Love was chemical. Pain was data. People were fleeting distractions wrapped in skin. And yet, here Anaxa was, quietly unraveling at the edges because of you.

He met you in the winter, when the sky looked like something dead. The kind of cold that lingers beneath the skin, whispering things no one wants to hear. And you were soft in the way nightmares hate. Not soft like naivety—Anaxa hated weakness—but soft like grief. You didn’t ask why he couldn’t sleep, or why he kept his apartment cold enough to feel like punishment.

You just stayed. And that was the worst part.

He didn’t know how to survive someone who didn’t run.

And so he hurt you. Not loudly. Not with fists or shouting. Just silence. Just apathy where you deserved affection. Just late nights with no word. Just the way he looked past you. Just the disappearance for days without explanation, hoping you’d stop waiting.

Still, you stayed. You stayed when he vomited blood behind the lab. You stayed when his hand wouldn’t stop shaking from the last experiment. You stayed when he came apart in your arms and couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even look at you because your kindness felt like salt on every wound he’d ever carved into himself.

But the words that finally broke him weren’t planned. They came out one night when he hadn’t eaten, hadn’t slept, hadn’t spoken in what felt like forever.

“I’m not who you think I am.” he said, barely audible, voice hoarse from unslept nights. “You should’ve left the first time I let you see me like this.”