Work Text:
The steady, low hum of the server racks in the corner of the high-rise studio filled the room, making the silence between them feel even heavier.
Joss didn't know where to look. He kept his eyes on Gawin, who was slumped behind the massive mixing console, staring down at a crumpled lyric sheet. The studio was completely quiet except for that dull electronic drone and the steady click of a digital metronome someone had left running. Gawin wasn’t tweaking the levels or checking the playback. He was just resting his palm flat against the cold metal faders, trying to keep his hands from shaking.
"You're not here, Joss," Gawin said. He didn't look up. His thumb traced the edge of a volume knob, over and over, until his skin must have felt raw. "You haven't been here for months."
Joss swallowed hard. The air in the room felt thick and stale, smelling of old coffee and his own expensive cologne. He wanted to use the usual excuses—the chaotic fashion weeks, the flights, the constant demands from the agencies—but the words felt incredibly fake. They were excuses he’d used so many times before that they didn't mean anything anymore.
The truth was, the spark was just gone.
He still cared about Gawin. If Gawin called him in the middle of the night because a master track crashed or he needed a ride home from a late session, Joss would go. But that ache in his chest whenever Gawin smiled, the simple need to just be around him—it had faded into a dull, predictable routine. They were just two people living on past memories, navigating around each other in a life that had moved too fast.
And then, there was Verena.
She was a half-Thai, half-Italian model Joss had met during a shoot in Milan. Verena was loud, sharp, and full of life. She had an energy that completely took over a room, but underneath it, she was incredibly gentle. It was the exact same warmth that had drawn Joss to Gawin years ago, back when Gawin was just a talented, quiet music director hiding behind soundboards and heavy headphones.
But where Gawin’s world was quiet, heavy, and exhausting, being with Verena was effortless. She liked spontaneous road trips and late-night dinners after a show. With her, everything felt easy. With her, Joss didn't have to deal with the suffocating silence of a dying relationship or the guilt of leaving Gawin alone in dark studios.
"I'm sorry, Fluke," Joss said. The old nickname slipped out before he could stop himself.
Gawin finally looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had dark circles under them from weeks of working late and barely sleeping. He wasn't crying. He just looked completely drained, like Joss had been slowly wearing him down for a year.
"Don't call me that," Gawin said. His voice was low and cracked slightly at the edge. "Not anymore. Don't use that name to try and soften this."
"We can't keep doing this," Joss said, taking a step back toward the heavy soundproof door, already wanting to leave. "We're just hurting each other by pretending."
Gawin let out a short, dry sound that was supposed to be a laugh, though his face didn't move. "Pretending? Is that what it was to you? A performance?" He finally looked directly at Joss, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I wasn't pretending, Joss. I was drowning. I was sitting here in the dark every single night waiting for you to come back to me, while you were just... waiting for the right time to leave."
"You know what I mean," Joss muttered, his jaw tight. The guilt made him defensive, and a frustrating, ugly heat flared up in his chest. He hated feeling like the bad guy, even though he knew he was. "It’s not working, Fluke. It hasn't been for a long time. You know it too. Don't act like this is out of nowhere."
"Out of nowhere?" Gawin stood up, the sudden movement making the space between them feel incredibly small. "The distance wasn't out of nowhere, Joss. The fact that you stopped trying wasn't a surprise. But standing there and acting like this is a mutual decision? Like we both just gave up? That’s the lie. I stayed. I was right here. You’re the one who left months ago."
Joss couldn't look him in the eye. He looked down at the soundboard instead, watching the tiny red and green lights blink in the dim room. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
"But you did," Gawin said softly. The anger seemed to leave him all at once, leaving him looking exhausted. He sat back down, his fingers gripping the edge of the metal desk until his knuckles turned white. "You did."
The silence came back, heavier this time, pressing into the room.
"Okay," Gawin whispered, looking back down at the paper in front of him, though he wasn't actually reading it. "Then go."
