Work Text:
As the bells ring and the rush to the lockers starts, Liam slings an arm around Bryce as he puts in an earbud that he wasn’t supposed to have on him during school time. He passes Bryce an ear bud, peering over the other boy’s shoulder as he nods in gratitude and pulls up some group chat. But it’s not their group chat. Not the normal one. Liam squints his eyes and makes out Jack and Henry’s profile pictures.
“Hey, what group chat is that?”
“Huh? Oh, it’s nothing,” Bryce brushes off. Liam raises an eyebrow and mumbles an alright, reaching for his own phone. As they finally shove their way into the overcrowded locker, he flings open his unlocked locker door, almost knocking someone out in the process as he hastily pulls out his backpack and notebooks for homework. Luckily, they didn’t have too much today, he should be all free to hang out with Bryce over the weekend.
As he and the taller boy finally leave the locker room, he shoots a quick message to the normal group chat, seeing that all three other people are online, but no one responds.
‘hey guyss how was school??’
Speech bubbles appear but no one actually sends a text.
‘guys whats up’
This time, speech bubbles don’t even appear.
Frustrated, he tosses his phone into the endless abyss that is his messy backpack. Bryce still seems to be typing away in the other groupchat, his shoulder aimed almost like he was trying to hide something. Liam opens his mouth to ask what he’s typing about, but shrugs it off, not wanting to be annoying and nosy.
-
Later, that night, Liam sat at his desk, tapping his pencil tip against his worksheet. Man, this was supposed to be quick! My teachers hate me or something. As he lets his thoughts wander, he thinks back to that group chat he had seen. Hesitantly, he reaches for his phone, which he always has to shove under his bed whenever he’s doing homework to avoid distractions.
He unlocks his phone and his thumb hovers over a deleted message Jack had sent an hour ago, unsure how to ask what it is without sounding like he’s trying to pry. Sighing, he scrolls down to see if anyone had replied to his text and frowned at the empty group chat, as the double blue checkmarks seemed to mock him. His eyebrows furrow as he turns off his phone and throws it onto bed.
As he finishes the last equation on the worksheet, a buzz comes from his phone that lay discarded on his bed. Another message from Jack? He opens the message and feels an angry embarrassment bubble in his chest.
Usually, it wouldn't have bothered Liam much, but this time he wasn't in the mood. It was just stupid Jack again, poking fun at Liam for something light, how he usually was. Any other day, Liam would have just sent a stupid sticker or laugh, but tonight, this just fueled his annoyance. Liam shoots back with a long angry message, his thumb jamming on the send button without a second thought.
‘can you shut up? seriously oh my god do you not feel tired from running your mouth so much youre actually js pissing me off now if you want me to frick off you giys you could JUST SAY IT?? YOURE ALL SO ANNOYINGYOU DONT NEED TO DO ALL THIS I GENUINELY HATE YOU ALL’
Liam sits up on his bed after lounging, muttering angrily to himself and heads to the bathroom. Splashing his face with water to bring him back to his senses a bit, he brushes his teeth. Only afterwards, staring at himself in the reflection of the mirror, he feels… like an idiot. He feels a slight tinge of guilt at what he said to Jack. He knew Jack never meant any of the insults he threw and that he only meant it in a good light… Maybe Liam had overreacted, blew things out of proportion.
He snarls and shakes his head. No, today Jack had crossed a line, and there's no point feeling bad over what's already happened.
Climbing into bed, he pulls the covers over his head and sighs. Every time he rolls over and shuffles, the voices that tell him to delete the message and apologise get louder. The other parts of his head yell back, though they become quieter and quieter the more he thinks about it. Liam groans, crossing his arms as he stares at his bedroom ceiling. No, it’s not that personal, he tries convincing himself. Jack was being annoying and he got what he deserved. There's no point deleting it if he saw it anyway.
After a fair few minutes of ranting in his head, though it felt more like he was just trying to convince himself to stay angry, Liam finally closes his eyes, sleeping off that feeling of guilt settling at the bottom of his stomach.
-
‘liam
are you okay?
you’ve barely been online
you know we dont hate you, right?
js text me when ure free’
Leaning against the wall adjacent to his bed, Liam stares blankly at the phone resting in his palm. He reads the messages as they appear on his lock screen, but he doesn’t make a move to respond.
He feels sick. He sent that angry message. He’s ignoring everyone. And yet Bryce is still reaching out, trying to make sure he’s okay. He doesn’t deserve it, really. He just wishes Bryce would go away, treat him like how he deserved to be treated after what happened yesterday.
So he impulsively taps on Bryce’s contact and blocks him. He goes to the main group chat, cringing as he sees double blue ticks on his angry long message, and deletes it, knowing everyone already saw it. Going to the group icon, he leaves, and goes blocking Jack and Henry too.
It feels like there’s a clot. In his heart. He’s angry and mad, of course he is, but beneath all that rage and hatred is just sorrow.
Man, what is he doing with his life? It’s a weekend, he shouldn’t be alone, just sitting in his bed doing nothing. If only none of this happened. Maybe he shouldn’t have blocked everyone… God, he is such a loser, can’t even stick to his own decisions.
Groaning as he pushes himself off the bed, he walks over to his desk, booting up his PC. He stares blankly at his dual-coloured wallpaper, contemplating what to do with his time. Finally, he double clicks on the Minecraft icon, ignoring his multiplayer worlds that he’s worked on with Bryce and the others for a year now. Instead, he starts up a new singleplayer world.
