Stargazing doesn’t turn out to be as romantic an idea as Shiro was hoping. For one, they aren’t allowed to stray too far from the hospital, and the fluorescents spilling from every window are as bright as floodlights, choking the immediate sky with more light pollution than a city-wide grid. So there aren’t many stars to gaze upon, though Adam makes it his mission to point out as many half-heartedly twinkling dots as he can spot.

Mostly, though, Shiro’s having a hard time keeping his mind in the present. He has a sneaking suspicion that even if he could see every star in the sky from here, he still wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate them; most of his attention’s currently being held hostage by the dread that’s been steadily seeping through his innards like internal bleeding since his consultation this afternoon.

Adam’s steady presence beside him is somewhat grounding, and Shiro laces their fingers together and lays his head on Adam’s shoulder, closes his eyes and lets his voice vibrate through him as he talks about anything and everything and nothing at all. He tries to let the ebb and flow of his voice sweep him away, distract him from the hurricane raging through his mind, but…

Adam’s trying to distract him, he realizes. The thought sits uncomfortably in his stomach. Adam never deflects, never beats around the bush, never treats him like he’s made of glass, so the fact that he’s sitting here talking about the distance in lightyears between the polestar of Ursa Minor and the pointer stars of Ursa Major instead of anything that actually matters–

He can’t take it anymore; he needs to talk about it, or else he might implode.

Clearing his throat, he peels his eyes open and stares out at the simple, manicured lawn. “Can I ask you something?”

Adam’s voice peters out so fast it sounds almost like he chokes on his own words. Shiro feels Adam shift beneath him, feels the weight of his gaze as it settles on him, but he can’t bring himself to lift his head from his shoulder and meet his eyes—he’s not ready for another glimpse of all the grief and pain that’s been shoved into the deepest cracks of his irises just yet.

After a moment, Adam squeezes his hand and hums an affirmative.

“What do you think happens when we die?”

The air rushes out of Adam’s lungs with all the force of a punch to the gut, his body physically caving with the exhale. “Takashi.”

“Look, I know what you’re going to say,” Shiro starts, and he clutches Adam’s hand tighter as if that might be enough to hold him here in this miserable reality with him. Guilt swallows him even as he does so; if he were a better man, he’d let him go. “But I can’t–”

“Do we have to do this right now? Can’t we just enjoy our night?”

The rejection stings. It’s a door slammed right in his fucking face, and–

This is why he never talks about death and dying and all of the horrible, nightmarish things that make up his everyday reality—because most people can’t handle it. Most people shy away from the topic in the same way they hold their breaths as they pass by a graveyard, like death is a supernatural, incomprehensible condition they’re likely to catch if they’re not careful. As if it’s not antithetically intertwined with the human condition already; utterly inescapable, no matter how hard you try.

But Adam isn’t most people—or so he thought.

“I’m not trying to ruin our night,” he says, practically pleading. “I just–”

“No.”

“Adam–”

“I don’t want to think about that, Takashi.”

“And you think I do?” The words explode out of Shiro with a viciousness that surprises even him. “Believe me, I’ve been trying my damned hardest not to think about it for years now. And it worked for a while, because I was stupid enough to think I had time to keep putting it off, but now I’m here and I’m quite possibly out of time and I’m–”

His voice splinters, catching and tearing on the edge of something he hasn’t yet let himself name, because once he finally does, it’ll be like admitting defeat.

Then again, what is death if not the greatest defeat of them all?

Trembling slightly, he lifts his head and turns it so that his chin rests on Adam’s shoulder, though he still doesn’t quite meet Adam’s eyes—this is as much vulnerability as he can manage.

“I’m scared, Adam,” he whispers. “So can you just humor me? Please?”

Adam doesn’t say anything for a long time, just studies him with an inscrutable expression. His breath ghosts lightly across Shiro’s face, and Shiro greedily breathes in every one of his exhales as if it might add to the dwindling number of breaths of life he has left.

Eventually, Adam’s expression shifts, his mouth setting in a thin line and the wrinkle between his brows smoothing out just a bit, and Shiro almost sags with relief. This is his I’m-not-going-to-hold-anything-back face, usually reserved for sim contests and down-to-Earth conversations, and it’s exactly what Shiro was hoping for.

He needs Adam to be real with him, if no one else will.

“I don’t think anything happens. I think you just cease to exist.”

Adam’s words settle in his chest with all the gravity of a black hole, packing every one of his unfathomable fears up in a tight wad and cramming it into the miniscule space between his heart and his ribs.

“Jesus.” Shiro wrenches himself off Adam’s shoulder and braces his hands against the concrete step as if he’s in danger of crumpling under the crushing pressure.

On second thought, he’s changed his mind; he’s absolutely not ready for this conversation.

Adam’s sigh is sharp as a scold. “You wanted to know what I think; what did you expect? You know I’m not religious.”

