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the loneliness has been getting to him lately.
it starts, of course, with dean getting sent to prison. then way dies — sudden, brutal, and so sharp it feels almost surreal. north doesn’t know what to feel, not really, not after everything that happened. but he copes. or he tries to.
and then, just when he starts to breathe again, sonic leaves too.
that one cuts deeper. it hurts more than he says, more than he knows how to say. but he convinces himself it’s temporary. sonic always comes back. the two of them have always been messy, always orbiting each other in ways that don’t quite settle. so north keeps moving, keeps his head up. and besides, everyone else is still around. the world doesn’t tilt too far. not yet.
but it doesn’t stop there. because soon, slowly, it also begins to fray. everyone’s suddenly in love, wrapped up in each other, curled tight around soft corners north can’t quite reach. first it’s charlie and babe, clumsy and sweet, getting engaged before anyone has time to really process it. then alan and jeff follow, even quicker. and kim — kim, of all people — launches himself into some mission to domesticate kenta, or whatever his name is.
north watches it all unfold from a distance that seems to grow by the week. it isn’t jealousy, not quite. he doesn’t want to be any of them. he just wants to stop feeling like he’s outside something he used to be part of. the world keeps moving, reshaping itself without him, and no one seems to notice he’s been left behind.
still, he keeps going. because that’s what he does.
the uploads stay consistent, timed to the minute. he edits like a machine, scripts clean walkthroughs of garage updates, records interviews with practiced rhythm. he cracks the usual jokes about tire wear and aero balance, throws in a few clips of himself yawning through morning debriefs, claps along when he’s supposed to, smiles in congratulation posts. and then he goes home, and it’s quiet again.
—
eventually, when the nights stretch too long and everything starts to press in a bit too much, he throws himself into fixing up the garage. not in any grand way, just some cosmetic work here and there. the place has always needed a little love, and now seems like as good a time as any.
he starts with the lounge. draws up plans he never finishes, replaces the awful flickering lights, installing strips of warm leds that cast everything in softer color. brings in secondhand furniture, misfit mugs from discount stores, throw pillows in colors that don’t match. finds stickers tucked into the bottom of old race bags and slaps them onto the lockers. prints out photos, tapes them to the wall.
he tells the others it’s quality-of-life stuff. and it is, kind of. but deep down, the part of him knows exactly what he’s doing. knows why the colors don’t quite go together, why the cushions are too bright, why the art on the wall doesn’t match the frame. knows how deliberate the clash is — loud and messy in a way only one person would’ve understood.
this is him reaching, the only way he knows how.
if you see this, will you come back?
no one does, of course.
so he keeps working. the motions become habit. cleaning, arranging, fixing things that don’t really need fixing. he scrubs the floor tile until the grout shines. buffs the cabinets. oils the hinges on every locker door. reorganizes tool drawers by type, then again by color, then again by frequency of use.
the only place he doesn’t touch is the back corner. the one with the ghost.
dean’s car rests deep inside the garage, parked like it might roll out again someday, though everyone knows it won’t be. no one’s moved it since the day. it stays where dean left it, like a memory, a monument to something no one ever talks about.
north ends up beside it more often now, sometimes without realizing. some days he wipes the windshield clean with his sleeve, just enough to catch his reflection in the glass. other times, when it’s late and everyone’s gone, he slips into the driver’s seat and closes the door behind him.
inside, it’s cold. quieter than the rest of the building. the silence feels heavier here, heavier than memory. heavier than guilt.
dean’s scent is mostly gone. maybe a trace of it still lives in the seams, but it could just be in north’s head — the ghost of sweat and motor oil and something warmer, something sharp and familiar that always used to hit first in the chest, then everywhere else.
he closes his eyes and leans into it, breathes deep, and thinks about the way dean looked near the end. how his jaw always stayed clenched, how his mouth never softened anymore. how he stopped looking people in the eye when they spoke, like he was watching something they couldn’t see. like he was waiting for the moment he’d stop pretending it could get better.
north wonders if this is what it felt like — being here, being loved and still somehow alone. surrounded by noise, buried in kindness, and still sinking deeper every day.
(he doesn’t tell anyone, but sometimes he still texts dean. dumb shit, mostly — a blurry photo of a cracked tail light, a clip of someone’s engine catching fire mid-race, a half-eaten meal with the caption look familiar? it’s all casual, light. like he’s keeping the space warm just in case.
expectedly, it stays unread.)
