The Sound of Missing You

Lin finds Sunny still lost in the weight of his grief. In a moment of raw honesty, Lin confesses how much he misses the real Sunny, sparking a tentative shift in the quiet despair.

The lock clicked, a sharp, intrusive sound in the apartment's oppressive quiet. Lin pushed the door inward, the hinges groaning faintly. He didn’t call out. He knew. Knew before his gaze landed on the lump beneath the rumpled duvet in the far room, the one that should have been bathed in morning sun by now. The air in here was thick, stale, carrying the faint, metallic scent of something uncleaned, something held onto too long. It caught in his throat.

He stood there for a beat, maybe two, his hand still on the doorknob. The light from the hallway, a thin, sickly yellow, spilled across the worn floorboards of the living room, highlighting dust motes dancing in the undisturbed current. On the coffee table, a mug sat, crusty with dried coffee rings, next to a stack of untouched mail. Lin felt a familiar, sickening clench in his stomach. This wasn't just a bad day. This was a trench, dug deeper each time he found it like this.

He walked in, each step deliberate, as if the floor might complain under his weight. The blinds in Sunny’s bedroom were still drawn, cutting the world outside to thin, pale stripes. Sunny was a mound, buried under a tangled mess of sheets and a heavy, faded comforter. His back was to the door, his hair, usually a soft chaos, was flattened and damp around his temples. He hadn't moved. Not really. The position was identical to yesterday, and the day before that.

A tremor, cold and sudden, ran through Lin. It wasn't anger, not this time. It was a colder, sharper thing: fear. A desperate, primal fear that burrowed into his gut and twisted. He’d tried everything. The gentle nudges, the forceful calls, the quiet sitting and waiting. Nothing worked. Nothing even seemed to penetrate the protective shell Sunny had constructed around himself, a shell that was, Lin realized with a jolt, slowly suffocating him.

He sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress sinking slightly under his weight. He didn’t touch Sunny, not yet. His hand hovered, a fraction of an inch above the rumpled duvet, then dropped to his own knee. The silence stretched, heavy and uneven. Lin could hear his own heartbeat, a frantic, thrumming bird trapped against his ribs. He felt the rough texture of the blanket beneath his palm, the slight chill in the air, the distant hum of traffic from outside, the normal world moving on without them.

Sunny shifted, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, a soft sigh that was barely a breath. Lin’s throat tightened. He watched the subtle rise and fall of Sunny's shoulders, the only sign of life. He saw the faint, dark circles beneath Sunny’s eyes even from this angle, the way his jaw was set, too tight even in sleep. It was breaking him, this quiet witnessing.

“Sunny,” Lin said, the name a whisper, rough around the edges. It didn’t feel like his own voice. It felt thinner, more brittle than he remembered. He waited. Nothing. Or at least, nothing he could immediately discern. He saw a slight tension in Sunny's back, though. A small flinch, a drawing in. He was awake.

Lin took a ragged breath. “I… I can’t do this anymore.” The words were out before he could catch them, raw and unsteady. He hadn’t meant to start like that. He’d planned something softer, something less… exposing. But the fear, the helplessness, it was a torrent. It felt like a confession of his own weakness, his own failure.

He cleared his throat, the sound a dry rasp. “I mean… watching you.” He paused, searching for the right words, for words that wouldn’t push Sunny further away. He needed them to be honest, though. Brutally, tenderly honest. “You’re… you’re just disappearing. And I don’t know what to do.”

He reached out, his hand hesitating again, then settled, tentatively, on Sunny's shoulder. The fabric of his shirt felt thin, almost papery, beneath Lin’s fingers. He felt the slight tremor that ran through Sunny’s body at the contact, a silent acknowledgment that he had been heard. The weight of it, the unspoken communication, was almost unbearable.

“I miss you,” Lin confessed, the words finally tumbling out, a dam breaking. They were small words, plain words, but they carried the crushing weight of weeks, months, of swallowed pain. “I miss… you. Not… not the idea of you. Not the one everyone expects you to be, or the one you used to pretend to be.” He leaned a little closer, his voice dropping, husky. “I miss the actual you.”

He swallowed hard, the taste of dry metal in his mouth. “I miss your laugh. That stupid, snorting laugh you do when something’s genuinely funny, the way you try to cover it up, like it’s a secret. I miss… I even miss arguing with you. About dumb stuff. The last slice of pizza, or who left the lights on.” A faint, almost imperceptible smile, tinged with pain, touched his lips.

“I miss your insistence on watching those terrible old sci-fi movies, the ones with the awful special effects, and how you’d point out every single continuity error, even though you loved them. I miss the way you used to hum when you were concentrating, totally off-key.” Lin’s voice hitched on the last word, a sharp, unbidden pain rising in his chest. He felt a tear prick the corner of his eye, a hot sting that he quickly blinked away.

