The blue-green lines across his chest are starting to show, and for an ace swimmer, that isn't a good sign.

Still, he doesn't care. Roden needs a distraction from thinking, from feeling, from hurting. Even though he knows he probably shouldn't be in the water when he can't even fucking breathe properly, he needs to save himself from drowning the last time he was here. He needs to redeem his safe haven in these ripples of blue.

But he can't even do a lap before he's suffocating.

"Jesus Christ, Roden!" he hears faintly, the sound resonating alarmingly loud but still too silent for him to reach. He's flailing, he's thrashing, he's gasping for air while dots surround his vision. It's cold. Is he out of the water? "You're so fucking stupid, breathe, come on."

Knox is the only person who can insult Roden at a time like this for being reckless and stubborn. He pats his best friend's back and yells, "Get them out of your chest, goddammit. Spit them out!"

The flowers seem to have heard him. They climb up Roden's throat until he's retching purple tinged with red.

"I told you not to do it," Knox hisses, angry but worried. His hand smoothes out the bare planes of his back comfortingly. "You just had to, didn't you? Thank God I was watching. I told you."

Roden pants for air. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I can't do this. I can't swim."

"No shit. You have training tomorrow for the championships. What the hell are you going to say to your coach?"

"I can't swim," Roden says again, slower this time as the words process themselves into his brain. "I can't fucking swim, Knox."

His best friend is grasping his face in seconds. His clothes are dripping and water droplets surround his face. "Look at me and listen, Rodes. It's been a week. You need to do something. She's killing you."

"It's not her fault," Roden whispers, heartbroken as he shakes his head. His eyes brim with tears. "It's mine."

"Get the surgery."

"No."

Knox lets go of Roden's face to stand and grip the strands of his hair. Roden knows Knox's patience is running thin. "Shit, do you think you're going to fall out of love at some point, Rodes? That's impossible, alright, it's—it's going to take months. Years. Time that you don't have because this Disease is fucking killing you!"

Roden's crying, he's crying because he doesn't know what to do and it hurts. It hurts so much.

"What do you think Reed will feel, huh?" Knox bends down and levels his face to Roden, still sprawled out on the floor. The features of his face are drawn together in anger and frustration. "She's going to want you to have the surgery, you idiot, and you can't let her live with that kind of guilt."

"She doesn't ever need to know."

"Fucking hell, you're so stubborn."

Roden's hand comes up to grip his best friend's shirt in obvious desperation. "Let me be stubborn, Knox," he murmurs. Pleads. "Let me think about what to say to Coach. Let me refuse the surgery."

Knox stares into those sea-greens.

When he doesn't find what he's looking for, he clenches his jaw and shakes his head. "Punch me in the face instead. That hurts a lot less than you asking me to let you die."

*

He met Reed back when he was young and stupid and had an infatuation on one of the seniors from the swim team in high school.

They'd been talking for a while now. Roden managed to score the number after beating her by one second during a race. The girl, whose name is irrelevant to mention now, was impressed, and so she handed over the digits to the victorious fifteen-year-old with a wink. His friends were howling and slapping his back.

She was three years older at that time, but clearly it wasn't a matter of discussion especially in the middle of a heated make out session inside the shower room after training. Roden felt good, he felt awesome, he felt excited. Low, breathy moans surrounded the room as he kissed his way down her neck. His hands dropped to her sides, to her hips, to her bottom. While he was busy marking her skin, her fingers hurried to open the button of his jeans and he held his breath. Roden had been waiting for this, he was eager to know what it felt like, if it was as good as his friends say.

He didn't find the answers then, though. The door creaked open and rushed footsteps padded inside. Roden and the girl couldn't even hide—in a matter of two seconds, the newcomer's face emerged into their view with her eyes wide and her mouth hung open.

Roden must've looked the same, because she was in a towel.

Just a towel.

At this realization, Roden kept his eyes firmly on her panicked ones as she clutched the cloth that only reached her thigh with shaking fingers. She bent down awkwardly to hide her legs, as if doing so would show less skin. Her whole face was burning. "Oh, oh my God," she said, voice barely above a whisper. One of her hands come up to cover her eyes. "I am so sorry. I'll just—I'll hide in the stall."

"What?" Roden snapped, frustrated and...hard. Down there.

The newcomer did as she promised, hurrying to shut the cubicle door behind her once inside. "I'm sorry!" she shouted, then realized how loud she was and repeated the statement in a quieter tone. "Uh, please c-continue."

Roden stared at the closed stall. The senior laughed, pulled herself away from Roden and patted his bare chest twice. "That was fun. You should text me tomorrow."

"What? What do you mean?"

She looked up at him beneath her eyelashes with a smile. "Tomorrow, Roden, okay?"

And then she turned around and left.

Roden ran a hand through his face and muttered, "Fucking hell."

