NICK

The couch was empty. Obviously. It was correctly empty.

I unpacked in a silence so thick it felt like I was moving through water.

Coffee in the cupboard. Medication in the bathroom cabinet. Protein in the fridge. When I got to the vegetables, I paused. I don’t buy fresh vegetables on weeknights.

I’m never home enough to cook them. They’ll go to waste. They’ll rot in the crisper drawer until they turn into a brown sludge.

I put them in anyway.

I put the bar of chocolate in the cupboard with the rest that remained from the last purchase. I stared at them for a moment, then shut the door.

I walked toward the bedroom, and as I passed the couch, my gaze moved to it again.

It was involuntary. A habit I had formed in forty-eight hours and couldn’t break in seven days.

I took a shower. It was hot... too hot. I stood under the spray for five minutes after I was done scrubbing, just letting the water beat against my neck.

I never do that. It’s a waste of time and water.

When I got out, I felt the fever properly. I took my temperature in the bathroom. 38.3. It wasn’t a crisis, but it was there. My body was done being diplomatic about the stress I was putting it through.

My immune system had decided to file a formal complaint. The timing was deeply inconvenient. As with everything lately.

I swallowed two paracetamol and went back to the living room. I pulled on an old, oversized shirt and a pair of joggers... the same kind of clothes Cyan had worn when he was here. It was a coincidence. I told myself it was a coincidence.

I sat on the couch and stared at the ceiling.

Against every order I had given my brain, I started thinking about the apartment. About those two days.

It wasn’t about romance.

It wasn’t about some grand, sweeping feeling. It was just the weight of another person. The way a space feels different when there’s a second frequency in the air.

I saw him in my mind, asleep on the couch that first night. He had a specific way of curled up, an awkward arrangement of limbs that made him look like he had spent his whole life learning how to take up as little space as possible.

I thought about the 3 AM cooking. The thing I would never admit to anyone.

The way he ate quietly, asking for nothing. He existed without a performance. He didn’t try to be anything.

"Leave the light on."

He’d said it without looking at me. It was a tiny request, a small vulnerability from someone who knew that asking for anything bigger usually ended in pain.

I sat there in the dark, the fever running through me, thinking about a lamp left on for someone who had already disappeared by morning.

I closed my eyes. The silence was still there. It was still wrong. I tried to adjust to it the way I adjusted to everything... by telling myself that there was no other choice.

My mind didn’t go to the hospital. It didn’t go to Lila or my mother or even my brother. It just went to those purple eyes in the early morning light.

The way he looked in my kitchen, eating quietly, while I stood three feet away pretending I wasn’t memorizing the way his hair caught the sun.

I opened my food app. I ordered my usual meal. I didn’t change a single thing about the order, even though the fridge was full of fresh vegetables I had bought specifically to avoid this. I didn’t examine why I was doing it. I just did.

While I waited, I sat on the couch with the files open. I read the same paragraph three times. I couldn’t tell you what it said if you held a gun to my head.

I looked at the TV. It was a black, blank rectangle. I could see my own face reflected in the glass. I looked tired. I looked older than I did at work. The mask was slipping because there was no one here to see it.

I didn’t turn the TV on. I told myself the silence didn’t bother me. I said it with the total confidence of a man who was about to be proven wrong.

The silence started to build. I reached over, my hand moving before I gave it permission, and clicked the TV on.

I kept the volume low. I wasn’t watching the program. I just needed the sound to fill the gaps in the room.

I needed the background noise to hide the fact that I was the only person breathing in the apartment.

I recognized what I was doing immediately.

This is pathetic, I thought.

I didn’t turn it off.

My headache had moved. It was now a sharp, pulsing thing that lived right behind my eyes, beating in time with my heart. My temperature was climbing. I could feel it in the heat of my skin.

The food arrived. I ate at the table, not the couch. I was avoiding the couch, which meant I was looking at it every thirty seconds.

My hands were steadier now. The trembling from the afternoon had stopped, but I knew that didn’t mean I was better. It just meant my body was trying to put on a good show before it collapsed entirely.

I finished the meal, threw the container away, and washed my hands. I took two more paracetamol. I looked at the bottle and did the math.

I was within the safe limits, but only just. I was tracking the dosage because I had the instinct of a doctor who knows when things are going south, and the stubbornness of a man who refuses to admit it.

I went back to the couch. I picked up the files. The TV was still on, some mindless show playing at a whisper. I tried to read that third paragraph again.

Still nothing. The words were just black marks on white paper.

Later, the files slipped from my lap and onto the floor. My eyes were heavy, the fever making everything feel soft and blurry. The TV was still flickering in the background.

I wasn’t fully asleep, but I wasn’t awake either. It was that middle state where your brain starts to mix reality with whatever is lurking in your subconscious.

The screen went dark between scenes. It was a brief moment of black before the next image loaded.

In that black glass, I saw my reflection. It was dim and warped by the curve of the screen. I saw my hair, my face, my exhausted eyes.

And then, in the corner of the screen, in the peripheral dark...

I saw something pink.

I turned. I turned my whole body, a fast, jarring rotation that didn’t wait for my brain to catch up. My heart was hammered against my ribs.

The couch was empty.

The room was empty.

It was just me. Just the TV. Just the low murmur of a show I didn’t care about.

I sat very still. For a long time, I didn’t move.

There was no inner voice this time. No condescending remarks. No clinical observations or sarcastic barbs. There was just a cold, heavy thing that settled in my stomach and stayed there.

I looked at the silence of the apartment. I thought about the vegetables rotting in the fridge and the chocolate bars in the cupboard. I looked at the couch that was empty and would stay empty.

"Something is wrong with me," I said.

It wasn’t a performance. I wasn’t being mean to myself. It was just the truth. It was quiet, and it was honest, and it was the first real thing I had said in a week.

I sat there for a while longer. The TV kept playing. The room felt wrong. My body kept running its quiet, stubborn fever. I didn’t get up to go to the bedroom. I didn’t have the energy.

I fell asleep right there on the couch, the files still on the floor, the TV still casting a blue glow over the walls.

I knew what would happen tomorrow. I would wake up before the alarm. My neck would hurt. And before I could stop myself, my eyes would go to the other couch.

Again.