He starts seeing him. He isn't surprised, and he doesn't question it. He knows it isn't real, and he couldn't care less. It's strange; it didn't just start happening out of nowhere. Like he simply slipped into John's everyday routine, and one day John realised he couldn't pinpoint the exact time he started seeing him. It was like he never actually left John.

He's just there; whether he's sitting on the sofa plucking at an invisible violin or examining the glass tubes that John hasn't removed from the kitchen table. He never talks. When John thinks about it, he understands he never really needed to. He could always pour everything he wanted to say into one meaningful look. His eyes weren't the window to his soul, but the doors – and through them he let pass anything he chose. The doors were always open to John; the only time he had seen them shut was when they turned him over on the pavement and his eyes were…

John still makes two cups of tea. The man across the table never drinks his. He merely watches John sip the brown liquid with his observant eyes, two slates of blue ice that John can feel breaking him down to his components, analysing each carefully. When John looks up and his eyes meet the other's, the spell is broken and John is always the one who looks away. Because the doors are still open, and what they try and say to him John doesn't want to hear. He purses his lips and resumes drinking his tea.

John manages it. He knows he does. He can tell true from false. He doesn't tell anyone because they'll try to take it away from him and he won't let them. It's better than the alternative – cold, paralysing loneliness that creeps at him and wraps itself around him like a pair of firm hands that clutch onto his neck until he can't breathe. That's how he felt before meeting him; everything was so dull. Then he came along. John looked at him like he was the only thing he could see in colour. And he really was; without him everything is grey. And he can't go back to that state – he just can't – so he succumbs to the illusion and welcomes it with open arms. No one else would understand. They'll force him to stop. "It isn't good to dwell in the past," they'll say to him. Is it really? Is it better to be dead inside, is that what they want him to become? They don't understand that he can't move on. What the open doors are trying to tell him shows that he doesn't understand either. The look in them is unequivocal: stop it. He wants John to move on.

"That's why you told me the lie, isn't it? You wanted me to move on." The other man doesn't reply. He doesn't have to.

He wants John to live. He wants him to laugh. To smile. To enjoy himself and stop clinging onto a memory. He doesn't want John to squander in his bubble of grief. He wants him to let go and that hurts the most – knowing he doesn't want John to be like this, and yet John isn't capable of that. He can't see how addicted to him John was, and now the withdrawal is excruciating. So John ignores the piercing, scolding looks and tightens his bubble around him, pretending his other half never left. They've merged into one – the perfect unit, one body. Now one half is almost gone, and John is clinging to it with everything he has. So it's wrong; who bloody cares? John never cared what anybody else thought of him. Only what he did mattered, and now he's gone and his echo doesn't get a say in this. He'll never forget where the light beauty mark above his left eyebrow used to be, or the angular definition of his upper lip. Should those ever begin to fade away – the ghost will always be there to remind him.

The things he didn't say; he still can't say them. What good would it do? The ghost is good enough to dull the pain, but John knows it isn't real. Saying everything he felt about him to a hallucination; what good would that do? Besides, he doesn't want to do anything that would jeopardise the comforting veil of pretending he's there. Releasing everything he's been holding inside could damage the bubble.

One time John tries to touch him. To just reach his fingers and meet the royal cheekbones. His fingers never make it all the way and linger there, millimetres away, before he draws back.

Normally the echo just saunters around the flat. Sometimes he stomps agitatedly, sulking, like he's bored. John knows he is – he's like a bird in a cage. It used to be because he didn't have a case to keep himself occupied with; now it's simply because he isn't supposed to be there. John keeps him chained to him wherever he goes. It's up to John to let him go, and he declines.

Very rarely, John manages to forget it isn't real. When he sits on the sofa, watching the news with his flatmate sitting by the other end and stroking the long untouched violin – John is able to genuinely forget that he really is alone again.

Those are the moments he lives for.