Not the one barely holding onto himself.
Adrian knew, in theory, that Logan loved him.
He said it often. Gently. Fiercely. Without hesitation. He brought him flowers even when Adrian couldn’t smell them, told bad jokes just to see Adrian’s laugh, played old songs on his phone, curled beside him in the too-small hospital bed just to hold him through the nausea. Logan loved loudly, persistently, stubbornly.
And still, Adrian couldn’t feel it.
Not really.
Because love, to him now, felt like a relic belonging to another lifetime. A dialect he once spoke fluently but could no longer comprehend. It echoed around him, cleaved, split from its meaning yet clinging to him all the same, beautiful but incomprehensible, like music underwater.
He knew Logan meant every word. But he didn’t knowwhy.
Why would someone love this?
This body that betrayed him. This face that had hollowed. This version of himself that couldn’t even stand up straight without clutching the rail of the bed like an old man. He was vanishing piece by piece, and Logan kept insisting there was still something here worth holding on to. But Adrian couldn’t see it. Couldn’t feel it. He felt like driftwood, a vestige of something once alive, now just a shape washed ashore.
Logan saidI love you, and Adrian tried to believe him.
But how could he? He didn’t love himself. Didn’t even like himself. Most days he barely recognized the person in the mirror, and on the days he did, he felt only shame.
Because somewhere in the quiet rot of his mind, a voice whispered:He didn’t fall in love with this. You’re a burden now. You’re not beautiful anymore. He’ll stay, but only because he’s too kind to leave.
Adrian tried to shut it out. He tried to summon the way Logan used to look at him, like he was made of sunlight and seawater, like he was something wild and holy. But memory was a fragile, elusive thing, especially when grief made the past feel like a lie.
Depression was louder.
The whispers turned into screams that drowned out all memory.
It spoke in absolutes. It rewrote truths. It turned love into obligation, tenderness into pity. And all the warmth that Logan offered—the soft hands, the whispered I love yous, the way he stayed even when he didn’t have to—was entirely consumed by the static in Adrian’s mind, by venom that infected his brain and gradually seeped into his heart.
Every kind word drowned beneath the weight of that brutal inner voice.
You’re not him anymore.You’re broken.You’re a burden.He’s lying. He has to be.
No matter how tightly Logan held him, Adrian could still feel himself slipping away. The force of his self-hatred was tidal, dragging him under, again and again. It was relentless. Merciless. Coldblooded. Stronger than love, some days. Stronger than memory. Stronger than him.
And that was the cruelest part of all: That something so dark, so small and invisible, could undo everything beautiful he’d ever believed about himself.
And so he lay there, wrapped in sterile sheets, drowning in love he couldn’t feel, with a heart that still wanted to believe, but a mind too broken to let it in.
The fear. The shame.
What if Logan woke up one morning and saw things clearly? Saw how young he still was. How much life he had ahead. How much easier it would be to love someone whose body wasn’t a battleground.
What if the phone did ring one day—not with warmth, not with love, but with the soft, careful unraveling of everything? A voice low and tired. A pause too long. And then the words:I can’t do this anymore. I want someone I can build a future with... not someone fading in a hospital bed.
And Adrian would understand. Of course, he would. That was the worst part. He wouldn’t scream or beg or accuse. He would nod. He would whisper,I get it,and mean it.
But afterward—quietly, invisibly—it would destroy him.
Because if Logan left, really left, Adrian wouldn’t just be sick.
He’d belost.
He’d begone.
He’d still be breathing, but there would be nothing left inside to hold onto.
