Twenty-nine minutes later he was stumbling out of the elevator to Gabe's apartment. He knocked on the door, five times in rapid succession, then two slow knocks. A kind of lovers code, he supposed. Nothing happened. Syro fished his old key to Gabe's apartment. He'd forgotten the last time he'd had to actually use it, because Gabe was almost always in. It took a few tries to fit it into the slot, because his vision was still a bit hazy. First fifteen tries it wouldn't go in because it was upside down, the last two because he was stabbing it into the woodwork by accident. When he finally got it in he pushed the door open slowly, wondering how he was going to explain away the partially mauled front door.
The creaky floorboard made him start suddenly, hitting his knee hard on the edge of a polished, chocolate-coloured table. He cursed and looked around carefully. Everything was in it's right place, nothing had moved except the golden-framed picture of Syro that used to be on the same wooden table that'd just injured him. He shrugged off the feeling that something was wrong. But what if... well, he hadn't seen his boyfriend in two weeks as he couldn't sneak out that often. What if Gabe'd gone to his house? And was waiting? What if Michael caught him lingering by the apple trees in their front yard, third to the right, closest to his bedroom window? Shit.
'Don't be stupid, Sy. He'd call you,' He reassured himself. It made him feel a bit better. He closed the door behind him and flicked on the lights because he'd watched way too many movies where people oh-so-stupidly leave the lights OFF, and the door OPEN, then walk further in to whichever place they had just entered without a second thought. He took great care to avoid all tables. There was no light coming from the kitchen, and no sound of water splashing... so Gabe couldn't be in the bath or the shower. His apartment was so small that you could hear when someone was in the bathroom having a bath, or shower, because whenever you turned the taps on the cold one started dripping and stayed dripping for the next god-knows-how-many-hours. Usually it drove Sy crazy but now he'd give anything to hear it, just to know that Gabe was in, or had been in recently. There were towels on Gabe's bed, pressed and clean, and flowers in the Chinese-style vase on the right hand desk. Odd. He never folded his towels like that... come to think of it, he didn't fold them at all. And he was allergic to pollen. So...?
It felt as if steel hands had closed around his windpipe. He couldn't breathe momentarily, panicking. He stepped into the front room. Everything had a thick film of dust on it, like...
Like it hadn't been cleaned in two weeks. In the kitchen, no food in the fridge or cupboards. No hair products in the bathroom. Syro sat down on the sofa, sending a cloud of dust into the air, staring at nothing in particular. He didn't even know he'd been crying until he felt the warm, salty tears dripping from his cheeks onto his open palms.
Gabe was gone.
