Blink

Snap

"—eally sounds best." Kevin's voice is saying quietly. "At least he's out of intensive care."

"Yeah," Kirstie's voice answers from near Scott's head, just as quietly. The hand that's holding Scott's must be hers. It feels nice. Comforting and familiar, but too small.

Scott wishes Mitch was there.

It's silent for a few minutes, then a lock of hair that was tickling Scott's forehead is carefully tucked back behind his right ear. Kirstie clears her throat. "I, um. I called Alex."

"Oh," says Kevin. "Okay, wow."

Why the hell would she call Alex?

"Why the hell would you call Alex?" Mitch asks.

Oh, Mitch is there.

"He sent me a text and then left a frantic voicemail because he couldn't get through to you," Kirstie says. Her fingers smooth through his hair one more time. "He even tried calling Scott, which tells you how desperate he was. Someone tweeted him that snap of the wreck and asked him how it felt to have broken Scott's heart right before he died."

There's a beat of silence before Kevin says "Please tell me you're kidding."

Scott and Alex didn't part on precisely bad terms, but they're still in that awkward phase where they circle around timing absolutely everything to avoid contact with each other while their sizeable number of mutual friends—they were together almost four years, they have a lot of mutual friends—all go for the Tony for the starring role in Pretending Nothing is Weird While Waiting for Two Seemingly Competent Yet Emotionally Stunted Adults to Pull Up Their Big Boy Pants and Move On With Their Lives, or at least that's how he overheard Mitch and Jake bitching about the whole situation.

But even if Scott has no idea what wreck and snap they're talking about and actively avoids thinking about Alex whenever he can manage it, holy shit someone telling Alex that Scott is dead and then basically blaming him for it is fucking cruel.

"Apparently our Wikipedia page had a date of death reported too, although that had been fixed by the time I saw it," Kirstie says.

Fuck.

"Fuck," says Mitch, and Kevin grunts what sounds like agreement. "Why are people such utter assholes? Is Allie okay?"

"Once he heard from a reliable source that someone he spent years of his life being in love with wasn't actually dead? Yeah, he's doing better now."

"Who tweeted him the video?" Mitch asks. "Because I need to socially ruin them."

"Oh, don't worry," Kirstie says, sounding as satisfied as Scott's ever heard her. "The fandom's on it."

Sweet, thinks Scott.

"Sweet," says Kevin.

Blink.