Our Time Is Short, This Is Our Fate

I heard the door open and close. I waited for a minute - I can tell each of the boys by their footsteps - but whoever it was didn't move. I sat up, but the room was utterly dark; the boys put me to bed on the couch when I got back from Cleveland because it's just easier for them, but I groused until they pulled out the hide-a-bed so HB could sleep with me. He was next to me, his breath deep and even, still sleeping.
"Hello?" I said cautiously.
"Hey," a familiar voice replied. "Is this a bad time? Too early?" It was David.
"No... no," I said, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands. "What time is it?"
"Six thirty." I heard David cautiously move over to the other couch. Paper rustled as he moved. "I can go if you're still asleep, Bigg, I just wanted to see how you were doing."
"No, s'okay. Siddown." I threw my feet off the side and sat up. My innards slid and billowed with the motion, causing me a sharp stab of pain that made me groan. HB moved and muttered a little in his sleep, and I bit my lip and heaved to my feet. Right after I clicked the lamp I remembered that I should probably have checked just how dressed I was first.
"Whoops," I muttered and twitched the sheet back over HB's bare ass. I looked around wildly for something to put on and then spotted my pajama bottoms hanging from the shade of a floor lamp - on the other side of the room behind David, naturally. Please don't ask how they got there. "I... uh..." and then I caught sight of David's face.
He looked like he might cry. "Oh, Bigg," he said, and it sounded like a gasp.
"What?" I looked down at myself. "What's wrong?"
He was just staring at me - well, okay, at my body. I realized that it had been a good long time since he'd even seen me so much as without a shirt, but jeez... And then he got up and came over and put his arms around me.
"I am so, so sorry," he whispered in my ear, and I could tell that he was upset.
"It's... uh, okay," and I patted his arm. "I should really..." He went right on hugging me.
"I am so sorry that I ran out on you," he said into the side of my neck, and from the strained husky sound of his voice and the hitch in his words I thought he might just cry. "I wish so much that I could be here for you through all of this. You poor..." He put his hands on my shoulders, held me back far enough to look me up and down in my tiny little skivvies, then started welling up. "You've been through so much..."
"It's okay, David," I told him, wishing desperately that he'd let go of me so I could get my pajama pants back. Personally, I find that people who have this sort of pitying reaction test my restraint far more than the ones who give me the 'so what?' attitude, but I get it a lot from people I love so I just try to let it slide right off me when it happens. Not so easy to do sometimes. "I should really-"
HB cleared his throat behind us. David and I both froze and slowly revolved to see HB sitting up in the hide-a-bed, the sheet puddled in his bare lap. There, of course, less than three feet from the end of the bed, was me wrapped in David: his arms around me, and I'm ninety percent of naked, and never mind that I look like I'm put together with matchsticks and toothpicks. The only way it could possibly have been worse is if HB'd had a camera.
"What time is it?" HB said, and his tone perfect conveyed several unspoken questions at once: Why is David here? Why aren't you dressed? Did I miss something?
David let me go and stepped back so fast you'd've thought I was on fire. "I am SO sorry," he said at once to HB, holding his hand out palm out. "I just stopped by after my run this morning... I didn't realize you guys were sleeping down here... Sorry... I just thought..." He took a deep breath. "You know, I should go now."
I was about to say You may be onto something there, but HB shook his head. "No, it's okay." He started to get up, realized he was entirely naked, and sat back down. "Um, Bigg, could you...?"
I scooted over to the lamp, pulled my pajama bottoms down and snaked into them, then grabbed HB's clean sweat pants from the laundry basket - please don't ask me where his clothes from last night went, I think we threw them out the window - and tossed them to him. David considerately turned away while HB yanked them on, so he didn't see HB give me a quizzical look and a head-bob in his direction or my silently mouthed I have no idea accompanied by a frantic shrug. HB had one leg entirely on and was hopping up and down trying to pull the other one on when Aaron spoke up from the doorway to the dining room.
"What the hell's going on?"
HB startled and fell on his ass, one leg still out of the sweat pants with his bare bottom and goodies hanging out. David gaped at Aaron, looked at HB (and quickly away), and even though I wasn't even entirely sure what was going on yet, I started blushing like a firetruck.
One word: awkward.
HB got his pants situation squared away, I found us both t-shirts and Aaron went to the kitchen for a very considerate pause and came back with coffee and tea. Turns out that David had actually spoken to Aaron on the phone the night before, and Aaron had told him about the trip to Cleveland, that I hadn't really felt too skippy since I got back from there, and probably quite a bit of other stuff that probably sounded like they'd be fitting me for my casket any day now. To which I could only (and can only) say, I made it this far, it might be premature to give up now. David is genuinely, terribly worried about me, and HB was really wonderfully understanding about waking up to find him embracing me in my underwear, all things considered. Aaron went back to the kitchen and made a very competent breakfast for the three of them and a horrible protein concoction for me - the damn things are doing wonders for my weight and muscle tone, but taste sort of predigested. Ew. David stayed for a couple hours, and everything was okay.
I'll say this: I go through a lotta shit, but I am never bored.
Then this morning I was awakened by the cordless phone ringing somewhere under the blankets with us. It was the clinic with my biopsy results. The good news is that they're reasonably certain that my liver's fine, it's just one of those things. The bad news... Well, I haven't really let on to HB that there even is any bad news, so I won't talk about that. I guess, though, that this will be a great way to see if he really reads more than the first few sentences of my posts, right? Anyway, I'm signing off today with a song/video that I've really come to utterly love. It captures so much of what I feel about HB, I'm just crazy about it. You might wanna give it a try.
Have a good day, everybody.

Title lyric from "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz.