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/CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP —
It wasn’t until Stefan felt Colin’s arm drape itself across his chest and Colin’s even breaths on the junction between his jaw and neck that he allowed himself to think.
Stefan didn’t think much nowadays, not so much anymore. He didn’t really have to— coding and making games were all in a small, separate part of his brain (maybe almost subconscious), and it wasn’t like he was making any choices. Not since he knocked frantically on Colin’s door begging him to take away the choices, please, I don’t—I can’t make them anymore, I was never making them with his fingernails half-bitten off and tears in his eyes. Colin only glanced at him, didn’t even say a word, just gestured him to come inside, and let Stefan tremble and stare off into space while he made his choices for him. Colin was the one who chose to make Stefan tea, who chose to slip sleeping meds (thankfully not a tab of acid this time around) into it, who chose to lay Stefan down on that curved sofa and let him sleep off the panic—all while Stefan silently cried about whatever choice he was forced to make.
Stefan couldn’t even remember what choice had led him up to that moment—it could have been a number of things, he could have thrown tea all over his work, yelled at his dad, made to choose between two fucking cereal brands, or whatever bullshit “choice” he was given.
He didn’t like to think about them anymore.
Colin made most of his choices now, and it was better this way. Once Bandersnatch was released, his days always followed the same routine—wake up (most likely next to Colin, or find Colin passed out at his desk), breakfast, code, dinner, sleep, repeat. If there was a choice between toast and cereal, Colin would make it (toast, more often than not). If there was a choice between driving or taking the tube to work, Colin would make it (the tube, on most days). If there was a choice between working on his game or going home and having sex until he passed out, Colin would make it (it was working on the game almost all of the time, Stefan was never quite in the right headspace for it, and Colin was almost always too tired).
Every time Colin made a choice, Stefan didn’t have to. It was out of his hands, there was no need to sit through that uncomfortable, mildly painful, and completely disorienting couple of seconds where he had to resist a choice. With each choice Colin made for him, it was like a part of Stefan was slowly drifting away into nothingness—not in a bad way, though. The part that was disappearing was the paranoid, shaky Stefan that would obsess over P.A.C.S or whatever the fuck a Netflix was. It wasn’t the healthiest, sure, anyone could see that clear as day, but it wasn’t like Stefan had any other option.
Let Colin choose for you
Let whatever is controlling you choose
(It was an easy choice, really)
But it was never just the choices that Stefan was avoiding. It was the knowledge of the timelines (he couldn’t remember how he figured out about the whole timeline thing, but it was most likely the acid, and Stefan never quite forgave Colin for that, but it didn’t matter anymore, not really), how each choice he made branched him off into some other world, some other reality—the responsibility of it scared him. If he made the right choice, he was burdened with the knowledge that he caused another Stefan somewhere else to simultaneously live out the consequences of the wrong choice in some other world. If he made the wrong choice, he had to live with the knowledge that some other version of him made the right choice, and he couldn’t go to that timeline no matter how close it was. (Not unless he died.)
Colin never seemed bothered by that responsibility.
Stefan never remembered all of the timelines in their entirety, either—or maybe he did, in some subconscious part of his brain, and he was just blocking it out so he wouldn’t go completely crazy. He suspected that Colin did, though. How Colin wasn’t completely mad by now was a mystery to Stefan, but he mainly just left it to the fact that he a) was almost always self-medicating and b) used his crazy conspiracy theory rants as an outlet for the madness.
He never remembered all of them at once, but he did remember that in every timeline, every reality, in every possible choice he could have made, loving Colin (or, at least having the capacity to love Colin) was never a choice. Even in the ones where they had killed each other.
It was never a choice, loving Colin was the only constant in his possibly-most-likely-definitely infinite life. And Stefan really never had an issue with it.
Not until he let himself think.
He knew that he loved Colin—or at least he loved Colin as much as he could love anything. Most of the time, he felt as though he was just a swirling mass of universal matter that snowballed with each timeline he went through. But the swirling mass he could recognize as himself half of the time knew he loved Colin, and that Colin also loved the swirling mass that was him back. He saw it whenever he slipped into the soft and fuzzy and safe headspace where all he had to do was go through the motions of life while Colin guided him through it with a hand on the small of his back. He saw it when Colin guided his head to his chest and used one hand to run his fingers through Stefan’s hair while the other held a joint. He saw it whenever Colin would lean over Stefan and cage him in with his arms on either side of him so that he could help him with a difficult line of code.
And Stefan had no issue with this. He knew he never made the choice to love Colin, but then again, he never really made his own choices in the first place. The only thing that bothered him was if it was real. Was the love real if he never made the choice? Did he really love Colin (and did Colin really love him) if someone else, some outside force, made the arbitrary decision to entwine Colin and Stefan together? Stefan wanted to believe that they were simply always meant to love each other, but what scared him was the thought that he was wrong— their love didn’t transcend space and time, it wasn’t fated or destiny, that it was only ever a choice made by something out there, some random, arbitrary decision that didn’t really matter to whatever the fuck made the choice.
It wasn’t the lack of choice that scared him, it was the lack of meaning.
And even if it didn’t mean anything, even if it never meant anything at all, it wasn’t like Stefan could stop. Their lives, in every possible iteration, every possible timeline, every reality that has ever existed or will exist, were completely entangled with each other. Completely and wholly tied together, like the universe had taken their separate, infinitesimal existences and made them new and whole—something that mattered.
All of that based on some stupid, absent-minded decision by some asshole in the cosmos.
The thought of it sat sour in Stefan's mouth.
“Stefan? Why th’fuck are you up?” Colin murmured from beside him. Stefan didn’t even realize that in his nightly contemplation of the implications of their relationship that he had drawn himself up to sit at the edge of the bed they shared.
Stefan only made a vaguely dismissive hum before returning to staring at the wall while waiting for his train of thought to pass through his mind again.
Or, at least he tried to. His plan was derailed when Colin snuck an arm around his waist and pulled him back into the bed with an oomph from Stefan. His arm pulled Stefan back into him and slowly, Stefan could feel his thoughts beginning to pass him by, any ability of his to function 100% autonomously slowly seeped out of him as he surrendered to just being with Colin.
“Y’gotta stop thinking about shit. No more choices, remember? Just leave it to me, love,” he muttered, half into the pillow and half into Stefan’s hair.
Before he was completely swept away, he managed to whisper, “Do you think our love means something?” into his chest, not really expecting an answer.
Colin was quiet, quiet enough that Stefan allowed his eyelids to droop and the final shreds of self-awareness to leave him, right up until Colin answered back in another whisper.
“Probably not, but s’not like we could ever stop. Even if we could, even if we wanted to. If there’s even a way in th’first place.” He ended his sentence with a chaste press of his lips to Stefan’s hair, and then he was out.
Stefan closed his eyes and accepted the answer— he would have let Colin choose the answer, anyway.
— NOT SURE HOW TO STOP //