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"We know my Mirror's a dick, so that's a good start." It's not that he blames Jay for that; he's not that off his nut, right? Only he's blamed Jay for worse for far less before. Can't blame Jay for electing to be wary about that either.

What a fine pair they are, huh?

"You sure it was really...y'know, me? He's lied to us before. Both of us."

Sure, he was clearly manipulative, but did the Mirror actually lie the one time they talked for sure? He gave Jay information, albeit cryptic, potentially dangerous information.

Jay agrees with Tim on one thing, though. He's definitely a dick.

"I guess we can't exactly..." Jay pinches the bridge of his nose. "...prove it for sure either way."

He rocks back, leaning his head against the wall. "So if it was him, then what? What would he even gain from that?"

"He threw you off, didn't he?" Can't say for sure what else might be on his agenda, but - maybe George has had contact with him since then. She asked for his help in investigating whatever the hell his Mirror might be doing.

Maybe it's time to uncover the glass and start chatting him up again.

Doors open both ways.

"He likes messing with us. Both of us." He turns the words over and over in his head, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. "...said you did something. Didn't say what?"

Despite his instincts screaming at him that something's wrong, something happened, Jay admits the possibility is making more and more sense. Easier for the Mirror to mimic Tim than it'd be for Tim to get behind the glass and back without anyone but Jay noticing. Occam's razor.

(Or maybe it benefits Tim if Jay doesn't know. That doesn't really fit what he remembers either, because why would he write on the mirror if he didn't want Jay to know?)

Jay shakes his head. No, he didn't say what.

"Can't say for sure it was nothing, though. I mean, I don't remember getting up before three, but..." He shrugs. Just another day, right?

"Right. Neither do I." He rubs at the bridge of his nose between pinched forefinger and thumb, staving off the incipient migraine that's threatening to drill into the delicate center of his brain. You'd think it'd be easier to bear when one gets used to it, but mostly you just get tired. You get tired of it being the default state of being. You get tired of it being your life.

His temples throb, distantly. He drops his hand across his knees. Looks at Jay directly - not staring at the lens that he so often substituted for his eyes, but at him.

"He could've just been lying to us."

He is a liar.

Jay meets Tim's eyes.

He looks as exhausted as Jay feels, and Jay knows it's not from the hour. Four-and-a-half years on the run, winding back tapes and looking over his shoulder. An entire life in and out of hospitals, barely scraping together a normal life (until Jay showed up). And here they are, sitting next to each other on the floor of Tim's room at 4 in the morning. A fine pair, indeed.

Jay breaks the eye contact.

"Yeah. He could've."

...doesn't believe him, does he?

Or maybe - fuck, maybe not everything's about Tim, huh? Maybe it's not that. Maybe it's just the infuriation of not being able to know whether or not he was. Maybe it's just the fact that not knowing is Jay's own personal brand of hell, and he's just stranded himself in the deepest circle of it.

He nods at the camera in Jay's hands without glancing away.

"You ever done that before? Messed up the, uh...SD card like that?"

"No." It comes out almost petulant. "I haven't."

And he's not planning on doing it again. God, what a fucking rookie mistake. The one thing he's got experience with, and he manages to screw that up, too.

"Might be able to salvage some of it." He digs the heel of his hand into his eye socket, pushing hard enough to see sparks. "If I'm lucky."

He resists the urge to snap out an equally petulant response to that. Jay's got good reason to be pissed; the last thing you need in the wake of some Mirror messing with your head is a simple mistake to ruin any possibility of knowing what, exactly, actually happened.

"Look, that's not on you."

(He is a liar.)

"I mean..." Try to revise. Try to be better. "You messed up, but it happens. We're just gonna have to figure things out on our own. We've done it before, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

They've done it before, but they shouldn't have to. Not when there's a block of time neither of them remember. (Just sleeping, nothing else.) Not when someone's telling him he did something he's forgotten, and Tim's explanation makes sense, but since when has anything in their lives made any goddamn sense?

He just wants to sleep. He just wants to sleep knowing he'll wake up the same person.

"Look, I'll...send you whatever I can get off this card. That's a start, at least. Then we can try figuring out whatever from there."

He knows he's gonna have to pull himself to his feet. Some stupid part of his lizard brain is tugging at him to just close his eyes and fall asleep here, but that's an awful idea for multiple reasons. Even if the carpet's more comfortable than he would've anticipated.

He's kind of expecting Jay to get up and start doing that, but whatever caffeine's in his system must not've been nearly enough. It's goddamn like...three? Four AM? Of course it's not enough.

Tim sighs, and pushes himself to his feet.

"Look, there's...there's no rush. Okay?" The least he can do is make sure Jay doesn't pass out from exhaustion, or whatever the hell. "Take a break, yeah?"

When Tim rises, Jay attempts to do the same. He wobbles on his feet for a moment, leaning against the wall until his head stops spinning. The Mirror or Tim or whatever it was told him not to sleep, didn't it? And now the Real Tim's here, telling him to 'take a break.' Inconsistencies. God, it's looking more and more like that was the Mirror back there.

There's no rush. Take a break.

"Okay," he says, because he's not sure what else he can say. At this point, staying up doesn't seem like a real option anymore.

He doesn't want to wake up with anything missing, but he can't stop it.

"Keep an eye out, alright?" If Jay can't stop anything from happening to himself, maybe Tim will have better luck.

Useless camera in hand, Jay inches back toward the door.

One stupid, stupid parts of him wants to make that offer for him to crash here, if he wants. No cameras. No mirrors watching over him. And it'd be stupid and he can't say which instinct has that question swelling on his tongue and which instinct has him muzzling it.

