"He's gone."

"What? What do you mean?" Alex takes a step back into his room, gives Nick some space.

"Karl, he...there was a mal..." Nick is leaning on the doorframe, head hanging. He swallows hard, tries to find words and fails.

"What are you...were you there with him? How...?"

"We think he had a seizure or something, he was on the ground and I was trying to keep him safe but there was too much shit trying to get to him, and then he was just, he wasn't alive anymore, and there were these things starting to, to come out of him..."

"Hey, hey, it's okay, you don't have to describe it to me or anything, it's fine." It's when Nick takes a second to breathe that Alex seems to register what's been said.

"He's...really dead?" His voice is very small.

"Karl's really dead," says Nick softly. "We left the body out, it probably wasn't safe to eat. I've got most of his stuff now, if you want it."

"Okay," says Alex. He can't think of anything else to say for a very long moment. "Thank you for coming to tell me."

Nick frowns a little. "Of course I came to tell you? He was both our boyfriend, and you and me are still...that's not the point, I, I wanted to tell you..." He reaches in to put his hands on Alex's shoulders, insistent. "It wasn't your fault. George thinks the...the stuff that came out of him was some kind of psychic mal, it was messing with his brain and making him act weird. He didn't really mean anything he said when you guys argued. It wasn't his fault or your fault."

But he still told me to leave, thinks Alex, followed closely by but he's still dead.

"I guess," he says. It's harder than it should be to not lean into Nick's touch. "Is...are you okay? I know you and Karl..." That you and he were close, for much longer than you knew me.

Nick's face crumples for a second before he gets himself under control.

"I guess," he echoes. "I have a lot of classwork and I've gotta start training for graduation, so I don't have time to think about it or anything." And he hasn't really had anyone to talk to. George is barely awake. Clay's mind is on graduation and he's restless and weird. Alex hasn't been around. It kind of sucks, grieving someone by yourself. 

He's still holding onto Alex. He wishes a little bit for a hug. 

Alex sighs through his teeth. "Shit, yeah. Graduation."

That's the issue, is graduation. That's the entire fucking problem. Alex had already been trying to rewrite his list of allies in his head as soon as things fell apart with Karl, because even if Nick still cares, he can't count on Nick. By the end of the year Nick's going to be out of the scholomance, and without Karl, that's Alex's only real in with Tampa. Karl being...gone-gone only makes that worse. 

When you're an indie, leveraging relationships and connections like Alex does is an okay strategy, but it's clear that it'll only get him so far. Maybe the relationship sucks too much to be worth it. Maybe the person just leaves you or just dies. Maybe you really care about each other and it still doesn't matter - Toby and Tommy were like brothers right up until they weren't. Ultimately, Alex knows why Toby had to do it, knows he didn't have a choice, but he doesn't like seeing a friendship like that go out the window to appease someone scarier. It makes Alex not like his chances. 

"You know what, I've still got the group project almost done," he says to Nick. "You can have it after, it'll at least help at graduation." And maybe it'll still win him a spot in the Tampa alliance once it's his turn, though his hopes aren't high. "The train doesn't stop." .

Nick...thinks that he laughs at that, but it sounds kind of ragged. "No, yeah, exactly. We gotta keep going, right? No matter what."

There's a hole in the shoulder of Alex's shirt where the seam's falling apart. He chafes at it absently with his thumb and wishes he were better at sewing, so he could fix it. "I just...wanted to come check if you were okay."

And that's the other issue. Nick didn't have to find him at all, but he wanted to know if Alex was okay. Nick wants a spot for him on the alliance if he can do anything about it. Nick introduced Alex and Karl because he liked them both, and thought they'd like each other, and wanted them to be happy.

(Karl had a dumb sense of humor and warm, sleepy eyes. Karl wasn't a fighter, but he told the best stories. Karl's last words to Alex were angry, and Alex will never see him again.)

When Alex looks at Nick and tells himself that what they have, what the three of them had, is temporary, it hurts so much more sharply than it should.

"Oh," says Nick, at the look on Alex's face. "Baby, it's okay, it'll be okay, I'm sorry." He isn't sure which one of them pulls the other in, but they're embracing, and then awkwardly shuffling back into Alex's room, and Nick kicks the door shut, and then they just lean on each other and fall apart for a little while.

They hang out in Alex's room until class, not really saying or doing much of anything. Nick plays with Alex's hair and thinks about graduating, and his family, and then about nothing. Alex tries to study, but gives up and comes to lean into Nick again. The two of them hold each other tight, tight as they possibly can, and both of them still feel an empty space in between.