33

The apartment is empty.

Winston stops right by the entrance door, already in the room proper, and looks at it. Lights burst in through the windows, the blinds down but not closed, the floor the kind of cheap laminate that looks like plastic. The furniture is all old; worn and torn, the fabric on the couch stained and falling apart. The lamp in the ceiling flickers when he flicks the switch and goes out in less than a second.

He should probably fix that. Winston moves through the space silently, familiar steps to the kitchen nook where he gets an opened ox of cereal--not his favorite, but the cheapest of the lot--and he relocates to the couch. It's the only sitting furniture he has; once the bed is pulled out there's not any room left for chairs.

And he doesn't particularly want to spend any time sitting around, anyway.

Eating straight out of the box, he pulls a streaming app up on his phone and browsers through it, spending a good fifteen minutes just looking through the categories for anything interesting. The crunch as he bites down is the only audible thing in the room; despite the many faults the apartment's sound-proofing is god-tier and he can't hear a thing from either outside or the other tenants.

After a while, he gives up. Clicks on the first familiar thing he scrolls past (some kind of B-movie alien invasion action thing) and settles in against a pillow.

It's not quite night yet, but winter has arrived and the sun sets earlier every day. Winston is slowly bt surely dropped into darkness, the shadows twisting on the ground and over his feet.He doesn't look up.

It's... strange, maybe, that he both wants Jason to be here and at the same time doesn't want Jason anywhere near this pace. It's not rational, he doesn't think, this profound desire he has to not own this place.

Because it's not like it inherently sucks. There are some issues, but aside from the space he could solve them all with just some initiative and cash. Both of which he theoretically has. And yet. Well, and yet. Yet Winston simply never has, doesn't want to, would rather the place just burned to the ground.

Irrationally, he hates this place to his core.

Irrationally, he wants it all gone.

Shutting his eyes, he lets the sound of the movie wash over him. Explosions, screams, the falling rain. Cars squalierng on the asphalt and the heartfelt confession of the main character's love interest. It's nothing but background noise, the cacaphony of a life he can't live. And yet he eventually finds himself entangled in it, rejoicing with the victories and mourning the losses.

At some point, Winston yawns, nudging he cereal box with his foot across the coffee table unti it's out of reach so he doesn't spill it all over the floor--again. He stretches his arms over his head, works out the kinks in his shoulders, and then face-plants on the couch again.

Pulling out his phone, he scrolls through his app, the movie still going strong.

The room is markedly darker than when he entered, the lights fading as night sets in properly. With less cars on the roads there's less streetlights bouncing off the billboards and oddly reflecting windows across the street. The sun is setting, the light moving over the floor and the air through the ventilation system is freezing cold.

In the summer, the cold ventilation is a godsend. In the winter, it's hell.

Winston bites his lip, breathing in the cold and exhaling a cloud, eyebrows furrowing the longer he aimlessly scrolls. Nothing seems appealing, strangley. Not even the games he can easily spend hours on.

Calling Jason is an impulse. He doesn't even stop to consider what he's doing before hitting call.

"Win?" Jason's sleepy voice greets him, staticky over the terrible connection on the ancient flip-phone. It has the same old sim card he's had since he first got a phone, and the card doesn't fit in the newer phones these days so he's only got it for games.

Clearing his throat, Winston says, "Jason."

"Winnie? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

A telling pause, then, "Is there something I can do to help you be even more fine? Maybe even great?"

Winston huffs, a smile failing at the last second. "I'm fine," he repeats.

"Okay." Jason is silent for a long moment, but Winston is content to just lie back and listen to Jason's breathing. It's steady, deep, occasionally accompanied by a static he finally identifies as fabric shifting. Jason at last asks, "What are you doing right now?"

"Watching a movie."

"Oh, what movie? Is it good?"

Winston laughs. Can't help it. He raises his head enough to catch sight of the laptop screen and watches the main character in some kind of confrontation. It's probably supposed to be tense, but he has no idea what the stakes are. "I have no idea."

"No idea what?" Jason sounds confused, and Winston can just picture the image of Jason furrowing his eyebrows and the cute wrinkle that always forms between them.

"About anything," Winston says after a moment. He stretches a hand over his head, for no apparent reason, and flexes his fist. It looks odd in the apartment's darkness, like it's a demon come to steal his soul.

Jason responds, "That's cool, neither do I."

"Liar," Winston laughs.

Jason defends himself, "No, really. I'm not gonna go pro, you know. Like, I love basketball and it's my whole life, but I wanna be a chef too and I think... I think I might want that more?"

"You'd look really cool in a chef's hat," is the only response Winston can think, mind blanking. He did, he thinks now, kind of expect Jason to go pro after college. Jason just shines so much when playing; not only in games but during practice, too. It's visible how much he loves it and, more than that, how much fun he has. He enjoys it to his bones, Winston thinks.

Winston, too, loves watching Jason enjoy something so much.

"I would, wouldn't I?" Jason muses, humming a little. Winston laughs, a tiny puff of air that can't be audible through the phone connection, and yet Jason still chirps, "Hah, I made you laugh."

Yeah, Winston thinks. You did.