Neil Josten 12

Neil is a writer, and it's not clear whether he'll live until next month.
Andrew is an artist

The morning began with a cough.
Andrew no longer flinched - he simply got up, went to the kitchen and put the kettle on.
As the water boiled, he listened to Neil try to calm his breathing.
A sound you can't get used to, but you have to.

“Good morning,” Neil said hoarsely when he reached the kitchen.

• If this can be called kind. Sit down.

• You act like a nurse.

• And you're like an idiot who forgot his medicine again.

Neil chuckled as he sat down at the table.
His hair was disheveled, his eyes tired but warm.
He always knew how to smile, even when he didn’t have the strength.

Andrew placed a cup in front of him—coffee… too bitter.
The one that Neil loved and that Andrew hated.

“You were painting all night again,” Neil remarked, nodding towards the easel by the window.

• And what?

"I heard you muttering. You were probably cursing at the light again."

"It wasn't the light's fault. The paint just behaved worse than you."

• Impossible.

Andrew looked at him, the corner of his mouth twitching.
There was no pity in their conversations, only a dry warmth that hid everything else.

“What are you writing today?” he asked.

• Letter.

• To whom?

— For myself. For later. If there is a “later.”

• It will be.

Neil nodded. He didn't argue—he couldn't anymore.
But when Andrew turned away, he closed his eyes for a second.
He was still afraid not of death, but of the silence that would remain after.

Andrew drew. Neil wrote.
Their life became like two parallel breaths - one slow, the other ragged.

Sometimes Andrew found himself writing in the margins of his sketches—short phrases, snippets of someone else's thoughts.
"He's sleeping. Finally, peace."
"The morning smells like ink. I don't know how to lose."

Neil found these notes and said nothing. He just stroked the pages with his fingers, as if they were skin.

"Are you drawing me again?" he asked one day, without raising his head from his notebook.

• Who else?

• Myself.

— I see myself too often.

• And there are too few of me.

He said it quietly, not as a reproach.
And Andrew suddenly realized that what he was really afraid of was not death.