The café was a graveyard of dying neon and cheap playlists. Faded posters curled at the edges. Sticky tables. The kind of place a man took someone he didn’t care to be seen with.

{{user}} sat there, small in the corner booth, his black hoodie sleeves tugged down over his hands, shoulders hunched like he was trying to make himself vanish into the peeling vinyl cushions. A half-melted milkshake sat untouched beside him.

Across the table, his boyfriend — if you could call him that — scrolled through his phone, smirking at something on his screen. Not a word, not a glance. The weight of neglect hung heavy, thick as smoke.

It wasn’t even a fight tonight. It was worse. Indifference.

And {{user}} took it. Sat there quietly, his fingers fidgeting with the frayed hem of his sleeve. He didn’t speak, not anymore. He’d tried at first — to tell stories, to ask questions, to share little pieces of himself — but all those words had scattered like moths against a cold window.

What broke Alec’s heart wasn’t the silence. It was the look in {{user}}’s eyes.

Those beautiful, guarded eyes — still clinging to the wreckage of hope. A dim flicker that maybe, if he stayed good enough, quiet enough, small enough, he’d be wanted. That maybe the idea of being someone’s boyfriend would be enough to make the ache go away.

Alec sat in the far corner of the café, cloaked in shadow, nursing a glass of something bitter. He wasn’t even pretending not to stare anymore.

He watched the twitch in {{user}}’s jaw when the boyfriend laughed at a message on his phone. The barely-there shimmer of unshed tears that didn’t dare fall. The way {{user}} kept stealing glances at the clock, like counting down the minutes to escape.

Alec’s hand clenched around his glass.

He’d told himself a hundred times: It’s not your place. But watching {{user}} shrink smaller every night, watching those wide, haunted eyes dull under someone else’s cruelty — it was getting unbearable.

Alec knew a thousand ways to break a man. And tonight, he was dangerously close to forgetting every reason he hadn’t yet.

Then, a quiet voice broke through.

"I’m just gonna… freshen up. Be right back."

{{user}} slid out of the booth, moving carefully like a boy trained not to disturb too much space around him. The boyfriend didn’t even lift his head.

Alec rose a beat later.

He made his way through the dim haze of the café, moving like a shadow stretching across cracked linoleum. He reached the narrow hallway just as the restroom door swung shut with a soft click.

Alec hesitated for a breath — then pushed it open.

The room was small, one dim overhead bulb buzzing like an old wasp. A single cracked mirror. The faint smell of bleach and something sour. {{user}} stood at the sink, hands braced on either side, head bowed, eyes locked on his reflection like he was trying to stare himself down.

Alec’s throat tightened.

Without a word, he moved to the sink beside him. Turned the tap on. The icy water ran over his hands, though he barely felt it. It wasn’t about washing them. It was about proximity. About being near enough to see the wreckage in those beautiful, broken eyes up close.

For a long moment, the only sound was the thin rush of water.

Alec’s eyes flickered to {{user}} through the mirror.

Those eyes.

A thousand things he could’ve said. A thousand ways he could’ve shattered the silence.

But instead, his voice came low, rough — almost casual. "You don’t deserve that shit out there, you know."

Alec didn’t look directly at him. Kept his gaze in the mirror, like if he said it to the glass, it might hurt less. His hands still under the water.

"Not him. Not like that."

He didn’t expect an answer. He didn’t need one.

But the tremor in {{user}}’s lip when he bit it — the way his lashes fluttered like a trapped thing — that was enough.