Wednesday morning Roman can't lift his left arm over his head.
He tries to put on a t-shirt and makes a noise that is half laugh, half pain, a sharp inhale through his teeth, and he stops with the shirt halfway over his head like he's stuck.
"Need help, princess?" I ask from my bed, because I can't help myself, because teasing him is easier than admitting I was watching.
He glares at me from inside the shirt, his hair sticking out the neck hole. "Shut up and help."
I get up, and he's standing in the middle of the room in sweatpants, holding the shirt bunched in his good hand. His shoulder is dark purple and yellow now, the bruise spreading down toward his bicep, ugly and deep.
I take the shirt from him and hold it open. "Arms up."
"I can't do arms up, that's literally the problem, genius," he says, deadpan.
"Right arm then," I say, trying not to smile.
He slides his right arm in, and I pull the shirt over his head careful, my fingers brushing his jaw as I guide the fabric, then I guide his left arm through slow, my hand under his elbow to support it. My fingers brush his side as the shirt falls into place, and his skin is warm, warmer than I expected.
He's close. I can smell his soap, that clean laundry smell, and I can see the little scar on his collarbone up close, and the bruise blooming dark across his shoulder.
"Thanks," he says quiet when the shirt is on, his voice lower than usual.
"You're welcome," I say, and I don't step back right away, I stay there for a second too long with my hands still holding the hem of his shirt.
The door beeps. Maya walks in without knocking like she owns the place and pays rent here, and she stops dead in the doorway. She looks at me holding Roman's shirt, at Roman half dressed with his hair messed up, at us standing very close in the middle of the room.
"Well," she says, grinning huge, her eyes darting between us. "Good morning, boys. Am I interrupting something?"
Roman jumps back like he's been burned, nearly tripping over his own feet. "It's not— he was helping— my shoulder— I couldn't—"
"I didn't say anything," Maya says, holding her hands up in mock surrender, but she's still grinning. She drops a paper bag on my desk. "Brought you both breakfast. Because you're injured and you're whipped."
"I'm not whipped," Roman mutters, but his ears are red, bright red all the way to the tips.
I take the bag because someone has to be normal. "Thanks."
She winks at me on her way out, a slow deliberate wink that says *we will be talking about this later.*
At practice, Maya won't let it go, of course she won't. We're stretching on the boards and she keeps looking at me over her water bottle.
"Soooo," she says, drawing the word out, "how was playing nurse this morning?"
"He hurt his shoulder," I say, focused very hard on touching my toes.
"Mm-hmm. And you helped him get undressed," she says, delighted with herself.
"Dressed," I correct, because details matter.
"Same thing," she says, and she does a little spin on her toe picks just to show off. "You like taking care of him. You get that little focused face."
I don't answer because she's right and we both know it, and because my face is getting hot again just thinking about his warm skin under my hands.
At lunch, Roman sits with us again, third day in a row, and his shoulder is better but he still winces when he reaches across the table for the ketchup. I push his water bottle closer without thinking, just slide it into his reach with my fingertips. He notices and smiles at me, small and private, just for me, and my chest does that tight, warm thing it keeps doing around him.
After classes, I have therapy, and Dr. Amara's office is warm and smells like peppermint tea.
She asks about the week, and I tell her about the snow day and the injury, about the ice pack and the shirt, leaving out the parts where my hands shook.
"You took care of him," she says, not as a question.
"Yeah," I say, picking at the seam of my sweatpants.
"How did that feel?" she asks, setting her pen down.
I think about my hands on his shirt, about being that close and not panicking, about not needing to make myself small. "Good," I say, honest. "Scary, but good."
"Why scary?" she asks, tilting her head.
Because if I take care of him, he might expect me to stay. Because if I stay, he might see everything I'm hiding, all the messy parts. Because I like him and people I like get hurt or leave or turn into my father. Because caring feels like handing someone a weapon and trusting them not to use it.
"Because I'm not good at it," I say instead, because that's easier to say out loud.
She looks at me over her glasses, that look that makes me feel seen all the way through. "Viktor, you're very good at caring for people. You just haven't had many safe people to practice on."
I don't know what to say to that, so I just nod and look at my shoes, and my throat feels tight in a way that isn't bad.
That night, Roman is on the floor doing his physio exercises with a resistance band, making faces at the ceiling every time he lifts his arm. I'm at my desk with the journal open, not really writing, just looking at the list I've been building.
*Safe.
Roman.
Mom.
Maya.
Papa.
Party.
Stayed.
Stay.
нравится.
Scared.
Happy.
Snow day.
Hurt.
Stayed anyway.*
Underneath, I write a new word in English, careful block letters so I can't pretend I didn't mean it.
*Care.*
I stare at it for a long time, at how simple it looks on the page and how complicated it feels in my chest.
Roman finishes his exercises and flops onto his bed with a groan that is mostly for dramatic effect. "You're writing again," he says to the ceiling.
"Five minutes," I say automatically, closing the journal halfway.
He turns his head to look at me, his hair damp with sweat. "What do you write about in that thing? You've got like a whole novel in there."
I close the journal all the way, my face hot. "You."
He goes very still for a second, just looking at me, then he smiles, slow and real. "Yeah?"
"Not just you," I say fast, too fast, my face burning. "Other stuff too. Lots of other stuff."
"Good," he says, still smiling. "Write good things about me. Make me sound cool."
"I write the truth," I say, which is the most honest thing I've said all day.
He laughs, that low laugh I like. "Even better. I can handle the truth."
He turns his light off and the room goes dim. I put the journal away in the drawer and get into bed.
In the dark, his voice comes across the room, quiet. "Hey Viktor?"
"Yeah?" I whisper back.
"Thanks for this morning. For helping with the shirt and stuff."
"You would do it for me," I say, because I know it's true, because he's already proven it over and over.
"I would," he says, without hesitating, without thinking about it. "In a heartbeat. You know that, right?"
I fall asleep with that word in my head, heartbeat, turning it over and over like a smooth stone, and with the feeling of his warm skin still on my fingertips.
And in my drawer, the word *care* sits under all the others, right at the bottom of the list, like it belongs there, like it's been waiting for me to be brave enough to write it down.