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God must hate him. It was the only explanation Bryce had for any of this.
Someone—or several someones, given his luck—had looked down at the earth from their cushy little seat in whatever stupid heaved they came from to find a prime someone to fuck with, and, for whatever reason, he’d just so happened to fit the bill. He checked all the boxes of someone deserving of a vacation straight to the strangest hell imaginable, and so off he’d went. Nevermind the obligations he’d been ripped away from: work shifts, mounting bills, bottles waiting to be emptied. No, no, no, just let all that pile up. Go live out some pointless nightmare, then come back to whole new problems instead. That’s what they’d decided for him, not giving a shit as to what he’d wanted. He was just lucky he’d been able to work with what he was left with afterward.
Now, the brush with being fired wasn’t fun, to say the least, and neither was the lack of voicemails from anyone outside work waiting for him after he’d dropped off the face of the earth for several days. He’d spent plenty of the following nights watching the shadows on his ceiling instead of sleeping, unable to shake the feeling that he’d wake up somewhere else. But he’d weathered it out. He cleaned his apartment. Went back to work. Started talking to his neighbours more, and called his family for the first time in a while (if only just to hear their voices again). He’d even nabbed himself a managerial position after health problems forced the last guy to step down. He’d pushed away enough of the anger and confusion and dread that he’d been left with to finally get his life in a position he was ok enough with. Happy with sometimes, even! And then god remembered.
And now there was. This.
Now, Bryce had never been religious. He’d never put enough thought into it to really care, honestly. His last real experience with religion had been several years ago, at the funeral of an aunt he really hadn’t known well, crowded into the worn pews of the stuffy, summer-hot church it’d been hosted in, alongside a mess of family and family-friends, zoning in and out as the pastor spoke. He couldn’t really remember exactly what he’d said. Something about gifts from god. Or warnings, maybe. Reasons a higher power would hate you that he’d pointed ignored.
Presently, though, he sighed, blinking up into the din once again. The blanket was both too hot and too cold, and the laptop’s fan filled the little apartment with a soft whirring as it charged. He wasn’t sure if Texty needed to sleep like he and Liam did, given that they didn’t seem to need food or water either, but he sure as hell wasn’t gonna ask, having made the very deliberate choice that he did not care. Speaking of which.
Bryce rolled over, the bed creaking, until he found himself staring out at the apartment at large, Liam laying on the floor between the bed and the table. After shoving him off towards the shower the scattered man had sorely needed, Bryce had dug up the old quilt he used on colder winter nights and laid it out on the floor, along with a little rolled-up towel in place of the spare pillow he didn’t own. Once Liam had stepped out, seeming somewhere between slightly more at ease and just fucking spent, they’d turned in with hardly another word. Neither had slept, though. Even in the low light, Bryce could see Liam staring up at the ceiling, face blank, eyes elsewhere, arms folded over the blanket, grasping it tight. The towel, as not a pillow as it was, had flattened underneath him.
For months Bryce had written the plane off as a nightmare brought on by one too many drinks. He still felt that way somewhere, deep down, despite the days he’d definitely missed and the half-stranger currently having an existential crisis on his floor. It was way better that way, after all. Just some nonsense his brain made up to scare him: no sunny fields, no giant pools, no living textboxes or abstract prophets or disembodied voices with enough powers and regardlessness for life to certainly fit the sound of god, nobody dead, nobody he knew and understood, nothing he’d never be able to understand, nobody he needed to worry about after the fact—no, none of it should've been real, none of it could’ve been real, and yet—
Liam turned to look at him. Their eyes locked, breaths quiet. Faces betraying nothing. Slotted streetlight crept over the two of them through the blinds. Two out of six out of eighteen out of twenty-four that god seemed to fucking despise.
On the way to New York, Liam had given him a clearer (read: comprehensible) explanation of what had happened after Bryce’s elimination. Of Scenty (Amelia, Amelia, fuck—) throwing the challenge to send him home, Airy disappearing when he was so, so close to home, the system of shifts, the plug, the shed, the realization that Liam was literally dead to the world. The world, except, of course, for Bryce.
Liam broke away first, turning, after a moment, onto his other side and shuffling in an attempt to force the towel into a comfortable position. Engrossed in the impossible task, he didn’t even notice Bryce’s own shifting, nor his brief consideration, or even the tossing of the pillow itself until it smacked Liam square in the back. By the time he turned to grab it, Bryce had already rolled over to face the wall. He heard Liam breathe in, pause, then, in a tired whisper,
“Thanks”
before the apartment fell silent once more. Bryce pressed his cheek into the crook of his arm, staring out, trying not to think too much about any of it.
Who cared if god hated them, anyway.