Chapter Text
You think you already know what he looks like.
In the reflection of your laptop screen, when the sun blazes through dusty bent blinds and scorches the gameplay’s image, guided by external brainwaves and a haunting hum at the back of your throat, you trace his face. He’s sharper features than you, so you don’t curve fingers as you outline jaw. His hair’s shorter too; he’s a fellow broke college student who has not enough money to not pirate his textbooks, nonetheless find the money for retwists or to get braids done, and it’s in part of that similarity — although the stress you’ve given him doesn’t help matters, the guilt weighted in your gut — that he looks as tired as you.
Sleep deprivation can lead to the permanent loss of brain cells. It could lead to a decline in memory, recollection, lapses in attention, and performance errors. You’ve been awake for so long. It hurts to even think, but at least looking at the screen doesn’t restart that ringing awful melody, the call to action, nor the recitation of the play.
You know more about him than just that; of course you do. These things, these meaningless to all but you, this mental biography of him, it’s all that you have from him. So you—