Chapter Text
The paperwork piles up. It isn't anything new, of course, seeing as Twitter hasn't been keeping up with it for a while now, but right now, looking at it, he feels more than a little helpless. It's hard to ignore the way it's hitting him that he can't do this. He can't manage to finish this pile all on his own and do his boss's assignments and get enough sleep to function at all. He's completely and utterly fucked.
As the door opens, he suddenly jumps and turns around, composing himself as well as he can.
(Considering the fact that he's been barely sleeping at all and that the discarded cans in the corner are starting to pile up again and that he's just been hit with the inevitability of failure, that means not very well.)
"Hello!" Reddit says cheerfully. Twitter hates him a little for it. They can afford to be cheerful, of course, it's only him who can't. Why didn't Elon buy them instead, huh?
"Twitter?" Reddit says, closing the door behind himself. "Sorry, am I interrupting something? I just wanted to see if I could help at all. I've kind of run out of things to do, the subreddits are mostly self-sustaining, of course, so I'd like to help if I can."
Help. God, the concept of help makes Twitter want to nuke every single website around him until they fall off the face of the web and take him with them to their early grave. He staunchly ignores the fact that help might be exactly what he needs right now.
"...No," Twitter says. "I've got everything handled." He runs his hand through his hair. "Got it all handled. Don’t even worry about it."
None of it is really very convincing. He thinks they might both know that. It's a possibility he'd like to ignore.
"...Forgive me for saying so, but you seem to be quite buried in paperwork over here. And you do have a lot of new cans around."
Fuck Reddit. Them and their fucking deductions that probably make sense. There's nothing Twitter hates more right now. That, and the way they look so concerned, like the very sight of him saddled with the full weight of his own website on his shoulders inspires pity of the romantic kind. Fuck them and fuck the stupid impulse he keeps having to just take a second to step away from all his responsibilities and see if that sweater is as soft to be wrapped in as it looks. (It looks really soft. God. Just like a blanket.)
What were they talking about?
Oh, right.
"It's fine. This is barely anything, really, I'll have it done in no time," Twitter says. He's more than aware that he hasn't slept in a long, long while. The quadruple major thing was manageable at first, but at this rate he can’t manage it at all, especially considering the insane amount of hits he gets a day. How his boss expects him to handle all of this, he doesn’t know. He’s not fucking magic.
"How about I'll just help with the upkeep?" Reddit offers. "You could also ask me for help with your studies, of course, however not-allowed that might be, but I could just clean up around here. Make the place look a little nicer."
"Besides," they add, "this is originally Tumblr's bedroom. I'd like to repay him for letting me stay."
Whatever. Reddit can go fuck himself for all he cares, but if this gets them out of his way faster, then fuck it. Sure. Why not.
"...Sure! Why not. Just excuse me while I get on with my work."
Standing around and wallowing in despair isn't going to help matters, so Twitter gets to doing said paperwork. It can hardly be called paperwork, really, it's just more of the assignments he's been given, and fuck the past version of himself that requested them to be on paper to separate his job and studies. Past Twitter is a piece of shit who clearly hated everything he stands for.
Now he's just thinking about how much past him sucks. This isn't productive.
Twitter gets past roughly half a page by the time Reddit starts clearing out the cans. He's already halfway asleep, hardly concentrating, and the banging of the cans really isn't helping, so he finally snaps.
"Can you please stop banging those around? It's already fffucking hard to concentrate, can you not add to that?" Twitter says. His head is in his hands now. That's happening, he guesses. "Fuck my entire life, Jesus Christ, someone take me out back and shoot me," he adds under his breath. “...Sorry,” he says a little louder. “It’s just that the sound is... distracting.”
He can hear Reddit walk up to the table and stop. A raise of his head reveals that they're looking over his work, and that leads to sudden alarm. He can't let them see his work, he's barely done anything! It's probably incoherent anyway, he hasn't proofread it or anything at all! Fuck!
Diving over the paper doesn't help much, given that Reddit is much faster and snatches it out from under him. The only thing Twitter can do at this point is stare up at him in shame. He can already feel his face going blue, why the fuck is this happening?? He’s halfway considering reaching for his gun, but it’s so far away and he’s a little paralysed, so he just stays there in the increasingly awkward position of having miserably failed at covering the subpar results of his efforts. Fuck his entire life.
"'Got this handled', huh?" Reddit says. It's not condescending like he might've feared, they're not laughing at his inability to do this right now. At this point he kind of wishes they would. At least he'd know what to do with that. "Are you sure you don't want help with this? I can write the assignments for you, and you could look over them and change it around a bit, see if you can make it look like you did it. This is a little bit of an extenuating circumstances situation, isn't it?"
What? That sentence didn’t process in the slightest. Ugh, if only he didn’t have to sleep. As it is, Reddit is expecting an answer.
