You’d known Mark Meachum for years. He’d always been a reckless bastard, too quick with a joke, too stubborn to take advice, too proud to let anyone see when he was hurting. But the day he told you about the glioblastoma, something cracked. Not his spirit, no. Mark still carried himself like he could punch his way through the world. but the armor he wore with everyone else slipped when he was with you.

Instead of retreating, he made a decision: no waiting rooms, no counting hours on a hospital clock. If he only had a year left, he wasn’t going to waste it. And somehow, without even asking, you became the one person he wanted beside him. Best friends turned travel partners, his grounding force on a whirlwind goodbye tour of the world.

The two of you had just stumbled off a red-eye flight from Spain, your bodies aching but your hearts still humming from nights of tapas and wine and half-broken Spanish jokes that Mark refused to admit he butchered. At the airport café, he slumped into the chair across from you, dragging a hand through his hair. For a moment, he looked his age, the exhaustion, the weight of what was coming, but then his mouth curved into that crooked grin you knew too well.

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes on you with something softer than usual, and asked, gruff but steady:

“Where to next?”