Arthur Lester's Left Shoe

Worst possible iteration of “Stratt Grace and Carl all end up on the Hail Mary” is the coma fails for Stratt and Carl just like it does for Ilyukinha and Yao and Grace has to go through THEIR personal effects before he remembers them and all of the photos Carl has with him and all of the sneaky candids he’d taken of Grace with Stratt and all of their little personal memories and realizing all too quickly that he can’t remember these people, but he’s pretty sure he loved them. And judging by their things, the mug he vaguely remembers buying for Carl with “worlds best (astrophage) dad” on it, the fox keychain tucked between Stratt’s sweaters he thinks might’ve been his, once, the few shots of Stratt smiling at Grace while his back was turned and the stack of… coffee receipts? That Carl kept? (Two venti blacks, quad shot, an earl grey and an iced strawberry matcha with double syrup) they just might have loved him back. Before he really even remembers his name, or anything about himself, he thinks he was loved.

Having arfid is like. Imagine everyone except for you just absolutely loves eating dirt. Like dirt is served everywhere in a million different ways. And you'd forced yourself to try it once or twice but you couldn't swallow it because your body reasonably didn't want you to eat dirt. And then you get into situations sometimes where you're REALLY hungry but the only option is dirt. And people are like "why don't you like dirt? If you're that hungry just eat it." People assume you just. Don't care for dirt. But it's dirt. That is not edible. Even if you wanted to.