He notices the hesitation.

The way your eyes flick away when he’s talking. The way your laughter stops a heartbeat too soon. The way your hand hesitates on his, like it’s weighing whether it wants to stay or leave.

Gaz hates hesitation. He hates it in a mission, hates it in a fight, and god: he hates it most of all in love; because he knows what it means. He’s seen the look on faces before they stop caring, before the warmth dies out; and the thought that it might be you... you... it makes something inside him snap.

He doesn’t go quiet. He can’t. He can’t let it simmer and gnaw like it does in Price’s chest or Ghost’s. He explodes. At first, it’s sharp, frantic. Questions. Accusations. “What’s wrong? Did I do something?” His voice is louder than he wants it to be, shaking with the need for proof that he isn’t imagining it. That you still want him.

The louder he goes, the further you seem. And oh, that’s the knife twisting: seeing the distance in your eyes as he tries to reach across it. The warmth he craves is slipping, and he can feel it like fire eating through him from the inside.

He’ll do anything to pull you back. Make you laugh, make you remember, make you need him the way he needs you. He’ll run, he’ll fight, he’ll throw every ounce of himself at you; but love doesn’t respond to desperation, and sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes, no matter how much you burn for someone, they are already turning away.

There’s the quiet moment afterward, the one he can’t run from, the one where he’s staring at the ceiling, heart hammering, hands trembling like he’s holding a grenade and the pin is long gone. He thinks of what he’d do if it’s really over, if you’ve already left him in small pieces without even knowing it. He imagines walking away, but he can’t. He can’t stop himself from hoping, from aching, from reaching for you: even when he knows that reach may only push you further.

Gaz loves like a storm: fast, violent, impossible to ignore; and if you’re slipping out of his grasp, he doesn’t just feel loss. He feels collapse. He feels the world tilt, the floor drop, the sky darken; because for him, love is total. It’s all or nothing. The thought of nothing… it terrifies him more than any enemy he’s ever faced.

He doesn’t beg quietly. He doesn’t cry silently. He shouts into the dark, into your eyes, into the space where your warmth used to be, hoping, praying, demanding: don’t leave me. Don’t let this end.

And when you don’t answer, when the hesitation lingers too long, he finally realizes the truth: sometimes the people we love the most aren’t ours to hold. Sometimes we burn ourselves trying to keep a flame that was never ours to keep.

...but Gaz...God, poor, frantic, unstoppable Gaz... burns anyway.