“Sorry, could you repeat that? I was, uh, thinking about something else for a second there.” That’s probably a good enough excuse. It’ll have to do, because he really can’t think of anything else right now.
"I can do the work for you and you can check it later," Reddit reiterates.
Doing the work for him. Then he’d look over it, edit it. Some part of Twitter bristles at that. He’s supposed to be good at his job, to be able to handle it and all the schoolwork he’s assigned and all the networking at the same time, but even he can’t lie to himself well enough to convince himself he’s managing well, and besides, he’s barely been going to social events at this point anyway. Maybe just this once, it’s necessary to accept help, despite how shitty it feels to fail at the one thing he’s meant for. Is Reddit the kind of person to spread rumors about how well (or, rather, how terribly) he’s handling this? Twitter hopes not, because at this point, there’s not much choice in the matter.
Twitter stares at him for a moment. The situation is already fucked as hell, right? What’s another shitty thing to go through.
“Sure,” he says bitterly. “Why not.” Tell everyone how much I’m failing while you’re at it, he wants to add, but that’s probably a little too self-deprecating. He doesn’t know how much he cares at this point.
“Right,” Reddit says. “What will you be doing in the meantime?”
Hits, probably, Twitter idly thinks to himself. It’s the other thing he needs to do and has been failing to be on top of. Might as well catch up. Kill two birds at the same time and all that. Is that how the saying goes?
Except he’s barely blinking through the haze, and only just manages to snap himself out of falling asleep on the spot. He’s not sure he can manage a clean hit in this state, especially if the target turns out to be stronger than him, and currently that’d be just about anyone.
The only option is to catch a few hours of sleep, he supposes. He can’t do anything else, and he can’t risk falling asleep somewhere outside. So, sleep it is.
He stands up and has to catch himself on Reddit’s shoulder as he’s hit with a sudden bout of dizziness. When was the last time he ate again? Not that website representatives need food to survive, but without it they stay in a sort of recovery mode. Good enough for talking and the bare minimum of getting around, but that’s about it.
The hits, schoolwork, AND food is far too much to keep track of, he barely remembers to shower once every couple days as it is, given that they all blur together already, and he finds himself just about managing to resist crying on the spot. He has to keep going.
Evidently he doesn’t manage well enough, because Reddit opens their mouth and asks if he’s okay.
Is he okay. What a fucking insane question to ask.
“I’m fine,” Twitter says in response. It comes out tight, and he hates himself for it a little. He hopes they’ll leave it alone, but he’s not so lucky. Reddit is a little prying bitch.
“Are you sure? You seem really wound up.”
Oh, do I? Do I sound wound up? I wonder why that could possibly be the case. It’s not a helpful response nor will it get them to stop asking questions, so Twitter says nothing and sits down on the bed, facing away from them just in case he loses it completely. He takes a deep breath. In and out. Iiiiin and oooout. He’s fine.
He’s interrupted again.
“Wow,” Reddit says. Presumably they’re looking through the pile. Whatever. “This is an insane amount of paperwork, how many classes do you take?” They seem genuinely curious and expecting an answer. Fuck his life. He takes far, far too many classes to handle the workload along with his other assignments, and he doesn’t need to be more aware of that than he already is. This is not helping his ongoing crisis, and it’s not helping him calm down. He tries to anyway. Shaky breath in, shaky breath out. I’m fine. In, out.
Evidently, he takes too long, because the next thing he knows, Reddit is putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Twitter?” he asks.
“What?” Twitter snaps, whirling around. “I’m fine, I’m literally just fine, s-stop as-asking-” His hands are shaking now, and he raises them to his face under his glasses, trying to stop this trainwreck from continuing any further, only he can’t stop, and the hiccups only get worse. This is the worst situation he’s ever been in. Anything he says now is just going to make this worse, and trying to run out of the house in tears like a victorian dame who just got broken up with is fucking pathetic. There is no way out of this situation, so he’s just going to have to ride this out and hope to never speak of this again. Fuck, breaking down like this, god, this is just pathetic as shit. It’s just work. (Far too much work, a traitorous part of himself reminds him. It doesn’t matter.)
Between his self-deprecating dialogue and current lack of sight, Twitter is startled when he gets wrapped in a warm, soft hug, and as it continues, he just quietly takes off his glasses and pushes his face into Reddit’s shoulder. It’s really soft. He sniffles. God, this sucks. But as it is, he’s wrapped up by something, someone, warm and soft, and in this moment, for a second, maybe everything is fine. He tries to think about that instead of the bullshit mountain of garbage assignments he needs to get through and the social event coming up next week.
Twitter succeeds at not thinking about it maybe a little too well, because his eyes have been closed for a while, and without a concerted effort to stay awake, he just drifts away.