The breakup wasn't loud, but it felt like everything was coming apart. When Gawin packed up his things from their shared apartment over the weekend—the monitors, the vinyl records, the notebooks, the boxes of clothes—he didn't ask for explanations. There were no fights over who owned what. He just left his keys on the kitchen counter and walked out into the humid Bangkok heat, leaving Joss alone in an apartment that felt way too big.
Three months later, Joss was sitting at a rooftop restaurant in Milan.
The historic city stretched out below them, a sprawling canvas of warm streetlights, bustling piazzas, and the distant, illuminated spires of the Duomo. It was just before eleven o'clock on a balmy August night. Verena was laughing across from him, her fingers tangled with his, her perfume mixing with the scent of red wine and the cool Italian evening air. She was telling him a chaotic story about her childhood summers in Sicily, her eyes bright and completely focused on him.
With Verena, it was easy to breathe.
In the middle of her sentence, Joss's phone buzzed aggressively against the dark wood of the table.
The screen lit up. Gawin.
Joss’s stomach dropped. He glanced instinctively at the top corner of his phone screen. The local Milan time read 10:57 PM. His mind did the frantic math—back in Bangkok, it was 3:57 AM. The dead of night. It was the first time Gawin had reached out since he moved out. No texts, no social media, nothing. To receive a call at nearly four in the morning Bangkok time sent a sudden, violent jolt of adrenaline through his veins. His thumb hovered over the screen, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"Everything okay, babe?" Verena asked, leaning forward. She noticed his sudden stillness, the way the color had drained from his face. She reached out and lightly brushed a piece of lint from his collar, her touch warm and familiar. She smiled softly, completely trusting him. She had no idea who was calling.
Joss looked back down at the screen. It was still vibrating in his hand, a lifeline stretching across a five-hour time difference, completely shattering the illusion of his perfect European getaway. He hesitated for a second, his mind flashing back to the dark studio, the cold metal faders, and the hollow look on Gawin's face.
If he answered, he would have to face the guilt again. He would have to face what he had broken, right here in the middle of his new, effortless life.
With a tight throat, Joss turned the phone face down on the table, cutting off the vibration.
"Yeah," Joss said, forcing a quick smile as he looked back into Verena's warm eyes, drowning out the midnight desperation from the other side of the world. "Just a work call from back home. It can wait."
He never called back.
Two years later.
Karma doesn't arrive with a loud warning. It moves slowly, eroding the ground under your feet until you're suddenly falling.
Two years had passed in a blur of international flights, magazine covers, and shared apartments with Verena. Joss had convinced himself he was happy. He had convinced himself that the ghost of his past was exactly where it belonged—in the past.
Until he came home early from a runway show in Tokyo and found a pair of men's designer boots by the door that didn't belong to him.
The confrontation was quiet, which made it worse. Verena didn't even try to deny it. She sat on their velvet sofa, looking at him with the exact same detached, exhausted affection that Joss had once given to Gawin.
"I still care about you, Joss," she said, her Italian accent thick and heavy with a sigh. "But the spark... it’s just not there anymore. We became a habit. He makes me feel alive again."
The words felt like a physical blow to his ribs. It was a flawless, terrifying mirror of his own past choices.
For weeks after Verena packed her bags and left, Joss wandered through the empty rooms of the apartment, suffocating in the sudden clarity of what he had done. He finally felt the exact weight of the rejection he had handed to Gawin. He felt the phantom pain of being replaced, of being told that his presence was no longer enough.
In the dark, silent midnights of his sudden loneliness, the truth he had buried for so long finally forced its way up: It had always been Gawin. Verena had been a bright, beautiful distraction, a temporary sun. But Gawin had been the ground beneath his feet.
His phone buzzed on the coffee table, breaking the circle of his thoughts. It was a Line message from Kevin.
Kevin: Hey man. I know you've been going through it since the breakup. This popped up in my feed today and it made me think of you. Didn't know if you'd ever seen it.
[YouTube Link]
Joss rubbed his tired eyes, clicking the link without thinking.
The YouTube app opened to a dimly lit video. The quality was slightly grainy, shot in a small, cluttered home studio. In the center of the frame sat Gawin. He looked thinner than Joss remembered, his hair messy, wearing an oversized gray hoodie that Joss recognized instantly—it was one he had left behind.
