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The journey home had been as typical as ever.
In the short few days in late spring when the Paldean air found itself in a perfectly comfortable spot, Hassel traded the typically short walk back home for one that wound through the cobblestone streets and back alleys of Artazon. He surveyed every flower and smiled at every Sunflora or Smoliv drawn on the ground in brightly colored chalk.
It always brought Brassius to mind, before everything took a turn for the worst. This had always been his favorite time of year. He found beauty in all these seemingly miniscule things in ways he hadn't when Hassel first met the man.
His mind was so easily clouded with memories of Brassius. The longer he dwelled on them, the quicker they delved into painful regrets and overthinking.
It'd been unexpected. He knew there wasn’t much time left, he wanted his last moments to be in the comforting walls of his own home. It all happened so fast. There was nothing they could've done. Nothing he could've done.
Never in his life had he felt so utterly helpless.
His coworkers still avoided his name in Hassel's presence like it was poison on their tongues, a flame snuffed out far too soon. He never understood why. Did they fear his reaction? Or were they still weighed down by the loss of their former colleague all these years on?
Unlikely. He hadn’t been very close with them.
Often, when he made his way home from the job that had been entrusted to him after Brassius’s death, thoughts of returning home crossed his mind. What obligations kept him tethered to Paldea now? What was left to make this better than the alternative? Teaching would have been his answer years ago. Should still be his answer. Had it not been thrust to the wayside in the wake of everything, perhaps he would still trust himself in the role.
‘It’s what Brassius would've wanted.’ He always told himself. ‘He would want me to be happy.’
He sighed when he unlocked the door to their home, his home, hovering by the open doorway long enough to discard his shoes and coat before he locked himself in for the night.
Was he happy?
Hassel's eyes fell to the door of what had once been Brassius’ atelier. It was a shell that had once housed such a vibrant and brilliant artist, left to rot in the years without his presence. It was never Hassel's place to assume control over it in the way he did with practically everything else in Brassius's absence, regardless of how his partner may have encouraged it at some point in time. He could never bring himself to invade a space so deeply personal in an attempt to make it his own.
Amid his thoughts, his eyes were drawn to a peculiar sight at the door.
That was…odd.
He inspected this door from the entryway nearly every day upon returning home, and not once had he seen such a light emanating from the crack under the door, and the east-facing windows never caught the dimming evening sun in the way the rest of the house did.
He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had entered the room that would result in a light being left on. Some kind of electric malfunction, perhaps? The rest of the house seemed fine. The very back of his mind suggested a break-in, maybe his family once again disrupting his life to beg him to return home. Though again, the house seemed fine, and what reason would they have for shutting themselves in Brassius’s atelier?
The former seemed far more likely at the moment.
He passed the door several times a day, yet the steps to take an action as simple as turning off a light felt as if he was walking through the deepest snow. As he opened the door, his heart froze.
Someone stood in front of him. Not a relative, not someone trying to drag him home, but-
“You’re home early.” Brassius said.
The man in front of him continued to speak, his words muffled by the sudden pounding in his head and tightness in his chest.
Why was he talking to him? Hassel was no expert in medicine, but he wasn’t stupid. His better judgment told him this wasn’t real. He’d held his death certificate in his own two hands.
“Is everything alright, Hass?”
He watched his face shift to one of concern, the way his brow knits when he looks at him was an expression Hassel was all too familiar with, perhaps too subtle to someone who hadn’t known Brassius as well as he had.
He began walking towards him. Hassel’s mind told him to move, to close the door, to wake up, something, anything. This wasn’t real, this wasn’t real, this wasn’t real, this wasn’t-
He felt Brassius’s hand on his cheek. Scarred, calloused, and most importantly, warm, he wiped a stray tear away with his thumb.
“You’re crying.”
And that was it.
He all but collapsed, tears he previously hadn’t noticed came in waves as Brassius gently led him to the floor. Hassel couldn’t bring himself to speak, any word that came to mind dried up in his throat. He felt his weight under his hands, truly there, truly sitting on the floor of an atelier that had sat unused since the man it belonged to had left it, the man now sitting directly in front of him.
And when he stared at him, trying to make sense of it all,
Brassius gave him a smile that wasn’t quite right.