June 26th, 2017 at 07:51am
I am so sorry this took so long for me to comment on, but this is for the Prewrites Contest.
I remember the first time I read this a few years back I started crying and reading it again, I still had tears in my eyes. This piece is so beautiful. I was so engulfed in it that I had to reread it to see if there were any points to pick up on, but again I couldn’t focus on editing, only on the story. Firstly the title suits it perfectly the way the phrase is used throughout the story. Also it’s great, the initial shock when you realise he has cancer followed by the solemnity in how his boyfriend will only find out when he’s gone. All the description is relevant and the dialogue is short and not forced. I personally can’t fault this so well done and thanks for such a heart-breaking but wonderful read :)
This was such a depressing one-shot, wow. It starts with such a warm and pleasant scene that just immediately leads to the reader getting punched in the face by the shadow of the inevitable during the rest of the story. It was definitely a surprising beginning, but it was a good transition. It added weight to the entire present situation so that was good.
I’ll be honest with you when I say I’m not the biggest fan of the whole ‘character A has terminal cancer’ trope, especially in LGBT+ fics, but I did think you did well with it. It was sad and emotional as it should have been, and you were unapologetic when you were pulling your punches. I respect that you didn’t bail on the concept and have the surgery work so Tyler lived, or just have it be an illness that was easily curable. I also appreciated the mirroring between Cameron telling him to let go of his fear of swimming and then the echoing of his words at the end.
To be honest though, I thought it was really selfish of Tyler to not tell Cameron. I understand that Tyler felt that he needed that last moment of obliviousness, but if I were in Cameron’s position, I would want to know that in the morning, my boyfriend isn’t going to be there anymore. Not knowing until it’s already too late would root some serious betrayal and guilt with a lot of ‘what ifs’ that can’t just be forgiven in the romanticization of the dead, I think. I think it bothered me more because you wrote Tyler to be head over heels in love with this boy so I felt like, just by that alone, he wouldn’t actually keep something so something from him in a moment of sheer selfishness because it’ll hurt Cameron way more in the end. Then he gave Cameron a letter as an explanation? It actually frustrated me that he was doing all this because I kept putting myself in Cameron’s position and I would actually be so angry.
Technicality wise, you had some spelling errors (there are two places where you forgot the apostrophes with ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t’) and your dialogue tags are improper in a few places. Such as:
“I’m sorry boys, but visiting hours are over.” the nurse announced. – It should be a comma in the dialogue, not a period.
“So very true, m‘dear! I suppose I better get going before the nurse kicks my ass,” he grinned[.] – Then the total opposite here, it should be a period and ‘he’ should be capitalized.
You also tend not to capitalize the beginning of sentences after some dialogue. Unless it’s a tagline (such as said, whispered, yelled, asked, etc.), the next bit after dialogue should be capitalized. For example: “But Tyler, then we’d get to warm each other up!” wiggling his eyebrows with a smirk[,] – ‘wiggling’ should be capitalized as it’s not a dialogue tag. You did this a few times throughout the story so I would definitely reading it over and/or getting an editor to help you if you’re not sure about proper dialogue tags. It can be tricky.
Other than that, this was a well-written story with a lot of emotions. I really liked that you included Tyler’s family in the whole goodbye process, too. It made it that much more personal. Good job.