—
it’s late when it happens. north’s halfway through rewiring a set of overhead lights, balancing on a crooked step stool. there’s no warning, no dramatic entrance, just a silhouette in the doorway.
“you missed a spot,” it says, soft and familiar.
north nearly drops the screwdriver. when he turns, sonic is already inside, hands in his pockets, that same stupid half-smile playing on his face like it’s been days instead of months. and for a second, north forgets how to breathe.
“you’re back,” he says. it comes out quieter than he meant it to.
“for a bit,” sonic answers, and north pretends not to hear the weight under that. “looks like you’ve been busy.”
north shrugs. “yeah, well. figured it was time.”
he doesn’t say: i did it for you.
doesn’t say: i thought maybe you’d see this and remember why you liked it here.
doesn’t say: i hoped it would be enough to make you stay.
the words catch somewhere in his chest and don’t move. sonic watches him for a moment longer than feels comfortable, then turns to run his hand along the edge of the new cabinet. he moves slowly through the garage, as if it’s a museum he’s trying not to disturb. his fingers brush the freshly painted lockers, pause at the shelf north had organized just days before.
north watches him move and feels something twist. the differences are impossible to ignore. neat clothes, clean lines, all in muted tones. new shoes, a watch that didn’t exist before, a bag without any of the pins or cluttered affection it used to carry. he smells like a store north can’t afford, and when he smiles, it’s soft, polite.
and he, with red paint still under his nails and oil on his neon yellow hoodie, feels the horror settle in: maybe all of this — this garage, this stupid renovation, north himself — it’s too much now. too loud. maybe it isn’t what sonic wants anymore.
maybe that is why there’s space between them now. why there are calls that went unanswered, messages that never got read.
still, they don’t talk about it. sonic’s things return to their apartment. a toothbrush by the sink, phone charger curled into the living room socket, his shoes beside north’s near the door. they start cooking again, more often than they used to. nothing fancy — frozen dumplings, eggs over rice, the kind of food you eat barefoot and in wrinkled clothes. sonic hums while he chops vegetables, sways a little to whatever’s playing, rhythm easy and unthinking. he slides behind north at the stove and rests his chin on his shoulder, like he’s done it a hundred times before. he drinks north’s coffee without asking, bitter and exact. still steals north’s shirts. still sleeps on the left side of the bed. some nights he ends up pressed close, forehead tucked against north’s collarbone, fingers resting light at his waist, knee tucked between thighs. north lets him. breathes slow, tries not to think too hard about how natural it still feels.
he moves like he never left. but something’s different. not wrong, exactly, just softer, dimmer, like a song played through a closed door. the domesticity still fits, but it doesn’t cling like it used to.
—
they kiss in the middle of the garage. north reaches for it without meaning to, the way tired things reach for light — slow, shaped by ache, drawn forward because there’s nowhere else left to go. his hand finds the side of sonic’s neck, his mouth presses in, and he keeps his eyes open through all of it. it tastes like dust, oil, breath held too long. above them, overhead light throws a soft violet glow across their faces. the one north installed because sonic liked that shade best. used to, anyway.
sonic doesn’t kiss back.
he doesn’t pull away either. just stays still beneath the weight of it, breath caught somewhere shallow, lashes lowered. when the first tear comes, north tastes it on his tongue — sharp and clean, impossible to miss. he pulls away before the second falls. sonic’s face stays blank, or close enough, but the tear cuts a bright line down his cheek. north reaches for it without thinking. he cups his palm against that familiar jaw and wipes it with his thumb, slow, gentle.
for a second, sonic leans into him. his hands never lift, but his weight shifts, just slightly, the way memory does when it stirs too close to the surface. like his body remembers even if the rest of him refuses to say it. then the stillness ends.
“i’ve got to go,” he says, voice so low it’s almost swallowed by the hum of the lights.
north nods. doesn’t ask when he’ll be back. doesn’t ask if he ever really came back at all.
a week later, when he shifts the cushions, he finds a hoodie shoved behind one. navy, soft, sleeves a little stretched at the cuffs. sonic’s. north used to wear it without asking, used to pull it on just to feel closer.
he holds it for a long time. presses his face into the collar, breathes in, and stays that way until the sting behind his eyes fades to something dull.
after a while, he folds it, careful. sets it on the shelf above the mugs, where no one will look and nothing will brush against it by accident. it stays there, untouched, the way dean’s car still sits in the back of the garage.
another thing that didn’t stay.