When his racing heartbeat and his thing down there became calm, after taking a few breaths and thinking about cold fish and pigeons and pugs giving birth, he made his way towards the stall the newcomer had found refuge in and knocked hesitantly. "Um, hey. You can come out now."

No response. Roden's eyebrows drew together. He pressed his ear against the cubicle door to at least make sure she was alive and breathing, but the weight of his leaning down made the door crack open.

She was squeezed up against the corner of the stall, dark eyes still wide and...scared. Her legs wobbled and the hands that were clutching the towel around her body shook violently. "I'm s-sorry," she stuttered in her quiet voice. "I'm sorry, please don't hurt me."

Roden was confused. Did he look like he was about to hurt her? "I won't," he assured her, keeping a decent distance between them and holding his hands out in surrender. "I won't, I promise."

She seemed so terrified. "I was just," she wheezed out, long black hair covering her face, "looking for—for my clothes. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Your...clothes?"

She crossed her legs together in an obvious desperation to at least cover them up. Roden didn't dare look anywhere else aside from her face. "The girls in my class. From the swim team. They, um, they were joking around and they t-took my clothes. They said it was what they were told to do by the seniors, who gossiped about the girl who couldn't even do a lap in swim class." She laughed once, nervously, and there were tears threatening to escape her eyes. "It's a good prank, you know. It, um, it was funny."

"That's not a prank nor a joke. It's not funny," Roden told her, irritated. "It's bullying. You understand that, right?"

Reed only looked down. Swallowed hard.

"Stay here," he said, jaw clenching. "Don't go anywhere, alright? What's your—what's your name?"

She pressed herself up further against the wall. "If you could leave so I could find them, please—"

"Your name, honey. I'm not gonna ask twice."

"Reed," she answered, lowering her eyes. "Reed Blakelee."

"Okay, Reed, wait here."

She did. Even if she was so fucking terrified of Roden.

He came back two minutes later with a gray t-shirt, a school hoodie, and sweatpants. "You can put these on in the meantime. I'm gonna go inside the locker room and look for your damn clothes, alright? It should be empty by now. Did they at least leave your underwear for you?"

"Y-yes," Reed whispered, cheeks as red as tomatoes. "Yes, they did."

"Get dressed." Roden turned around to leave.

"Roden," she called, voice soft and gentle. Roden faced her again. "Thank you. Um. For helping me."

Roden didn't bother texting the senior from his swim team ever again.

Back then, Reed was just a friend, a someone that Roden felt the need to protect, a student in need of tutoring lessons so she wouldn't fail PhysEd. He waited for Reed every after her swim class to make sure she was dressed properly and not harassed by the envious classmates eyeing him from inside the shower room without Reed ever asking him to. He taught her how to swim and to do laps correctly, and he found that Reed was a really eager student—always ready to listen, to learn, to improve. When she passed her practical exam, she kissed Roden on the cheek and called him her saving grace.

Gradually, she became his best friend, the someone he couldn't imagine life without, the partner-in-crime and the 'best man' for his wedding twenty years into the future. She sat with Roden and his friends from the team during lunch so she wouldn't eat alone anymore, and they all admired her like he did. Roden took her to prom when she didn't want to go even though she mentioned wanting to experience it once in her life a long time ago, he pushed her to find her dream to be an architect by encouraging her talent, and he always made sure she was smiling and safe and happy even through the littlest of things—treating her to ice cream after finals week for studying hard, driving her home or walking her to the front door, sending her silly pictures of his face.

Reed, on the other hand, was his number one cheerleader to all of his competitions and swim meets. She made Roden a comfortable home in her arms when his grandmother made peace with the world and left Roden broken-hearted. She wrote him sticky notes during class with cute drawings to cheer him up after a long and tiring week, and she made sure they watched Finding Nemo at least once a month because she knows it's his favorite movie even though he's embarrassed to admit it. She took care of him when his foot got sprained during training, she lined up at dawn for concert tickets to a band that Roden really loved to surprise him for his seventeenth birthday, and she sketched a picture of him once for class, and she wrote my greatest blessing as the caption.

Now, Reed Blakelee is literally his lifeline.

And Reed's eyes disappear when she smiles. When she's really happy, a blush covers her cheeks and it's almost always the same shade as her lip tint.

Reed covers her mouth when she laughs out loud with two hands, because once, someone told her that she looked ugly when she laughed. Roden still hasn't found the bastard who said that to her, but he's been trying to get her to stop that habit. He succeeded once, and it was a sight better than all the wonders in the world.

Reed's hair smells like strawberries because of the shampoo she uses. It's intoxicating.

Reed's voice seems to carry all the warmth in the world, and it's always gentle, soft, soothing. It's Roden's favorite song.

Reed likes to leave her shoes around in her room so Roden can trip on them when movie night's at her place. She prefers orange juice over soda, chips over chocolates, and McNuggets over anything.

Her name is Reed Blakelee, and she's beautiful and her heart is too kind for this world. One word from her, and Roden falls apart.