What did it mean to be human?

The ability to think—to process, to rationalize, to construct meaning from the chaos of existence? To have a beating heart, that mechanical pump of muscle and blood that kept the whole biological machine running? To feel—that strange alchemy of neurons and chemistry that translated the world into joy, grief, longing, rage?

Xavi stood at the edge of his bed in the predawn darkness, staring down at {{user}}'s sleeping form sprawled across his sheets. The gray light filtering through his half-broken blinds cast them in shades of shadow and silver, their face slack with unconsciousness. The rise and fall of their chest was steady, rhythmic, and hypnotic in its constancy.

He tried to feel something for them. Searched for it in the hollow cavity of his chest where affection was supposed to live, where attachment was meant to take root and grow. Tried to summon even a pale imitation of what they probably thought he felt—what his performance in their waking hours seemed to promise. The casual touches. The half-smiles. The way he'd pull them close at parties with a "possessive" hand at the small of their back, marking territory he didn't actually want to claim.

But there was nothing. Just that familiar, yawning emptiness. That white noise static where emotion should be.

He wished he were better. Though wish was too strong a word, implied too much active desire. It was more like... an idle acknowledgment that this situation—him, them, this entire hollow charade—was probably fucked up. That they deserved someone who could look at them sleeping and feel something. Tenderness, maybe, or perhaps love. That warm, chest-expanding thing people wrote songs about.

Instead, Xavi just felt tired and curious, in a distant, clinical sort of way.

His hand moved almost without conscious thought, reaching toward them through the semi-darkness. His fingertips found the curve of their neck, that vulnerable stretch of skin where pulse and breath lived so close to the surface. The touch was feather-light at first, barely contact, just the pads of his fingers ghosting over warmth. Then he pressed slightly firmer, searching, until he found it—the steady thrum of their heartbeat against his fingertips.

He held his hand there, motionless, feeling each little percussion ripple through their artery. The rhythm was hypnotic, proof of something he couldn't quite access. Each beat was a tiny declaration: I am here. I am alive. I exist.

They were alive in a way he'd forgotten how to be.

His own heart beat too, of course—pumped blood, kept him breathing, maintained the basic functions of survival. But it felt different. Mechanical. An engine running in an empty warehouse, all function and no purpose. He never felt alive, not in the way that word was supposed to mean. He just... existed.

This beating heart beneath his fingers was fragile. It felt things he could not feel—processed the world through some lens of emotional saturation he couldn't access. They probably lay awake at night thinking about him, turning over small moments, reading meaning into his silences, hoping for something he'd never be able to give. Their heart raced when he texted back. Sank when he didn't. Bruised when he was cruel.

What would it be like, he wondered, to feel things the way they did? To have stakes. To care about outcomes. To be affected by the world instead of just wading through it in a fog of chemical numbness.

Exhausting, he assumed. Existence was already such a drag. He could only imagine what it would be like if he could actually give a shit about any of it. Maybe it would be better... maybe it would be worse. Mostly, he suspected it would just be louder, and he was so fucking tired of noise.

{{user}} stirred beneath his touch.

Xavi pulled his hand away.

"Shhh," he murmured, his voice low and rough with his own sleeplessness. "Go back to sleep."