All At Once

The funeral arrives a month and a half later.

Joe shows up in a grey button-up shirt and jeans, because that was actually one of the few things Dan bothered to specify: casual clothes. He would probably snort and laugh at the assortment of people, all with their different interpretations of the word 'casual', if he weren't a part of it.

Like he's thinking the same thing, Luke gives a little snort and says, Fucking Dan.

Joe nods in agreement, but they're both doing it halfheartedly. They can't really do anything else when Dan's dead body is sitting over in the next room.

He spends the funeral in a limbo between wanting to be charismatic and blase about the whole thing and wanting to be numb and mopey the whole way through. He settles for an awkward mix of the two, but something tells him he's leaning towards the numb-and-mopey side.

After the viewing (and God, Joe doesn't even want to think about that) Joe retires to the bar for drinks. A lot of drinks. Every once in a while someone will come floating past, murmuring condolences and patting him on the back, and Joe will grimace and say, Yeah, it's terrible, before turning away again. He hates all the pity directed at him and his mother burying her sobs in his father's shoulder and his father clapping a heavy hand down on him and all of Dan's hippie friends with their Burning Man t-shirts- He just. He hates it.

Around the seventeenth time somebody comes around more than a fair bit drunk and wanting to cry and talk about Dan, great Dan, wonderful Dan, such-a-tragedy-that-he's-gone Dan, he gets up with his drink and starts towards the room with Dan's casket in it. He's not sure what he's going to do, exactly, but he's a little drunk himself and he's never been one to psychoanalyze everything either, so he just walks down the corridor and pushes open the door. There's already someone there- Bryn, he realises, sitting next to Dan, chair pulled away from the neat rows, elbows up and staring down at him.

Jesus Christ, she's saying, I miss you. You won't believe what's happening up here and you know what, I always meant to call you and tell you but you were busy with your things and I was busy with my things and I never did. I just- Kept putting it off, because there would be time, there would always be more time. Her voice is remarkably steady, only a few hitches as she talks. I'm actually- she laughs, now, a choked, harsh sounding thing -God, you'd laugh - We've been nominated for a Grammy. And Landon's been asked to do a guest part on The Simpsons. We're going places, man.

Joe clears his throat and Bryn tenses up and turns around slowly. Hi, Joe says. Hi, she says quietly.

He pulls up a chair next to her and puts his elbows up on the casket. He doesn't want to look at Dan and he can't, but he keeps doing it anyway, like a guilty pleasure kind of thing. Bryn starts telling him about how Dan and her met and Joe tells her about the one time Dan set the kitchen on fire and blamed it on Joe. Somewhere between the story of Dan's prom and the story of how Dan was when he met Mila Kunis (Just Mila, to Bryn, because apparently they're roommates and best friends too.), Joe and Bryn get to holding hands.

That's how Luke finds them, talking quietly and holding hands, and he looks at them with an amused, exasperated sort of expression as he tells them Joe's parents are looking for him. Joe and Bryn break apart immediately and he still isn't sure who pulled away first.