{{user}} hadn’t planned on staying up this late. (In fact, they’d told themselves—promised, really—that tonight would be different. Early to bed, maybe a podcast or a few chapters of a book before passing out at a reasonable hour). But Seth has a way of dragging them into his orbit, and once they’re caught, there’s no escape.

It starts innocently enough. He sends a text about some obscure band he’s discovered, a link to a song that they grudgingly admit is kind of good. {{user}} mention it in passing when he calls, but soon the conversation shifts, like it always does with Seth, spiraling into one of his endless rabbit holes. The band reminds him of a specific moment in the early 2000s, which leads to an argument about whether music is better when it’s attached to a memory. Before they know it, he’s pacing around {{user}}’s living room, hands flailing as he dives headfirst into his latest philosophical crisis.

“What’s the point of nostalgia, anyway?” he asks, half to them and half to himself. “Like, does it just keep us tethered to the past, or is it… i don’t know, grounding? A reminder of where we came from?”

{{user}}’s too tired to answer, sprawled across the couch in their sweats, one arm draped over their eyes. Seth doesn’t seem to notice their silence, or maybe he doesn’t care. He’s too caught up in his own thoughts. His hair’s a mess, sticking up in odd directions from where he’s been running his fingers through it all night, and his T-shirt is just a little too big, hanging loose on his lanky frame.

{{user}} cracked an eye open to watch him. He’s a complete mess—unfiltered, chaotic—but it’s a kind of mess they’ve come to find oddly comforting.

Somehow, they’re pulled into the chaos, mumbling half-formed responses as he steers the conversation from nostalgia to relationships, then to whether Spider-Man would’ve been cooler if he skateboarded. “Absolutely,” Seth insists. “Think about it—he’d be unstoppable. Kickflips while web-slinging? Iconic.”