[ A bad dream. ] (Not actually posted, just some exposition.) You’ve watched him die before. In the heat of the battle, with the knowledge the game or Jane would bring him back, it didn’t make your heart seize. You always had failsafes. The risks were always calculated ten times over by you, miniscule. “Dirk?” Jake’s hand curled around your shoulder, squeezing tightly in a way that should be reassuring but barely reached you. “You know as good as any I haven’t the slightest clue how to gab at you in a way that’ll slap a plaster on this giant mess of broken pieces, but…” He trailed off. You weren’t looking at him, your eyes hadn’t left a spiderweb of broken up coding, but you could imagine the way Jake looked. Nervous and flustered, scratching the back of his head like a character from some cheesy fictional media. Concerned. Sad. Disappointed. “I’ll figure it out,” you said. Your voice sounded hollow to your own ears. Any attempt at reassurance fell flat. “… What? Figure what out? Christ on a cheese cracker, Dirk, it’s a bit late to ‘figure it out’. You should be-” he hesitated to say it and his voice dropped to a whisper, “-grieving, for Pete’s sake. This isn’t a problem to be solved. Now, come on. We’ll gussy you up in proper mourning clothes and… well, let’s start there. Everyone’s waiting.” Your focus finally shifted from the colorful strings of code to the reflection of your then boyfriend between them. He had a suit on, all black. Quiet and clean but the stubble clinging to his jaw was a few days old now. “I can smell the alcohol on your breath from here.” “Dirk,” he both pleaded and snapped. “Don’t do this right now. You, of all people, can’t just flake out on his funeral. You're his brother!” You pressed the *test* button to run the code in safe-mode. Error after error. It managed one message, over and over, a simple, red colored ‘yo’, before it collapsed on itself. Your jaw tightened. “Dirk,” Jake tried again, gentler this time. “Please.” He coaxed you from your chair. He helped you into your suit. He brushed your hair into the style you’d kept since your teenage years, pausing just a moment to murmur about it needing a trim. The entire time he kept a hand on you. The entire time you felt cold and too heavy to stand. You never met his eyes but when his attempt at playing it strong crumbled you collapsed into his arms as he drew you into himself. You clung to him and for the first - and last - time you cried over your brother’s death. You didn’t make it to his funeral and neither did Jake. The two of you didn’t leave the floor where you’d dropped onto your knees for hours. He stayed with you and you cried. You cried until you were too exhausted to continue. “I know,” he whispered into your hair as your breathing finally began to regulate. His thumb rubbed little circles into your nape, single-handedly fighting the headache expanding out from your sinuses. “I’m right here. Always within arms length, yeah?” [ Wake up. ] Your bed is cold. It has been for years. Messages sat unanswered in your inbox. Roxy wants to game again, she found a new bug to exploit. Jane’s checking in. Rose has a new hate read recommendation. Dave’s rambling about the quality of his eye lenses for photography. Jake… The last message, a few days old now, is from you. We only work as friends.
(( Reasonable, fighting myself on your side actually