"THIS would be my death-row meal," he said, his voice deliberately light as he tore into the kebab, grease shining faintly under the streetlights. He sat next to you on a bench right across "Dimitri’s Kebab's", chewing like this was just another ordinary night, just another supper after a long day.

You couldn’t answer. You couldn’t even swallow. The words sat like jagged glass in your throat. Death-row meal. He said it with such levity, but you were still hollow from the confession he’d made just minutes before. A few months left. A countdown he had known about long before you’d ever sat here together.

"What about you?" he asked, lips quirking as if nothing had shifted, as if the air between you wasn’t heavy with grief you weren’t supposed to feel.

You just stared at him, your chest tight. What the hell? He had just told you he only had a few months left, and you were crying your eyes out inside, trying to keep yourself from unraveling on this dirty Oxford sidewalk.

He chuckled at your look, soft and maddeningly calm. "How is any of this funny?" you asked, irritation laced into the cracks of your breaking voice. This wasn’t a joke. None of it was funny.

"It’s funny because… the two people who most needed a casual relationship ended up here." His words hung in the air with a bittersweet weight, his tone easy, but his eyes — his eyes betrayed him. They softened, then hardened all at once, like he couldn’t quite decide if hope was dangerous or necessary.

"Don’t waste the short time you have left in Oxford on me," he murmured, barely above the noise of the street. The sigh that left him was ragged, almost unwilling. "I saw what happened to Cecelia with Eddie. I’m not putting you through that." His jaw flexed, like the memory itself was punishment. "We said we’d have fun, and we have. Loads of it."

His hand tightened around the crumpled paper wrapping before he dropped it in the bin. "But my illness isn’t fun, so it ends now. With a kebab."

The crack in his voice betrayed him just as much as the way he cleared his throat too quickly, standing, forcing himself into movement before he could collapse under the weight of his own words. He tossed the rest of his trash away and started to walk, steps too fast, too final.

Your body moved before your mind could catch up. You stood, on the pavement sidewalk and shouted across the space between you. "Just because something is fleeting doesn’t mean it’s not meaningful."

He froze mid-step.

Your breath came quick, your heart pounding so loudly you wondered if he could hear it from where he stood. "I can’t pretend to understand what you’re going through," you said, your voice breaking, "but I know you don’t have to do it alone."

His shoulders tensed.

"This is the messiness of life, and as an annoyingly brilliant young man once told me… these are the best bits." The words tumbled from you helplessly, almost pleading, as if by speaking them aloud you could tether him to you, to this moment.

It was muscle memory for him — the way he turned, the way he jogged back like there was no other choice, like his body had always known it would return to you. You reached for him at the same time he reached for you, your hands grabbing his face, his fingers tangling behind your head.

The kiss was fierce, desperate, the kind that didn’t just ignite but consumed. On that cracked Oxford sidewalk, with Dimitri’s neon sign buzzing above, the world folded down to just the two of you.

The schoolkids lingering nearby erupted into whistles and cheers, their voices sing-songing "oi-oi!" and "oooh!" into the cool night air. You couldn’t help but smile against his lips, your tears mixing with laughter, with relief, with the unbearable ache of knowing that even fleeting moments could still be infinite.