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"You asked me to meet up with you" Sam said, exasperated. The duplicate just looked at him with this cold, uncaring gaze. "And then you didn't show up. I waited for an hour!"
"Bro, you're so clingy" the duplicate said, smiling slightly. Sam felt as though someone had just poured ice water over him but he didn't say anything. "Come on. I thought jocks were supposed to be, like, cool and standoffish" the duplicate continued. "You're always whining at me" he added before patting Sam on the shoulder and walking past him. Sam could tell something was off, but he wasn't sure exactly what it was.
"I'm not whining" Sam said, turning to look at, to his knowledge, his boyfriend. "I'm just asking for some consideration"
James laughed and put his head down, shaking it slightly. Something was definitely wrong. This wasn't James... Or, well, at least he wasn't acting like James. Sure, the two hadn't known each other very long, but Sam knew the boy well enough to know that this wasn't right.
"What is going on with you, James?" Sam asked, exasperated. "This isn't like you, at all. Since when have you cared about people fitting whatever boxes society shoved them into, huh? God, it's like I'm not even talking to my real boyfriend right now" he went on, not noticing as the duplicate's smile dropped. "It's like he got replaced with some mean, shitty replaceme-"
Suddenly, everything went dark.
When he came to, he was in a dark pit, covered in dirt. When he looked up, the sight he saw confused him. Several James' were staring down at him. Some of them were in normal attire, but some of them were still in the costume he was in the night they got together. Before Sam could even ask what was happening, though, the James' just laughed and walked away.
He looked at his surroundings in the pit and quickly spotted the real James, looking absolutely filthy and exhausted.
"Holy shit" Sam muttered, running to his boyfriend's side. James took a second to process who he was looking at but, when he did, he quickly clung to him and broke down in tears. Sam wasn't entirely sure how to react to this, as he'd never seen James cry before, but he did the best he could and began to rub circles on his boyfriend's back. "You're the real one, right?" A nod. "Cool, cool"
"They- Mm" James groaned in discomfort as the ability to form words grew harder. Sam remembered a conversation from when they first got together, the night of the party. James had explained that he was Autistic and, sometimes, if he got overwhelmed, he'd lose the ability to speak. Sam fished out his phone and was glad to find that, while he didn't have any service, it still had plenty of charge. So he opened the notes app and passed the device to the other boy to let him express himself.
'They've been keeping me down here since the day after the Halloween party' James typed out. Sam's heart sank. It hadn't been an insane amount of time, but the fact that he'd been talking to an impostor for any amount of time at all still freaked him out. 'How are you here?'
"The, uh, duplicate that was taking your place as my boyfriend was being an asshole" Sam explained. "Not that you're incapable of being an asshole, but he was being an asshole in a very not you way"
'Ah' James typed out, nodding vaguely. 'I'm sorry'
"That's not your fault" Sam dismissed, kissing the other boy on the forehead and ignoring the fact that it tasted like sweat and dirt. "Is there a way out of here?"
'Not safely, no' James replied. 'I've just been kinda holding onto the hope that my friends will put the pieces together and rescue me'
"That's depressing"
'I know'
"But, hey" Sam spoke up. "I don't think I have any replacements, so my disappearance might help speed that up"
'I hope you're right, Sam'
"Yeah, me too"