Work Text:
The apartment was exactly the way they had left it.
Weeks had passed since the explosion, but almost nothing had moved.
The same things still sat on the same shelves. The same little marks remained on the furniture. Their things were still mixed together in the way they had always been, as though there had never been any reason to separate one life from the other.
Tophat had stopped noticing most of it.
Or maybe he had started noticing too much.
He spent most of his days on the couch now, staring at whatever happened to be in front of him without really seeing it. The curtains stayed closed more often than not. The apartment was quiet enough that every small sound seemed enormous; the refrigerator humming in the kitchen, pipes shifting somewhere in the walls, the occasional noise from outside that reminded him there was still a world beyond the windows.
He rarely went into it. There were days when he barely left the couch at all.
Sometimes he wondered if GPS would have hated seeing him like this. That thought was almost funny.
…
Almost.
Instead, it brought back a memory.
It was raining that evening.
Not heavily. Just enough to make the windows blur with little trails of water, the sound soft and constant against the glass. Tophat remembered sitting on the couch with GPS beside him, close enough that their sides touched.
There hadn’t been anything particularly important happening.
That was what made the memory hurt.
They hadn’t been celebrating anything. They hadn’t been having some grand conversation that would have been worth remembering forever. They had simply been there, sharing the same room after another ordinary day.
Tophat remembered leaning against GPS without thinking about it.
He remembered the warmth beside him.
He remembered the rain.
He remembered thinking, for just a moment, that he was happy. At the time, he hadn’t known he was supposed to memorize it.
He hadn’t known there would come a day when he would desperately wish he could remember every tiny detail—the exact sound of the rain, the exact way GPS had been sitting, the exact feeling of having someone beside him and knowing they would still be there tomorrow.
Tophat closed his eyes.
“I want to go back.” He whispered.
The words came out quietly.
There was no answer.
Of course there wasn’t.
He opened his eyes anyway.
Someone was standing in the doorway.
For one impossible second, Tophat didn’t question it.
GPS looked exactly as he remembered.
Tophat stared.
His heart seemed to forget what it was supposed to do.
“You’re here.” He finally spoke after seconds of staring.
GPS didn’t move.
The silence stretched between them.
Tophat knew. Somewhere beneath all the denial and exhaustion and desperate wishing, he knew.
But knowing and accepting had become two completely different things.
“I thought…” He stopped.
His eyes burned.
“I thought you were gone.”
GPS looked at him with the same familiar gentleness Tophat remembered.
“You’ve been here a long time.” GPS spoke.
Tophat glanced around the apartment.
“Where else would I go?” He said with a small, awkward chuckle.
There was no response.
GPS’s gaze seemed to drift around the room—the untouched belongings, the closed curtains, the evidence of how little Tophat had been taking care of himself.
“You can’t stay here forever.” He said.
Tophat looked away. “I can.”
A pause. Tophat glanced around the room.
“Everything’s still here.”
His voice cracked.
“You’re still here.”
For a moment, he almost believed it.
He could almost feel the familiar presence beside him again. Almost hear the quiet rhythm of another person breathing in the same room.
Tophat reached out.
His foot met nothing.
The doorway was empty.
The apartment was silent.
Tophat stayed frozen for several seconds before slowly lowering his leg.
He knew what had happened.
He knew GPS hadn’t really been standing there.
That somehow made it worse.
He curled up against the corner of the couch, pulling his legs close and staring at the place where the hallucination had disappeared.
“I miss you.”
The words barely made a sound.
There was no answer this time.
There couldn’t be.
Outside, rain began.
Tophat listened to it against the windows, and remembered that one evening.
For a little while, he let himself imagine the space beside him wasn’t empty. He let himself remember the warmth. He let himself pretend.
Eventually, exhaustion began to pull at him.
His eyes grew heavier, his thoughts becoming slower and less distinct. The rain blurred into a soft, steady rhythm against the windows.
Tophat didn’t move from the couch. He simply curled a little tighter into himself and let his eyes close.
He only remembered the rain, the warmth beside him.
And there, on the couch in the quiet apartment, Tophat finally fell asleep.