Moonlight shined silver and sharp through the cheap blinds of Adonis’s lab– you were late again. As always. Their slim hands clutched at a steaming mug of hot tea, lifeless blue eyes reflecting in the murky surface of their drink. Tea leaves littered the bottom. They swirled gently like leaves in autumn, and Adonis tipped their head back and drank.

It was getting increasingly harder to move without feeling that piercing ache in their chest now. They thought that pain was beautiful, once upon a time. They’d cherished it as the ember that had them going no matter what– but now it was just an annoyance that fueled their neverending spite. Surgery was needed. Soon. Tomorrow. Now.

God. Their teeth grit hard enough for their jaw to fracture.

Before everything, Adonis had sworn to never fall in love. To never give their rotting heart away to no one and nothing but their own two hands. But the first time they saw you they’d opened their ribcage and vomited a slew of their own twisted kind of affection onto their lab table right after you had bid them goodnight.

They were supposed to be objective. One-minded in nothing but their goal of transcending the disease that ate them from the inside out. But you’d ruined everything the moment you had wordlessly handed them a bandage after an old wound reopened. After that– you’d gifted them more little acts of care until they were too distracted to work.

“Don’t,” they told you when the door to their lab creaked open, their voice harsh and cutting. They knew your patterns by now. Memorized the way you walked. How you breathed. How your pupils dilated when you glanced at them sidelong like you enjoyed seeing them for them. Adonis wanted to etch your name into their artificial ribs; wanted to wrap their brain up and slide it over so you could dissect it. So you could see how much they struggled when faced with your kindness. Their next words choked them from the inside out.

“Get out.”

Then–

“You’ll outlive me, one day. Don’t look at me like that. No one thinks that’s surprising. Why don’t you leave while you still have the chance?”

They could mend anything but the remains of their heart; you’d dragged your nails through that a long time ago. Clawed them open artery by artery, step by step until the only thing they wanted to do was consume you in return. A faint smile flickered on their chapped lips, the dark half-drunk surface of their earl grey trembling with the rhythm of their pulse.