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It's raining.
Of course it's raining. It's always raining in his shithole world, endless sheets of water falling on and on. But it feels harder, today, limiting visibility to a blur past a few feet out. He can almost feel it through his raincoat, feel the few stray drops that hit his face.
That last part’s nonsense, of course. He's alone in his room, door shut tight, lights out, and through the thin gaps in his blinds he can see bright lines of sunlight. There's no way for some shitty particle effects to actually fall on him.
There's another drop against his cheek, stingingly cold. He winces.
Maybe he's finally losing it. Too much time cooped up like this playing some stupid haunted game he never even liked that much. Maybe some B movie monster is taking over his brain and the first symptom is getting way too into Minecraft roleplay.
Whatever. If that's it it's fine. Being dragged into Minecraft means he can't turn his phone upright. He can't see the long line of missed call notifications and texts.
He can't see the date.
He shuffles in an aimless circle, trying to focus. He should do something. Get some work done. Build more of the house, or go mining, or block off the iron doors with another few layers of cobble. Whatever. Even if he's playing stupid creepypasta Minecraft, it's still Minecraft. There's plenty to do.
He keeps shuffling in the same circle.
Finally, after how long he's not sure, he lifts his head.
He narrows his eyes.
There's a streak of yellow out past the rain.
It stands there for a few seconds, considering.
Finally:
<colinlock16> i ddon't st and aruond inthe rai nlike the blar witchh pro ject
It takes him a moment, but finally he sighs deeply.
<collinlock16> oh ha ha very funny
<collinlock16> look i’m not in the mood today. can we skip the part where you get mad and try to skin me or whatever
<collinlock19> o k
Collin pauses.
<collinlock16> fym ok
<collinlock16 > yuo don’tt say i mnot collin
<Collinlock16> i d on’t attaky ou
<colinlock18> tru ce
There's a long considering silence, except for the sound of the falling rain.
Finally, Collin shrugs broadly.
<collinlock16> fuck it
<collinlock16> truce for today
<collinlock19> tr ucef or todayy
His mimicked copy approaches, drawing closer.
Maybe it's whatever weird hallucinatory hell he's found himself in, but he swears he can actually see the differences beyond the username. The way the other is just a little taller, with their mouth covered by their raincoat and shaggy too-perfectly-curled hair falling over dark eyes. The patches on the raincoat.
A near mimic. But not perfect.
And it's his face, not Steve's.
It's unsettling. Collin barely likes looking at himself in the mirror, but it turns out a slightly warped mirror isn't much better. He averts his gaze, tries to put it aside.
“No idea why you'd want to be me anyways,” he mumbles aloud.
“I don't want to,” a distorted, garbled voice responds.
Collin nearly jolts out of his skin. Had he even turned the proximity voice mod on? He can't quite remember, and all the icons seem distant.
“Jesus that scared me,” he says to himself, before looking at the other again. (Avoiding the face.) “What do you mean you don't want to? It's the only thing you ever talk about–”
“I don't want to,” the voice retorts. He can make it out a bit better now. His own, deepened and layered under noise, the sounds poorly pieced together clips. “I just am.”
“You're–” He bites off an insult. Keep up the truce. Don't get jumpscared. “...Yeah. Fine. Sucks to be you too, then, I guess.”
The other shrugs, a near perfect parody of his own earlier shrug.
For a little bit, they just stand there, gazing out at the rain.
To his own surprise, Collin is the one to break the silence.
“I don't even like Minecraft that much, you know that?” he says, looking at the cloudy sky. “Like, yeah, it's fun, but I'm a shitty builder, I don't like PVP, I get my shit kicked in by mobs… It was something to do with…” He trails off. “It was something to do. And now I just… keep coming back to it? Even though I don't like it and I hate being here.”
The other regards him, head tilted unnaturally.
“It's hard to be here,” they say, finally. The garbling seems a little reduced, as if they're focusing.
Collin raises an eyebrow. “If I'm that bad as company, you can leave.”
The dark, shiny eyes on the other narrow. “Not like that. Asshole.” (Collin nearly chokes.) “It's. Hard to be–”
A broad gesture at the world around them.
“Here.”
Collin turns that over in his head.
“Yeah?” he says, for lack of anything better.
The other looks out at the rain, clearly trying to put together the words. “When I'm. Not focusing. I'm somewhere else. Other places. Other things. Worlds that aren't here. Worlds that are here but different. I belong there.”
They tense a little, close their eyes.
“Things there. Don't. Belong here.” It comes out forced, the distortion spiking at the edges. “But. Collin belongs here. And. And so. I belong here. I'm Collin. And Collin can be. Here.”
Collin tilts his head, at a much less extreme angle than the other's had been. Trying to make sense of anything that had been said. “Seems like a lot of effort to be in the local haunted hellfuck shithole.”
“I like it here,” they answer, much more smoothly. Almost humanlike. “I like the rain.”
Collin pauses.
He lifts his head. A few drops strike against his face, cold and bracing. They run down his cheeks in uneven trails.
“Okay,” he says. “Maybe we have one thing in common.”
The other laughs, a single bark of noise, and lifts their head too.
They don't speak again, but the rain goes on, and Collin leans in and lets himself feel it.