Requested by _tristful_

Ship(s): Romantic/unrequited Logicality

Category: Angst

Warning(s): Gore, unrequited love, death (Hanahaki Disease so you get the idea)

Summary: Perhaps Logan should have a better grip on his feelings. Or maybe he should be around Patton Sanders less. Either way, those pretty blue flowers soaked in blood aren't going away, and neither is the ache in his heart.

(I'm sorry in advance. ~kc)

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At precisely three in the morning, hours before the sun would rise on a warm, bright Sunday, Logan Berry jolted awake with a burning pressure in his lungs.

He staggered to his feet, coughing violently, fingers clawing uselessly at his throat. He stumbled to the bathroom and collapsed to the floor, dry heaving over the toilet, eyes watering and chest on fire. Something soft fell from his lips and landed, blood-soaked, on the floor.

A single, tiny blue flower, barely the size of a quarter.

With trembling fingers, Logan scooped up the miniscule thing, blinking harsh tears from his eyes. When he wiped his mouth absently, his hand came away scarlet.

"No," he whispered.

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This wasn't something he could brush off, unlike most inconveniences in his life. This was serious.

His mother had taken one look at the flower and immediately whisked him off to the doctor, where they received a grim diagnoses: Logan had Hanahaki Disease. He loved someone who didn't love him back, and either he would die or be unable to love them.

It was tempting. God, it was tempting. Be rid of this pain and simply be empty, or... or he would die.

He'd told his mother he needed time to think it over.

Instead, he'd driven to his best friend's house and knocked on the door.

Patton Sanders swung open the door, his face breaking out into a bright smile as soon as he saw Logan. "Hey, Lo! What's up?"

"I just wanted to hang out, before we take our finals next week."

"Sure! Come right on in."

They'd spent the whole afternoon playing boardgames, baking cookies, and exchanging playful banter. Logan found himself constantly checking available mirrors for any spot of blood on him, anything that would give him away.

He had to excuse himself at one point, going to the bathroom to hack up more blue flowers. Some research told him they were blue asters. Flowers that symbolized afterthought. The way one wished for things to happen.

"Are you okay?" Patton had asked.

"I'm fine," Logan had lied.

There was no logical way to go about this. Facts and figures could not protect him from his own heart. He could not hide his emotions with his IQ score.

But Patton didn't need to feel unecessarily guilty for Logan being unable to handle his emotions. So Logan didn't tell him. No reason to worry the one person in this life that Logan truly loved.

A week passed. He spent all of his time with Patton. He ignored the increasing number of aster flowers peppering his bathroom floor.

His mother begged him to get the surgery. But he couldn't do that. Not to Patton.

God, Patton was wonderful. His baby blue eyes, the splattering of freckles dotting his nose, the way his lip caught on his teeth when he smiled. Logan's lungs burned with every interaction.

One night, he sat at Patton's desk while Patton slept, tired after their sleepover activities. He spread out a piece of paper, uncapped a pen, and started to write.

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Three days later, Logan was found dead in his bed, surrounded by baby blue flowers and crimson blood, a letter tucked into his arm, addressed solely to Patton Sanders.

Patton sniffled and wiped away tears in his room that night, clutching the letter, his best friend's tie clenched in the other hand. Then, as he folded up the note, the words forever imprinted in his brain, he coughed up a single, bloody asphodel flower.

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Dear Patton Sanders,

There are no words to accurately describe the deep sadness I feel whilst writing this. I can only lament that we did not have enough time, but all this is merely pleasantries in the true light. A very smart boy once told me, "sometimes love is enough", and I could not agree more. Perhaps I was not enough for you. That is fine with me. You were enough for me, my love. You always were.

Aster flowers, specifically blue ones, represent afterthought. Flowers of wishing, of lamenting, of grief over lost chances of the past. Fitting, then, for I loved a boy who had given me all the chances in the world, though I could not bear to let him suffer as I suffered. Perhaps this was my mistake.

Forgiveness is not a given, however I wish for it to be so. I will never forgive you for giving me more than I could ever give you, knowing it would eat me up until the day these afterthoughts drowned me. And I know you will never forgive me for leaving quite abruptly, but I could simply not bear to feel your light be carved out of me. I would not know how to live without your divinity filling me up inside, lifting me up and carrying me off.

I was never an emotional child, but you have taken my hands and showed me a world of color and love, and for that my gratitude follows me to the grave. I have kept these silly remarks close to my heart, tucked into the corner where your light shines the brightest, and they have kept me aloft although my afterthoughts form daisy chains of longing I could never quite escape.

I am not eloquent. I struggle with my words when it comes to you. But somehow, sitting here, watching the gentle candelight slant over your closed eyes and illuminate your gentle smile, my mind is clear for the first time in a very long while. I feel as though I am not writing, but rather pulling my heartstrings and recording the vibrations. Living music. You are not poetry, Patton, but the mold of which poets fit their innermost desires and light for you to shape, for you to hold. You keep a million songs inside your ribcage, and a host of butterflies spins behind your smile. I am not a poet, and you are not poetry, but we humans tend to reduce complex beings to mere art. Pure, unbroken.

Both are falsehoods. No one is truely pure, and no one is truly unbroken. But once you are broken, so utterly shattered, yes, this is the only time your light is able to shine through the cracks, splitting into billions of rainbows and sunbeams like those many CDs stuffed into your shelves, old music you only play when in a fanciful mood. One in particular struck a chord within me.

Perhaps wise men say, only fools rush in. But I did not rush in. I was pulled, entranced by your delicate dancing sunlight and harmonic notes humming within your soul. And so I fell, lifted by a host of butterflies and buried by blue asters. Blue afterthoughts.

The afterthoughts are not here to harm, Patton. They are simply meant to remind.

For I loved a boy and was not loved in return, and it was this love that both carried and drowned me. I do not regret this love. I do not mean to incite guilt.

I simply mean to remind.

Remember the blue afterthoughts, my love. (Asters grow best in late summer. Perhaps play them the songs in your heart, and they will grow into flourishing afterthoughts like the ones in my lungs.)

With deepest and warmest regards,

Logan Berry.

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