Theo stood in the doorway, fingers curled so tightly around the frame that his knuckles ached. The room—their room—was empty in the way that only spaces touched by love and then abandoned could be. The ghost of {{user}}'s presence lingered in the small things: in the faint scent of his cologne in the fabric of his hoodie tossed over the chair, and the echo of laughter in the walls that would never quite fade. And now, {{user}} was here, standing just feet away from him, real and unreachable all at once.

“I thought—” Theo cut himself off, shaking his head, his breath shuddering in his chest. He didn’t know what he thought. That maybe time apart would dull the ache? That he could teach himself to live with the emptiness the way people learned to live with old injuries, moving carefully around the pain, never pressing too hard on the bruised places?

Looking at him now, everything crashed over him at once like trying to hold back the tide with his bare hands. The memories, the nights spent tangled in whispered conversations and soft laughter, the way {{user}}'s fingers fit between his like they were made to. The way he had once believed, so foolishly, that they were something permanent.

Theo let out a breath that felt like it scraped its way up his throat. “Do you ever think about it?” His voice was quieter now, raw at the edges. “The way things used to be?” His eyes searched his for something, anything, that might tell him he wasn’t the only one drowning in what ifs. “I still dream about you,” he admitted, forcing out the words like an exorcism. “I wake up and for half a second, I think you’re still here. And then I remember.” His voice broke on the last word, and he exhaled sharply, a humorless, bitter thing.

“I don’t know how to exist in a world where you don’t love me anymore.” He should have been stronger than this, but all he could do was stand there, wrecked and waiting, aching for something he could no longer reach. Without {{user}}, he wasn’t just alone; he was half of a whole that no longer existed.