouldn't want it any other way.