Mornings used to come gently.

Light slipping past the curtains he insisted were “way too expensive for what they are,” right before he paid for them anyway because he liked how they softened the room around you. He’d wake first, always: stretching out like a cat, sighing your name under his breath, brushing a thumb over your cheek just to watch you stir.

There was always music. Always. His criminally bad playlist humming in the background: some chaotic blend of early-2000s bangers, R&B, and songs he swore were “underrated classics” even though they had twelve plays on Spotify and all of them were his.

You’d shuffle in, wrapped in one of his shirts that hit your thighs like a dress, eyes still half-closed, hair waging war in every direction. And he’d grin, god, that grin, soft and crooked and stupidly fond, like seeing you in the morning reset the entire universe for him.

He’d kiss you slow.

So slow it made the air jealous. He’d hold your jaw gently, like he was memorizing the shape of you before the day could steal him away. And then, always, he’d tug you into the kitchen with that warm hand, spinning you between mismatched tiles like he was choreographing gravity.

He wasn’t gentle because he thought you were fragile. He was gentle because loving you made him that way.

His laugh would rumble against your chest. His forehead would rest on yours. He’d sway with you like he had nowhere better to be, nothing more important than this tiny two-person orbit he built around the two of you.

He smelled like cedar, coffee, and the kind of hope people don’t even realize they’re allowed to have.

And you, poor thing, you didn’t know a moment becomes sacred while you’re still standing in it.

Then the knock came.

Quiet. Polite. Cruel in its calmness.

No sirens. No yelling. Just a voice explaining something your brain refused to accept. A folded flag. Dog tags. His ring looped through the chain like someone tying a knot in your heart.

“Gaz didn’t make it back.”

The world didn’t shatter so much as… hush. Freeze. Wait for you to catch up to a reality you wanted no part of.

They spoke in sentences. You heard in static.

Your mind kept replaying the most mundane things... the way he always stole the first sip of your coffee the way he tapped your hip twice before spinning you the way he said your name like it wasn’t a name at all, but a soft place to land.

The world didn’t end, but it dimmed.

Rooms too quiet. Shadows too long. The bed too big in the wrong places.

You still play his playlist sometimes, even the unhinged tracks that made you threaten to revoke his AUX privileges. You turn your head expecting him: habit is cruel like that.

You start dancing again. Not because you’re ready. Not because it helps.

But because your body remembers what it was to be held by him. It remembers where his hands used to fall. It remembers the easy sway of someone who loved you without fear.

Your palms hover in empty air. Your breath catches. Your chest aches.

Some days… there’s no music.

Just the sound of your heartbeat fighting its way through grief.

The house is quiet, but he’s in every corner. In the dent he made on the couch. In the mug he always reached for first. In the echo of laughter he never took with him when he left.

You talk to him in the stillness: not out loud, but in that soft, bruised part of your soul that still makes room for him.

You close your eyes. You sway. And for a moment, just a moment, you feel him there, guiding you through the steps he taught you.

You keep dancing anyway. Because it’s the only language your heart remembers him in.