Chapter Text
There is probably something wrong with Shane Hollander. Probably.
He still attends classes, maintains his near perfect GPA, sits on the quad with his friends, and makes it to the gym. But he doesn’t feel quite right and he is determined to figure out why.
He runs through his check-in as he does every night before bed: heart rate, to-do list (past and present), expected time to fall asleep, time to wake up, money spent today, incoming paycheck, skin, teeth, joints, important dates, and heart rate one more time at the end. All done manually of course. A notebook, phone, or computer cannot be trusted with the items on the check-in. Shane should be able to do this himself, and he doesn’t know what he would do if he lost the ability to handle it mentally or god forbid if someone found his notes.
Shane has been doing these for as long as he can remember. As a child his mind never turned off at night like it would for others. His thoughts would race and often run off the track as he lost control of the subject matter. Instead he would check-in on his necessities, and then read. And read and read and read until his eyes couldn’t move and his thoughts were filled with stories. Little Shane preferred fantasy. He let himself do this after the check-ins, after he made sure he was aware of what he did and what he had to do and what he was feeling. Then he could escape that reality for a bit. He had been told once that he wasn’t as in tune with his body as others, and he took the responsibility of timely check-ins very seriously. 21 year old Shane could hardly read anymore, it just spiked his heartrate– he would know– and made his eyes glaze over as he thought about all the readings he would have to do tomorrow and in the days to come. It was as if he had a Pavlovian response to words on a page, and he would not taint his night-time routine with blue light.
School managed to kill your one joy. He remembers thinking this after a particularly restless night. He had tried to read an adult fantasy book, only able to feel vague anxiety and the emptiness that reading used to be able to fill. Thoughts tossed at him like this often fill him with graphic imagery, his joy personified by his 8 year old self, and school an invisible weight that slowly crushes it. He can see the moment the weight crushes the child’s spine, hear the crack of his skull into the ground, see the way bones splinter and tear against his skin, revealing organs that become unidentifiable as the weight continues to bear down. Shane wishes he could read to distract himself with beautiful imagery instead, but his imagination seems to only work against him lately.
Maybe that’s what is so wrong? He lost the whimsy in his imagination? But that wouldn’t explain the fear he feels when he scans into the dining hall or hears footsteps behind him in the hallway. How his senses become heightened when he sits at the front of the class, recently opting for the back corner to avoid the feeling. If Shane feels so wrong and all his surroundings are… off, then why has no one noticed? Sure he doesn’t have the most friends but he has a few close-ish ones, right? Maybe he should add a friend-count to his nightly check-in, would that help him feel seen in the right way? It would at least ensure he keeps appearances with people he cares about. Come on Hollander, it can't hurt to be more cognizant of your friends.
There has to be a way for him to make everything right again, just like he used to under the covers with his book light and heavy novels. Nothing else comes to mind, so Shane expands his nightly check-ins to include a friend count and a recall of moments during the day where he felt on edge. There is a gnawing feeling in his chest as he tries to ignore the reminder his brain shoves at him that The Check-Ins haven’t changed since you were 16. It’s fine, Shane isn’t 16 anymore and there is simply more he needs to do to keep on top of it all. He lifts his left hand counts on his fingers: Rose, J.J, Hayden, Harris, Wyatt. Great Hollander, your close friends fit on one hand. He rolls his eyes at no one and nothing in particular. Next: he felt weird scanning into his dorm tonight, sitting in his upper level biology class that afternoon, walking to the gym from his dorm, and sitting in the dining hall with J.J. There has got to be something that connects these experiences, or something he can do to fix it. Think Hollander, fuck. He fluffs his pillow one last time, lays flat on his back, and smooths out the three blankets so they lay evenly across the mattress and his body. He stares at the ceiling. Shit he forgot to check his heart rate after all that. You are really losing it Hollander. He sits up, presses two fingers into his left wrist and counts. Satisfied, Shane tucks himself back in. Should he include laying in bed with his on-edge list? Get a grip Hollander, everyone feels weird laying in bed. It’s an odd experience waiting for sleep to come.
When it finally does come at 4am, he wonders if someone would notice if there was something actually wrong, someone other than him. He comes up blank and he can't decide how to feel about that.