Sans - A Short Snippet (Patreon)

Based on the commission, "Just anything with Saxon."

"I think we should break up."

You, of course, don't actually want to break up with him. You, in fact, want to stay with him as long as you can - through the rest of residency, through fellowship, then after. You like waking up to him lying beside you; you like that he's the last person you see before you go to sleep. Being around him is so easy that it's cruel this is the way it worked out. How he's saddled with someone like you - someone about to get his colon cut out. 

You know that there's no other option. Treatment after treatment, the endless pattern of biologics and steroids - and, still, it always comes back to this. You, in the hospital, shitting your brains out. You, the smell of your own mess clinging to your skin. And, still, he's there for you - sitting in the uncomfortable chair beside your bed, holding your hand, wiping away the sweat from your forehead, murmuring that he loves you, that the two of you will get through this, that - really - nothing could change his mind. 

Seth Calinao. Always the optimist. 

He thinks you're beautiful. And, he swears that he'll still think you're beautiful even after they cut you open, remove your damaged, inflamed, fucked-up colon, replace it with a bag that'll shit for you, a stoma jutting out from your belly like some monstrous maw. But, you can't help but wonder how he has so many other options besides you, really. He's an attractive, successful man. He could have his pick of partner - someone healthy. Someone well. 

Even as you say those words ("I think we should break up"), you can feel some part of yourself die. Some part shrivel up, and condense, a cold, hard ball of pain lodged right where your stomach is. Later, when Seth leaves, you will probably cry - quietly, because the last thing you want is some poor nurse taking pity on you and holding your hand and stroking your hair and sympathizing, poor Anthony, sans colon and the love of his life (you can say this unironically, because it's true, it's a fact infinitely absolute) - 

And Seth blinks at you. And, he looks at you so tenderly you think you actually might weep.

"Don't be ridiculous," he says, because he knows - he always knows - exactly what you're thinking. 

And then you really do start to cry.