Gawin tuned his acoustic guitar, his eyes downcast toward the microphone.
Joss’s breath caught in his throat. A sudden, violent surge of hope bloomed in his chest. His fingers shook as his eyes dropped to the description box below the video.
Video Caption: For Joss.
His heart hammered against his ribs. For him. Gawin had written a song for him. He was still out there, somewhere, keeping a piece of them alive.
On screen, Gawin began to strum. The melody was devastatingly simple—a slow, intricate fingerpicking pattern in a minor key. When he started to sing, his voice was raw, thick with an emotion that vibrated right through the phone speakers. The lyrics were a confession of a love that couldn't let go, written by a music director who usually poured his feelings into other people's tracks, now singing his own heartbreak.
Joss felt a tear slip down his cheek, a breathless, desperate smile tugging at his lips. He still loves me, Joss thought, a wave of relief washing over him. I can fix this. I can find him, I can beg for forgiveness, I can—
Then, his eyes caught the timestamp of the upload.
Uploaded: August 14, 2024.
Two years ago. Exactly three months after their breakup.
The smile died on Joss’s face. This wasn’t a fresh olive branch extended from the present; it was a ghost from a past he had left behind.
Confused, a strange, cold knot of dread forming in his stomach, Joss scrolled down to the comment section. The video was unlisted, but it seemed the link had been shared among a small circle of industry musicians and engineers over the years.
The top comments were old praises.
“His production work was amazing, but his voice is what broke me.”
“I miss his music so much, this song is devastating.”
But as Joss scrolled further, his thumb froze over a comment from a verified user—an executive producer they both used to work with on commercial soundtracks.
@P_Mix_Prod: You left us too soon, my friend. We miss your angelic voice, your brilliant mind in the studio, and your corny dad jokes. We miss you here.
Joss stared at the screen. His brain refused to make sense of the words. Left us too soon? What did that mean? Did he leave the music industry? Did he move away?
His eyes dragged down to a single reply beneath the producer's comment. It was from a fan account, dated almost two years ago.
@eargasssm: Heaven gained another angel. 🤍
The room didn't spin; it just felt entirely empty of air.
The phone slipped from Joss’s hand, clattering loudly against the floorboards. He scrambled for it, his hands shaking so violently he dropped it twice before he could open Instagram.
He searched for Gawin’s official handle. The profile loaded. The page was still there, but the last post was a photo of a silver mixing console under soft blue studio lights. The date underneath it: May 20, 2024.
Two years ago. No stories. No updates. Nothing.
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through his chest. He opened Facebook, then X, searching for any scrap of text, his mind screaming against the reality forming in front of him. Finally, he looked up Gawin’s older sister, Claire.
Her profile was public. Joss clicked the message button, his vision blurring with tears as he typed.
Joss: P'Claire. It's Joss. Please, I just saw something online about Fluke. Please tell me it's a mistake. Can we meet? Please. I need to know.
He didn't expect a reply, but less than ten minutes later, the typing dots appeared.
Claire: Tomorrow. 10:00 AM. The cafe near the old studio building. Don't be late.
Joss didn't sleep. He spent the night sitting on the floor of his living room, playing Gawin’s video on a continuous loop until the melody felt like it was carved into his skin. He watched the way Gawin’s eyelashes cast long shadows over his cheeks, the way his lower lip trembled on the final chord.
For Joss.
The cafe was mostly empty when Joss arrived at 9:45 AM. He sat in a corner booth, a cup of black coffee sitting untouched between his hands. He kept his cap pulled low, his sunglasses on, but he couldn't stop his fingers from twitching against the ceramic mug. Even in his grief, his tall, model frame drew occasional glances, but he felt invisible. Hollowed out.
At exactly 10:00 AM, the bell above the door chimed.
Claire walked in. She looked older, the lines around her eyes deeper, her expression completely flat. She didn't look around the room; her eyes locked onto his corner instantly. She walked over and sat down opposite him without saying a word.
