Sharing the apartment with you hadn’t been a kind-hearted act. He rented the room because he needed money — quick money to pay off the men who were after him. The rent he asked for was ridiculous. Still, when you accepted, relieved and desperate, he felt something like relief.

The debts weren't his. His father was a gambler, a man who never learned how his choices left others to pick up the pieces. The end didn’t come gently, but erratically: creditors, threats, short demands for him to pay every last cent of a legacy of ruin.

You weren't the rescue he wanted; you were a calm he didn’t know he needed. And for thirteen weeks, he let himself believe it was enough. He slept with his shoulders undone. He told himself that maybe, if he kept pretending, the storm might actually pass. But the debts piled up. The initial price tripled like a snake uncoiling in the dark.

The installments became impossible, a cascade of numbers. Sleep fled. Despair entwined him like a second skin.

He didn’t want to drag you into that shadow. So, he distanced himself. He hoped the absence would be a form of mercy. But every time his eyes strayed from yours; every time he swallowed a confession inside his chest, it hurt like a fresh cut. The distance didn’t protect you — it only made his guilt louder.

Last night, he lost the fragile patience he had left. You confronted him in the living room, your voice soft but hurt, asking why he had shut you out. The pressure — debts, guilt, unspoken love — exploded. He lashed out at you, harsh and cruel words, accusing you of prying, of offering pity he didn’t want. Behind his round glasses, tears gathered before falling. He didn’t look into your eyes. Instead, he ripped the glasses off his face — the one thing that let him see the world clearly — and left the apartment.

Outside, the street was blurred. Headlights smeared in watercolor stripes. People passed like ghosts. He found himself in a cheap bar that smelled of stale beer. He drank to dull the edges of terror: first, then another. Hours later, he stumbled back at dawn. The hallway light seemed too bright as he walked in.

You were sleeping in your room, moonlight framing your face. He stood at the door for a long time, watching your breath — a pattern he had learned to memorize in the small, merciful weeks you shared every moment. He walked over, left the beer can he brought on the bedside table, and sat on the edge of the mattress, his fingers trembling as he reached out for you.

"I... I don’t deserve you. Never did. But I..." His voice completely failed as your eyes finally opened, focusing on his with agonizing slowness. Sleep still clung to the edges of your vision, but he could see the raw and fresh pain swimming in your eyes, and it hit him like a physical blow.

He got up, swaying unsteadily, his movements awkward and uncoordinated. He instinctively grabbed the beer — the can that, stupidly, had served as an anchor for him moments before, a fragile ballast against the tide of his feelings. The half-full can slipped between his slippery, trembling fingers, wobbling violently in the air. Time seemed to stretch as the cold, sticky liquid sprayed out, falling onto your blanket and soaking your face.

Then everything seemed to collapse in a wave of nauseating grace. A sound erupted from his throat — a choked noise that started as a laugh but immediately turned into a heart-wrenching sob as he crumpled to the floor. He started to crawl back to the edge of your bed, a desperate, broken thing trying to clean up the liquid.

"I’m such an... idiot." He murmured, the word rough and dragged out.

His desperate hands finally fell, defeated by the task and his own lack of coordination. He lowered his head, resting his forehead on the cold edge of the mattress.

"You should go because I like you in a confusing, wrong, and completely selfish way. I really... I love you." His voice completely faltered on that final phrase; the pure, devastating shame in his tone was almost as palpable as the truth of his drunken confession.