His hand, still on Sunny’s shoulder, tightened just a fraction. “It’s not… I’m not trying to fix you, Sunny. I know… I know I can’t. And I’m not saying you have to just… snap out of it, or whatever stupid thing people say.” His own words felt inadequate, clumsy. He was wading through thick mud, trying not to sink.

“It’s just… it’s unbearable to watch you like this.” The admission was laced with a vulnerability he rarely allowed himself to show. Lin was usually the rock, the steady one. But this was different. This was Sunny. And Sunny was slipping through his fingers, dissolving like fine sand. “I don’t… I don’t want to lose you. Not like this.”

He let the words hang in the heavy air, a desperate plea, a stark confession of his own fear and pain. His eyes were fixed on Sunny’s still form, waiting, hoping for some sign, any sign, that his words had reached him, that they hadn’t just bounced off the invisible wall Sunny had erected.

Sunny moved then. It was slow, hesitant, like a deep-sea creature stirring after a long hibernation. He shifted onto his back, facing Lin. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and heavy-lidded. They were puffy, too, a silent testament to tears Lin hadn’t witnessed. His face was pale, almost translucent in the dim light, and his usually warm skin looked cold, almost clammy.

His gaze, when it met Lin’s, was not accusatory. It wasn’t even angry. It was just… raw. Unflinching. And in those depthless eyes, Lin saw it. Not just his own fear reflected, but the echo of his own pain. Sunny saw it. He saw the genuine hurt in Lin, the way his composure had finally shattered, the desperation in his voice. He saw his grief, finally, not as an isolated burden, but as something that could ripple outwards, something that could wound others, too.

A shudder ran through Sunny, a small, involuntary twitch of his fingers against the sheets. His lips parted, a dry, almost inaudible gasp escaping them. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as if trying to push back against the overwhelming current of emotion that Lin’s words had unleashed. A single, fresh tear tracked a path down his temple, disappearing into the pillow.

Lin’s hand still rested on his shoulder. He felt Sunny’s warmth, the faint tremor of his breath. It wasn't the kind of warmth he knew, but it was there, present, undeniable. He didn’t move his hand. Couldn’t. His gaze was fixed on Sunny’s face, tracing the curve of his cheekbone, the faint stubble along his jaw. He was so incredibly beautiful, even like this, ravaged by sorrow. And he was hurting. So deeply.

Sunny opened his eyes again, slowly. They seemed to focus, really *see* Lin for the first time in weeks. The intensity in Lin’s face, the raw, exposed nerves, it was a mirror. And in that mirror, Sunny saw a fragment of himself, a piece he thought had vanished forever. The sheer weight of Lin’s pain, his honesty, broke through a layer of the thick, suffocating numbness Sunny had wrapped himself in.

He blinked, once, twice. His voice, when it came, was a mere whisper, cracked and dry, like old parchment. “You… you want to… watch a movie?”

Lin’s breath hitched. It wasn’t an apology. It wasn’t a promise to be okay. It wasn’t even a full sentence. But it was *something*. It was a step, small and tentative, out of the dark. It was Sunny, reaching back, just a little. Lin felt a rush of heat, an overwhelming surge of relief that threatened to buckle his knees. “Yeah,” he managed, his voice thick with unshed emotion. “Yeah, I’d… I’d like that very much.”

Sunny pushed himself up, slowly, the sheets tangling around his legs. Lin helped him, pulling back the duvet, his touch light, careful. He moved towards the living room, Sunny shuffling behind him, still wrapped in a worn blanket like a shroud. Lin found the remote, clicked on the old flat-screen TV. He navigated through the streaming menu, pausing on the 'classic sci-fi' section, a section he knew Sunny had curated.

He picked the oldest, cheesiest one he could find, a black-and-white monster flick with a title that made him want to groan. Exactly the kind Sunny would obsess over. He settled on the couch, leaving a careful space, but not too much, between them. Sunny eased down beside him, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders, his knees drawn up to his chest. The smell of him, faint and familiar, a mix of stale air and something uniquely Sunny, was a comfort and a new ache.

The cheesy orchestral music of the movie's opening credits filled the room, a surprisingly cheerful sound in the lingering quiet. Neither of them spoke. Lin felt the slight tremor in Sunny’s shoulder, barely brushing against his own. He heard Sunny’s shallow breathing, felt the subtle warmth radiating from him. The silence wasn’t suffocating anymore. It was… shared. A quiet space they were tentatively building together, breath by uneven breath.

Lin risked a glance at Sunny. His eyes were fixed on the screen, but his expression was still distant, shadowed. Yet, the tightness around his mouth had eased just a fraction. He was here. Present. And Lin was right beside him. It wasn't a cure. It wasn't a fix. But it was a beginning. A fragile, hopeful, excruciatingly slow beginning.