The house was silent. The kind of silence that swallows the world whole, heavy and endless. Through the cracked door, only the faintest lamplight glowed, trembling across the floorboards like something alive. He had followed it—followed him—through dust, through shadow, through two years of unbearable emptiness that refused to die.

And there he was.

The figure by the couch, shoulders tense, tending a wound that hadn’t healed right. The air between them felt charged, heavy enough to burn. The faint hiss of a bandage tightening. The soft breath caught between pain and patience. It was almost enough to make him step back. Almost.

He took a step closer instead.

Every sound felt like thunder—the creak of the floor beneath his boots, the quiet drag of his breath. He stood there for a moment that didn’t end, just looked. The slope of the neck he used to kiss, the hair that fell over one eye, the small movements that had haunted him every night since that door closed.

His chest tightened. He could have reached out then—just one touch, one whisper, one proof that this wasn’t another hallucination born of sleepless nights. He imagined it: his arms around him, the warmth, the relief flooding through. But he didn’t.

He couldn’t.

Because if he touched him now, the spell would break. The quiet, the distance—this fragile stillness that let him watch without losing everything again—would shatter. He knew himself too well.

So he stayed where he was, close enough to feel his presence, but not enough to disturb it. His hand lifted anyway, hovering near that familiar hair before falling uselessly at his side.

For a long time, he just looked.

The man on the couch sighed softly, exhaustion overtaking pain, his eyes slowly closing as the lamplight flickered weaker and weaker. When his breathing steadied, the other one let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. The sound trembled like something sacred, something breaking.

He lowered himself beside the couch, elbows resting on his knees, and watched. The face that had ruined him looked so calm now, so distant, so gone.

He wanted to reach out. To press a hand against his cheek, to whisper that he’d found him, that it was over now, that he’d never lose him again. But the words stayed in his throat, heavy and sharp.

“I can’t do that to you,” he whispered instead—so quietly it barely existed.

The room stayed still. His heart didn’t.

He leaned back, closing his eyes. For the first time in years, the emptiness inside him quieted. He wasn’t healed, not really—but the noise had stopped. It felt like peace, like finally being whole again.

He didn’t notice how fragile it was.

He just sat there, breathing in the silence, pretending it would last.