Joss pulled off his sunglasses. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen. "P'Claire," he choked out, his voice rough. "Please. Tell me it's not true."
Claire looked at him for a long time. There was no anger in her face—just a heavy, exhausted sadness that made Joss’s chest tighten until it hurt.
"He's gone, Joss," she said. Her voice didn't shake. "He’s been gone for almost two years."
A sharp, broken sound escaped Joss's throat. He pressed his face into his hands, his shoulders shaking as the reality finally hit him. "How?" he whispered through his fingers. "What happened to him? He was fine, he was..."
"He wasn't fine," Claire said, cutting him off. Her tone wasn't loud, but it was cold. "He was never fine after you left him."
Joss lowered his hands, staring at her.
"After the breakup, he just stopped," Claire said, looking out the window at the passing traffic. "He wouldn't eat. He wouldn't produce. Directors would call him for music scores, and he’d just let the phone ring. The only thing he did was sit in that home studio and play that guitar until his fingers bled onto the strings."
She took a slow breath, her chest rising and falling heavily before she looked back at him.
"Then he started going out. Fluke hated clubs, Joss. You know that better than anyone. He hated loud places. But he started making this long, solitary trek down the expressway to a dive bar on the outskirts of town every single night. He was drinking. Drinking until he couldn't stand up, just trying to blunt whatever was ripping him apart inside."
Joss felt a physical ache behind his ribs. He remembered those exact months—walking runways in Paris, going to beach resorts with Verena, entirely blind to the fire he had started behind him.
"It was August 14th. He had just uploaded that video. He called me that afternoon and said he just wanted you to hear the song. He thought... he honestly thought that if you heard how much he was hurting, you'd remember him. You'd remember who you used to be before the fame took over."
She reached into her purse, her fingers coming out with a small, silver object. She set it on the table between them.
It was Gawin’s old phone. The screen was completely shattered, the silver metal casing twisted and scarred.
"He left the bar at two in the morning," her voice finally cracking, becoming small. "He was drunk, Joss. He shouldn't have been anywhere near a car, but he wasn't thinking straight. He lost control on the expressway. Hit the median going over a hundred."
Joss couldn't breathe. The air in his throat felt like sand.
"The police gave us his things," her fingers resting lightly on the cracked glass of the phone. "They said the crash happened at 3:59 AM. They checked the logs on the phone to see if he was texting while driving."
She looked up, her eyes pinning him to the seat, stripped of any mercy.
"The last thing Gawin did before he hit that wall—at exactly 3:57 AM—was make a phone call."
Joss’s heart completely stopped. The memory of that rooftop restaurant, of Verena’s fingers in his hair, and of his phone vibrating face-down on the dark wood flashed through his brain like a physical blow.
"He called you, Joss," Claire whispered, a single tear finally tracking down her face. "He called you while he was spinning out. He called the one person he thought might still care."
She slid the shattered phone across the table until it touched his knuckles.
"But you didn't answer."
The shattered phone felt freezing against Joss’s knuckles.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the spiderweb cracks in the glass. 3:57 AM. Almost two years ago, while he was shifting closer to Verena to catch the scent of her hair, Gawin had been gripping a steering wheel in the dark, watching the headlights blur through tears, listening to the steady, mechanical ring of a phone that would never be answered.
"I..." Joss tried to speak, but his jaw wouldn't work right. His mouth felt full of dust. "P'Claire, I didn't... I didn't know."
"Of course you didn't know," she didn't sound angry; she just sounded hollowed out, like someone who had spent two years repeating the same tragic script in her head. She stood up, pulling her purse over her shoulder. She didn't look back at him as she left a few hundred-baht notes on the table for the untouched coffee. "You weren't looking."
Joss was left alone in the booth. The ambient noise of the cafe—the steam from the espresso machine, the quiet chatter of strangers, the clinking of porcelain—rushed back into his ears all at once, loud and suffocating.
He picked up the broken silver phone. His hands shook so violently it nearly slipped through his fingers. He pressed it against his forehead, right there in the middle of the cafe, and let out a jagged, choked breath that tore at his throat.
