Sturniolo Triplets - One Shots/Short Stories

Time loop - N

Warnings: Time Loop, Mental Health Issues, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Suicidal Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Suicide (not one of them), References to Depression

Nick gets stuck in a time loop and doesn't have a good time

Day 1

Nick

When Nick woke up that day, the first thing he noticed was the morning sun hitting his face, causing him to squint his eyes, groan and turn around. After a few minutes of just slowly waking up and waiting for his mind to fully 'turn on', he grabbed his phone from his bedside table and started scrolling through his apps and going through his notifications. He also checked his calendar to see if they had anything going on that day and quickly remembered it was already Monday, September 4th, and they had their bi-weekly meeting with their manager in the afternoon.

Aside from that they had nothing planned, so Nick let out a content sigh, glad he had most of the day free to just chill. He's been feeling very overwhelmed lately, since his brain decided to start self-sabotaging again and bring all his old insecurities back into focus.

It started a few months ago and has only grown worse since; at first he dressed and re-dressed himself like three times before settling for an outfit because he didn't like how he looked in anything, he also stopped eating on camera and refused to look at pictures of all three of them together, since he couldn't stop comparing his appearance to his brothers'. Now he couldn't even look at himself in the mirror and he hadn't posted any photos of himself in weeks. Matt commented on this once but Nick quickly brushed him off, saying he wanted to focus on different aspects of photography for now.

With time, the weight of these insecurities started dragging him down, he felt less social and was tired more often, so he unconsciously started spending more time by himself, which resulted in Matt and Chris spending more time alone with each other, which in turn made Nick feel even more shitty about himself.

Though he was known to complain a lot, it was all mostly superficial shit. And although he couldn't stop an occasional self-deprecating comment or a suicidal joke from slipping out, Nick kept the actual extent of his issues to himself. So there he was now, feeling more and more sad, lonely and vulnerable with every passing day, each task, activity or plan becoming more difficult and exhausting.

He eventually managed to force himself to get up and go through his morning routine, before going to the kitchen to fix himself a small breakfast.

All

When Nick got down, Chris was already there, eating cereal while watching TikTok.

"Mornin'", Nick said, receiving only a quiet murmur in response. He sighed and opened the fridge to inspect what they had in stock, but was distracted by Matt coming down the stair and entering the kitchen behind him.

"Oh wow, didn't expect to see you up this early, couldn't sleep?", he asked, knowing it was a very rare occurrence for Matt to get up before noon when it wasn't necessary.

Matt let out a big yawn, stretching his arms above his head. "Yeah, I woke up like two hours ago and couldn't fall back asleep, I don't know what's up with today".

"Nothing's up kid, it's a normal day, you just sleep weird", Chris teased from his spot at the table.

"I don't sleep weird you ass, stop saying that", Matt groaned.

Nick just let out a small laugh and continued preparing his breakfast. A normal day indeed, he smiled to himself.

The day passed as one would expect, Matt and Chris busied themselves with preparing topics for discussion for their meeting in the afternoon while Nick retreated to his room and edited their upcoming video for a few hours. He closed the blinds on his window because the sun was reflecting on his computer screen and he couldn't see properly otherwise. At around 2pm, Matt called him down to eat, he was the one cooking that day and Nick wasn't surprised to see it was pasta.