He reaches out and brushes the door gently, with the tips of his fingers, and lets them stay there.

It's quiet, it's perfectly quiet; but he can feel the electric feeling that there is something inside this box.

It says "pull to open" but the door doesn't looks like it swings outward.

He loops a finger, gently, through the little metal handle, and pulls.

No dice, darling.  Sorry.

...pushes.

It feels like it's locked.

"Are you not for me?" he murmurs.  Not whispers, not unvoiced, but low and quiet.  "Should I go?"

He barely knows what he's saying, and he definitely knows it doesn't make any sense.  But.

(It makes perfect sense to her.  But she doesn't talk.  She's a box.)

What is it about this damn thing...

His eyes trace over the words.  They're not interesting words, but he's transfixed by them, somehow, as part of a whole.

(Well, maybe she does talk, a little.  But can he listen?)

"Do you have a key, somewhere?  ...Is this a quest?  My plot hook?"

Hee.  He's cute.

He'll stay there in silence, for a while, one finger still twined gently into the little handle.  It's a little bit before it occurs to him that he's smiling.

Eventually he gets hungry again, though.

He pats the door to the box.  "I'll come back," he murmurs.

He doesn't want to go back to the diner across the street, because he doesn't want to risk the cashier seeing him twice in one night and noticing him as the guy who came in twice in one night, because he's, you know, insane; so he takes a bit of a walk.

He thinks about the box, while he's walking, while he's eating, while he's walking back.

When he does get back to the alley, there's someone else there - someone sleeping on the ground, curled up under a lumpy blanket.  And Bryce feels intensely uncomfortable at the thought of walking past them to get to the box, at the thought of doing - whatever it is he's been doing - with someone else right there, even if they're asleep.

Also, what the hell exactly has he been doing?  Crooning over a weird public art installation?

His eyes rake over the alley, the box, and he -

- feels a flash of guilt -

- turns and walks away.

He goes home, and goes to sleep.

He doesn't wake up until the next evening.

He feels - strange.  It's not exactly a bad feeling.  He's sort of - floating.  Ethereal, in limbo.  He's just been fired from his job and he doesn't have any leads on another one, and he doesn't really have anywhere to go - not anywhere he could bear to show his face, anyway - and unless he puts in a truly heroic level of effort into finding a new job, a level of effort that he can feel himself not being going to put in, he's not going to be able to find any new income before his savings run out.

So he doesn't really have any prospects of surviving.

And yet - he's relaxed, free, almost happy.  He knows he's not going to survive, so he doesn't have to try to survive.  He doesn't have to be a person, any more.  When nothing remains, everything is equally possible.

He grins a little and closes his eyes, and buries his face in his pillow, pleasantly, and dozes for a little while.  He can sleep all he wants, now.

He considers his situation sleepily, sprawled out on his little bed.  He's never done anything even close to this before, thrown aside all his infinite obligation and hurtled himself toward inevitable disaster, carelessly and blithely, utterly free.  What would he like to do today?

He gets up, pulls on his coat and his shoes.  He didn't bother changing out of his clothes, last night, so he's already dressed.

He heads for the alley.

He sees, from the other side of the street, that there's someone leaning against the wall, in the mouth of the alley.  Tall, and thin, and wrapped in something like a blanket or a long coat.  Standing there, very still.

He - doesn't cross the street.  Instead he ducks into the diner again.

He should probably eat something anyway.