“Just a work call. It can wait.”
The ghost of his own voice from two years ago echoed in his ears, mocking him. He had killed him. It wasn't the car, or the alcohol, or the slick expressway. It was the face-down phone on a dark wooden table.
The cemetery was on the outskirts of Bangkok, far from the billboards, the neon lights, and the constant, flashing cameras of the world Joss lived in. It was a quiet Christian plot, lined with low stone walls and shaded by large, drooping frangipani trees. The scent of the white blossoms was heavy in the humid afternoon air.
Joss walked through the rows of gray stone, his boots sinking slightly into the damp grass. The rain from the night before had left everything slick and cool. He felt entirely untethered, like a man walking through someone else’s nightmare.
Then, he saw it.
The white marble was clean, stripped of the dirt that time usually leaves behind. Claire must have visited recently. Carved into the stone, below the legal name, was the one Joss had used every single day when they shared a life.
Gawin Caskey
"Fluke"
August 8, 1997 – August 14, 2024
“The music lives on in the quiet.”
Joss stopped three feet away. His knees gave out, hitting the wet earth with a dull thud. He didn't care about the mud soaking through his designer jeans. He didn't care about his jacket. He just stared at the name.
"Fluke," he whispered.
The name sounded incredibly small in the wide, open space. There was no response. No soft chuckle, no slight shift of a headphone band, no quiet, teasing remark from a music director telling him to get back in front of the lens. Just the wind through the frangipani leaves.
Joss crawled closer until his shins pressed against the base of the stone. He reached out a hand, his large, calloused fingers trembling as they brushed against the cold, carved letters of Gawin's name. The marble was freezing, completely devoid of the warmth he had spent months trying to forget.
"I'm sorry," Joss choked out, his voice fracturing into a sob. He pressed his palms flat against the stone, burying his face in his forearms. "I'm so sorry, honey. I'm sorry."
The tears came then—not the quiet, clean tears of a camera-ready model, but a violent, ugly weeping that dragged out from the deepest part of his chest. His broad shoulders shook, his whole frame heaving against the monument. He wept for the three months of silence after the breakup. He wept for Milan, for the rooftop restaurant, for the two years he had spent living a life that belonged to a ghost.
"I thought I lost the spark," Joss cried into the cold marble, his forehead resting against the carved date of death. "I was so stupid. I was so goddamn stupid. It wasn't gone. I just... I stopped looking at you. I took you for granted because you were always the one holding everything together while I was chasing the lights."
He squeezed his eyes shut, but the darkness inside his eyelids only brought back the grainy YouTube video. He could see Gawin’s thin frame in that oversized gray hoodie, sitting alone in the studio. He could hear the raw, aching melody of the minor chords.
For Joss.
"I threw away our five-year relationship for a woman I barely knew for a month," Joss whispered, his voice cracking into a ragged wheeze, the bitter realization tearing through him like shattered glass.
He pulled back slightly, his face wet, his eyes wild and bloodshot as he stared at the grave. "I heard the song, Fluke. It’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful track you ever arranged. Why didn't you let me hear it earlier? Why didn't you come to the apartment and throw it in my face?"
He knew why. Because Gawin had too much dignity, and Joss had given him nothing but a closed door and a silent phone line.
Joss reached into his pocket and pulled out the shattered silver phone Claire had given him. He placed it gently on the flat grass right above the headstone, his fingers lingering on the cracked screen.
"I’m here now," Joss sobbed, his chest aching so badly he could barely get the words out. He leaned forward again, wrapping his arms completely around the white marble headstone, holding onto it as if he could pull Gawin back up through the earth by sheer force of will. "I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Please... just ring one more time. Call me again. I'll answer. I swear to God I'll answer."
The sky above grew dark, the heavy Bangkok clouds rolling in, blocking out the afternoon sun. A soft, cool drizzle began to fall, mixing with the tears streaming down Joss’s face, soaking into the white marble and the dark green grass.
Joss didn't move to cover himself. He just stayed there, his large body curled tightly around the cold stone, weeping into the gray afternoon until he had no voice left to call his name.