New beginnings… If only it were that easy…
-
“Liam, are you sure you’re okay? You seem sick.” Liam’s mother was standing hesitantly at the doorway of his room.
“Mmm, I dunno,” he mumbles, pulling the covers over his head. He just wants to hide away from the world, can’t she leave him alone?
“Are you sure you can still go to basketball training like this?”
“I dunno… I don’t feel good, I don’t wanna go.”
“Shh, it’s okay sweetie, if you don’t feel good then stay home for today, okay?”
“...Thanks mum.” God, now here she goes being all nice and everything, of course he was wrong to think she would berate him, he’s always in the wrong.
As she leaves the room, Liam throws the covers off and groggily checks his phone. Sunday. 11 am. Usually, he has basketball practice after lunch around 2 pm, but today, he just wasn’t in the mood, to say the least. He isn’t in the mood for anything, actually. He spends the morning in bed, only getting up to brush his teeth when his mother called him for lunch.
And even then, he barely ate anything, worrying his parents.
“It’s nothing, maybe I’m sick or something, but I feel fine otherwise,” he said dismissively as he headed back towards his room.
“Kid, y’know if there’s anything up you can tell us, yeah?” His father says, concern written all over his face.
“...Yeah.” But he doesn’t tell anyone. About anything.
He spends the afternoon scrolling online, not even processing any of the videos, just moving his thumb, doing something to keep him from drifting away and losing his mind.
After dinner, which he only had a few bites of, he immediately brushes his teeth and, at 6 pm, heads to bed. He thought he would be able to fall asleep quickly, with how he’s barely been awake in the day, but he finds himself awake, staring blankly at his dark ceiling.
He barely processes the knock at his door.
“...Liam?” His mother again.
“...Hmm?”
“Can I come in?”
Normally he would have said yes, but today-
“No. Just leave me alone, I’m tryna sleep.”
“Liam, it’s been three hours, you’re still not asleep.”
“...”
“...I can’t force you to open up to me, but I don’t know how to help you otherwise.”
“...Jus’ leave me alone…”
“...Alright, if that will help you, then I will. But LIam, I need you to talk to me tomorrow, okay?”
He only hums in response. Not an agreement, but an acknowledgement that he heard what she said.
Around midnight, he gives up trying to talk, and instead opens up his phone and starts scrolling again. Around 2 am, he finds himself in his messaging app. Hesitantly, he goes to his blocked contacts list. After contemplating for about ten minutes, he finally taps the red “unblock” button under Bryce’s contact.
128.
128 messages from Bryce.
128 messages of Bryce begging Liam to respond. But only the most recent few caught his attention. He texted, just an hour ago.
‘happy birthday liam
im sorry we ruined everything
the other gc was supposed to be a surprise for ur birthday
we shldve js told u when u started feeling like u were left out on something
we dont hate you
not even close
liam
r u ok
im sorry about all this
liam you are real, you are special
remember who you are
we’re hand in hand, to hell and back, remember?
happy birthday liam
im sorry’
And… he’s right. The 16th of May is his birthday. He had forgotten completely. Immediately, guilt stabs aggressively at this stomach, all the resentment and frustration he had felt in the past weekend twisting into painful regret. All the people he had ignored and hurt were all just trying to do something special, and he immediately assumed the worst of them, lashing out and dismissing them for days.
Tears began to fill his eyes as he began to curl in on himself, thoughts rushing into his head. Shouts of regret and rue rang out in his mind, the feeling of intense guilt deepening somewhere deep down in his core. The assumptions he had made seemed so stupid now that he knew the truth. He should've known his friends would never hurt him like this, that it should have crossed his mind that it would've been a surprise or just something unrelated to him. He had assumed the worst, all because of the insecure voices that told him his friends were moving on.
Shakily, Liam began to type out an apology, his thumbs flying over the keyboard as the screen began to blur from his tears.
‘bryce im so sorry i thought you guys might have been talking bad about me or were making fun of me i shouldnt have assumed the worst and this is all my fault, im so sorry’
Liam sighs as he hits send and hits his forehead with his phone screen. He had been so stupid, if only he had remembered that his birthday was coming soon, all this wouldn’t have happened. He thinks back to his mum, who had just been checking up on him, only to be met with his indifferent responses. She was only trying to help, but he had pushed her away, just because he had been too caught up with his stupid feelings.
Liam goes to his contacts and unblocks Henry and Jack, typing out long paragraphs about the misunderstandings, and they both responded relieved that Liam didn’t hate him and laughed it off. Liam tried to laugh too, but that’s hard to do when you’re bawling your eyes out. The morning after that hard night’s sleep, he bee lined straight to his mother, who had been writing emails in the office and hugged her tight, his tears soaking through her sweater. She seemed worried, but calmed down and comforted him after listening to his teary explanation of the miscommunication he had with his friends.
Now, Liam was waiting nervously for Bryce to reply, anxiously checking his phone every two seconds expecting to see his contact pop up. Ironically, when Liam did see his name, it felt hard to move. His mind ran through all the angry and hurt things Bryce could’ve said, how getting ignored for doing something nice or Liam lashing out felt, but when Liam hesitantly opened the notification, relieved tears filled his eyes.
‘omg liam im so glad you arent mad at me, im sorry we were so secretive from you, i never meant to make you feel excluded. If youre up for it we could still celebrate? I miss seeing you <3’
Liam smiled at the last bit. Of course Bryce was supportive. How did he ever delude himself that he hated him?
‘that would be nice’
A beat as he tries to put his feelings into words.
‘i love you’
Yeah, that sounds about right.