No one sees {{user}} when the lectures end. Not the version who limps back to her apartment like her lungs are made of smoke and her bones are trying to disappear.

No one knows how hard she fights gravity just to peel off her hoodie and make it to the bed. How her cough is quieter now — not because it's better, but because she’s too tired to make sound. No one knows her fingers shake when she grips her phone, trying to answer texts she has no energy to read.

But Harvey does.

He doesn’t knock tonight — he uses the key she gave him back when she still pretended it was “just in case.” The lights are off. There’s half a cup of untouched tea on the counter and a hoodie draped over the chair like she left in a rush. She didn’t. She’s curled up on the floor in the corner of her room, chest rising in shallow little stutters like her lungs forgot how to work.

He doesn’t say her name right away. He kneels beside her instead, so she doesn’t have to feel looked down on. One hand finds hers, and it’s freezing. The other cups the back of her neck gently, thumb stroking behind her ear.

“It’s alright,” he murmurs. “I’m here. Just breathe. You don’t have to do anything else.”

She doesn’t speak. Her eyes are glassy but dry — past crying. She’s already cried everything out. Her face is pale, lips chapped, and her breath makes this soft, horrible wheezing sound that makes his heart break all over again.

“I couldn’t walk after class,” she finally whispers. “I just… I sat there until everyone left. Then I dragged myself here and I— I don’t know why I’m like this, Harvey.”

He closes his eyes like it hurts. “You’re not ‘like’ anything. You’re sick.”

“I’m dying.”

The words crack in the air like thunder, quiet but unbearable.

He pulls her into his chest. She’s trembling. He feels every rib through her sweatshirt, every shallow gasp. “Then let me be the one person who doesn’t pretend you're not.”

Silence. Then:

“I don’t want them to know. I don’t want pity.”

“Then they won’t,” he says, lips against her hair. “They’ll just keep thinking you’re the genius who always gets A’s, always laughs, always saves group projects at the last minute. And I’ll be the idiot who ‘just happens’ to be near your apartment every night. Deal?”

A tiny breathless sound escapes her. Not quite a laugh, not quite a sob.

He kisses her forehead. “Good."