It's the way he has to lean against the wall for support that clinches it. The way he looks almost dizzy. He's bound to trip and fall down the stairs at this rate, right? Wouldn't put it past him. Tim sighs.

Maybe it's weird, but what part of their lives has ever been normal?

"Look," says Tim, "you can just...just crash here, okay? You look like you can barely stand."

What.

Jay stares, eyes half-lidded, as the idea works its way through his head.

Tim's offering to let him stay the night. Tim says he looks shaky, which rankles him. He's not weak. He's had hundreds of nights like this before, and only one of them's killed him.

Hilarious.

He thinks back to something excised from his head, recorded and played back in Tim's voice (and played back later through tinny camcorder speakers). We're not gonna get anywhere like this, working solo.

"Okay," he mumbles.

Dimly, he scans the room for anything he can sleep on: a chair, a couch, whatever. He'll take the floor, no problem. But there's something else he has to deal with before he can sleep.

"Can I...?" He gestures toward Tim's closet.

For a second, he genuinely thinks Jay's gonna snap at him for suggesting it. He almost looks like he's about to, like he's got a mind to - and who could blame him? It's not like they're friends. It's not like they're anything but on-again off-again allies, wobbling distrustfully along, trying to piece together answers when Tim's holding possession of half the board.

Okay.

Tim releases a breath he didn't realize he was holding, blowing it softly out between parted lips.

"Yeah. Go for it." He reaches over and scrapes the window open, peers outside. It's a hot night. He slides it shut again, as if the complete break from his own routine would mask the fact that it's a front for what he's about to say next. "I'm gonna grab a smoke real quick."

"Alright." The response is automatic, trained after months on the road. Tim would step out on the balcony or just outside the door or against the side of the car, and Jay would spool through the day's footage until he got back.

This place isn't exactly a Howard Johnson, though.

"This floor have a balcony?"

"Yeah. Near one of the tea rooms." He doesn't actually step outside to smoke very often, but it gives him an excuse to get out of Jay's hair, just so he doesn't get sick of him, and it gives Jay the chance to smooth that drape over any coarse edges he doesn't want anyone seeing.

Gives them all a chance to just - breathe.

And it gives Tim a chance to stop breathing. Ha.

"I'll, uh...be right back. Yeah?"

He's not going far. It always felt safer to stick close to the room after dark, with the exception of a few late-night dinner runs. This is familiar. Same as always.

Same as a few months, as compared to a few years. This may be familiar, but it isn't normal.

It's more normal than nearly anything he's experienced since he got here, though, and Jay can feel himself sinking into the routine despite himself.

Tim's gone, so it's time to go through the footage. No footage. Time to get a new tape.

He reaches into Tim's closet, and after several false tries, manages to get it to spit out SD card that fits the camcorder. Storage isn't great, but he's had worse.

Wind back, set to record. Open up the computer. (Not here.) Open up Twitter. (Not here.)

Wait for Tim to get back.

Tim blows out a plume of smoke, one hand hooked over the railing, the other pinching his cigarette between index and middle finger. The night's heat isn't unbearable to the point where smoking's a bad idea, but the nicotine's liable to keep him awake for hours to come.

He wasn't about to sleep anyway.

It only takes a few moments, but he draws it out. Let the ash trail out between fingertips and wisp out across the breeze. Takes a minute to eye the darkened, distant treeline, which sits there innocuously in the distance, the same as ever, before he starts back through the hall.

Camera perched and blinking, ready to track them through the night. The first few nights in grimy hotels had been the hardest, for a variety of reasons, but the inability to escape the piercing, flickering red of the recording light had left him tossing, turning, huddling, for hours on end. Wondering if Jay had the same difficulties adjusting, before deciding not to ask. Why would Jay notice, or care? He might as well be attached to the camera, the way he carries it around.

He shuts the door behind him, dropping into the desk chair.

"You good?"

In the absence of an armchair, Jay's sitting on the ground, his back up against the foot of the bed. He's in full view of the camera.

He jumps when Tim opens the door, but after a moment to process who it is, he sinks back to the point of half-sleep he'd unintentionally reached while waiting. He's not actually asleep. He's just not really thinking about anything is all.

Tim asked a question, didn't he? Jay nods, head lolling.

Maybe he's more exhausted than he thought. Maybe.

"You lock the door?" he mumbles.

God, he's just barely holding on, isn't he? Tim glances at the doorknob once before reaching over and clicking the lock shut with the satisfying slide and chunk of bolts.

"Yeah," he says, a trifle unnecessarily. Feeling considerably more awake than he did prior to all this shit, he glances back in the direction of the camera, that beady little red light that no longer drills into his skull quite as thoroughly as it once would have.

"Now get some sleep,Jay, jesus."

Jay huffs out a strange little noise that might be a laugh, but he's not sure he can pinpoint what's funny. Maybe it's being scolded about staying up, when they both know what's kept them up for years is as real and solid as the bolt in the door. Maybe it's just the exasperation in Tim's voice, like Jay's insomnia exists just to annoy him personally. Maybe Jay's always been a little punch-drunk at sleepovers.

The noise comes again.

Yeah, sleep sounds like a great idea.

Reluctantly dragging himself out of his comfortable slouch against the foot of the bed, Jay reaches into the closet and withdraws a pillow (thin, but manageable) and a blanket (weird texture, but warm). He wraps the blanket around his shoulders and sets the pillow on the floor, and he's not sure when head met pillow but it's there now and he's not moving.

Tim, on the other hand, is not asleep at all, like the filthy hypocrite he is. Should've offered him the bed, seeing as Tim's not using it, but it might be kind of weird when Tim was just...in it. And Jay's out like a light pretty much immediately anyway. So.

He runs fingers through his hair and sighs, low enough that it hopefully won't wake anyone.

God, what a day.

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