“Sure, but I guess I thought you’d– I don’t know, believe in reincarnation or something, not just…” He flounders as he searches for a word that can possibly encompass all that ceasing to exist makes him feel. It’s utterly indescribable, this swallowing terror. It’s… “Nothing.”

“Reincarnation is a load of shit.”

Shiro looks over at that, just in time to catch the way Adam’s nose crinkles in that endearing way of his, and it calls up a ghost of a smile to his face despite himself.

“Oh really? What about the Law of Conservation of Energy?” he counters.

Adam scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Don't even start with that. You do know that’s just a big misconception, right? That the ‘spiritual soul’ isn’t energy and therefore can’t be converted or reused in the same way energy can.”

Shiro frowns, considering. “Okay…” 

Some of the tension bleeds from his shoulders as he mulls over Adam’s words, really taking his time with it. He’s always been a bit of a believer in reincarnation himself, simply because he thought it made the most scientific sense, but…

He can admit Adam has a point.

As he thinks, he drags his hands along the step he's sitting on, and his awareness narrows to the rough catch of his skin on the concrete. He’s suddenly hyperaware of every little scuff and scrape and prick, of how the irregular surface elicits so many unique sensations in his nociceptors. If Adam were to slide his hand along the concrete, just to meet his halfway, Shiro thinks the sensation would evoke something profoundly different in Adam’s body. No two living things experience life in the same way, consciousness in the same way, and…

And if he thinks about it too hard, pays too much attention to the slight squeeze and release of his ribs as he inhales and exhales or the way he sometimes can feel his own pulse pounding behind his eyes—if he tries to separate consciousness from reality–

It breaks his brain. It’s unfathomable, inconceivable. If your consciousness doesn’t go somewhere when you die—whether that be to an afterlife or new life—if it just ceases–

Then what?

It’s actually an interesting thought experiment, if you can ever get past the existential dread moving like fiberglass through your lungs.

His hand brushes up against the stem of a flower poking up out of a crack in the pavement, and as he traces a finger absentmindedly along the daisy’s delicate white petals, a thought occurs to him.

“Okay, but what about in, like, a cyclical way?” he says. “Like how, when your body decomposes, it feeds new life.”

When he looks back up at Adam, he’s got a skeptical scowl pulling at his lips. “What, so part of you can come back in the maggots feeding on your rotting flesh?”

“Or in the flowers that grow from the enriched soil,” Shiro counters, quick.

This is a familiar dance, the two of them sparring with their words, and—it helps, a little, makes him feel almost like a normal, not-dying man for a second.

“Your body won't be nurturing much of anything if it's trapped in a wooden box.” Adam’s face twists the instant the words leave his lips, regret painted plainly on his face.

Just like that, the electricity crackling between them fizzles and dies. This is another topic they haven’t really gotten around to talking about yet: what to do with his body, what services he should have. What comes next for Adam when he’s gone.

The black hole is back, sucking at his ribcage. “I guess not.”

He pulls his eyes away from Adam, turns his gaze back up to the light dusting of stars in the sky, and contemplates his place in the universe—because that’s an easier topic. He’s a single speck of dust, inconsequential, like one star amongst billions, and if his light is snuffed out…

That doesn’t really work as a metaphor, does it? If a star dies, all of the planets that once orbited it are decimated, too; in fact, there’s no universe in which the death of one thing doesn’t send ripples of devastation out into whatever’s been caught in its gravity.

Speaking of gravity, Adam slides across the space between them as if he physically can’t stay away and leans into his side, pressing their shoulders together.

“I guess maybe that’s what I was getting at after all,” he says after a moment.

Shiro sighs. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Compromise your beliefs to make me feel better. I’m not made of glass, you know.”

“Would you just–” Adam squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose as if he’s trying to physically force the exasperation back down. “–let me finish.”

He waits for a second, eyeing Shiro out of the corner of his eye to make sure he’s not going to interrupt. A bit begrudgingly, Shiro gestures for him to continue.

“It’s not that there’s nothing, exactly—it’s more that everything that makes up who and what you are is scattered like stardust through the universe. Your physical body breaks down into its essential building blocks, and all those little elements of you could end up anywhere—in the soil, in the air, in the heart of a supernova billions of lightyears away—but it's all too disconnected to still be you. Some of it’s you, sure, and some of it’s the people who came before you, and some of it’s the people who’ll come after you, and also, none of it’s anyone. Not anymore. It's just dust.”

Shiro takes that in for a long moment. Adam’s got his eyes on the stars once again, but Shiro can’t seem to pull his gaze away from Adam’s face. As he traces the freckles that speckle his cheek with his eyes, he finds his mind wandering back to stardust. There’s stardust inside all of us—he doesn’t know where that saying first originated, but looking at Adam now, at the way his skin glows a soft brown in the fluorescent halo behind him and his eyes sparkle with what might be tears (though Shiro certainly won’t comment on them), he thinks there might be some truth behind that sentiment.