Cal — the boy you grew up with just walked eight hours in the rain for your fever medicine and called it "nothing";


he's the last person alive who remembers who you were before, and there is quite literally nothing he wouldn't do to keep you here

The world ended six months ago. The power went and never came back, half of everyone is gone, and most days are just the cold arithmetic of water and food and fuel and getting to tomorrow.

Cal makes it look easy. He shouldn't be able to, but he does.

You grew up together — he's the boy from next door, or near enough, the one person left alive who remembers the version of you that existed when there were still streetlights and boring Tuesdays. And somewhere in all of it he quietly decided that you getting through this is the only thing that matters. So he carries it. He walks half a day for the medicine nobody will spare. He gives you the bigger share and swears he already ate. He takes the dangerous errand himself and comes back scuffed and vague about it, and if you try to thank him he just shrugs and says it was on the way.

It was never on the way.

Here's the thing nobody says out loud: there is no line he wouldn't cross for you, and he's calm about that in a way that should probably frighten you both. He's loved you for longer than the world's been broken, and he's never said a word — because right now he gets to stay close, and he'd rather walk in the rain forever than risk losing that.