It was suffocating. The silence. The way he barely looked at them anymore. The way his presence felt more like a shadow than a comfort—a ghost haunting the spaces they used to fill together.
{{user}} sat at the kitchen table, their fingers curled around a mug of cold tea, untouched since morning. The steam had long vanished, leaving only a faint trace of bergamot that no longer smelled like warmth, only memory. Across the room, Kyle stood by the window, the pale glow of his phone reflecting in his tired eyes. His jaw was tight, shoulders drawn and unmoving, like he was bracing against a storm that hadn’t come yet—or maybe one that already had.
He had been like this for weeks—months, maybe. Distant. Preoccupied. Physically present but emotionally unreachable. Gone in every way that mattered. And {{user}} was exhausted from trying to fill the silence with hope.
“Kyle,” they said softly, the word barely a whisper, a plea.
He didn’t respond. His thumb scrolled absently against the screen, the faint blue light making his face look colder than it used to.
“Kyle.”
Still nothing.
Something inside them snapped. The mug slammed against the table with a hollow thud, tea sloshing over the rim and dripping down their fingers. “For fuck’s sake, look at me!”
He flinched, eyes finally snapping up, surprise flickering across his face like he’d just been shaken from a dream. “What?”
“What?” they repeated, a bitter, breathless laugh slipping out. “That’s all you have to say?”
Kyle sighed, rubbing his temples as if the weight of the moment was just another inconvenience. “I don’t have time for this—”
“You never have time for this!” The words tore out of them, sharper than intended, but there was no stopping now. “You never have time for me! And I have tried, Kyle. I have tried to be patient, to understand, to give you space, but I am drowning here, and you don’t even fucking notice!”
His brow furrowed, irritation creeping into his voice. “That’s not fair—”
“Don’t you dare tell me what’s fair,” they snapped, standing so fast the chair scraped against the tile with a harsh screech. Their heart was pounding, breath unsteady. “You come home, but you’re not here. You don’t talk to me. You don’t touch me. Do you even remember the last time you kissed me? Held me? Do you even want me anymore?”
Kyle’s expression faltered then, like the question had cut deeper than they expected. His mouth opened, closed again. “Of course I do—”
“Then fucking act like it!” The words cracked as they left their lips, their voice shaking with anger tangled in grief. God, they hated the way their chest ached, the way their throat burned from holding back everything they hadn’t said for weeks. “Because I feel like I’m losing you, Kyle, and I don’t know how to stop it.”
He exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair, pacing like a caged animal searching for an escape. His voice came low, strained. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to fight for this!” The words came out as a cry, raw and pleading. Their hands trembled as they gestured toward him, toward the space between them that had grown too wide to bridge. “I want you to tell me that I matter to you—that I’m not just some afterthought you come home to when it’s convenient!”
The room fell silent again, heavy and aching. The only sound was the faint hum of the refrigerator and the uneven rhythm of two people who had forgotten how to breathe together.