postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

I didn't really plan on dying, you know. And -

[He has to say it, has to charge ahead and dismiss everything with a lateral sweep, with a sharp-edged comment, because if he doesn't, if he doesn't, then he'll have to acknowledge what's being said and that feels significantly more fucking terrifying.]

Y'know. Better me than someone else.

[Not that it mattered.]

[Not that it fucking mattered, when Clem died on the field too. When Shepard, when Max, when everyone else died in equally grotesque ways - often more so.]

[None of them planned on dying. Jay was probably the least qualified person out there, but they slapped a crown on him and threw half the people he knew into the line of fire just to keep him safe. Like his shitty existence was worth any of their lives.]

[He's still thankful, that's the worst thing. Thankful he didn't have to feel himself bleeding out across the chessboard, thankful he didn't have to risk going back a second time. Would he have gone there, if he died? Just him, alone, lying on the concrete squinting at the orange sky? Would Tim have gone, too? Does Wonderland have somewhere else it sends people? Is there a somewhere at all, or does it just...stop?]

What was it like?

[He didn't mean to say that. He didn't mean to say it, but now he's said it, and now he's got to clarify.]

Not...I mean, I know what... [Stop while you're ahead.] I'm talking about after.

[You're at a birthday party, for god's sake. Think before you speak.]

Or we could...not talk about that right now. Sorry, that was...sorry.

[He almost rebounds the question: you died before I ever did - how did it feel for you? Almost, but manages to bite his cheek, bites it back, swallows it away. It's been a year, over a year, and somehow it still feels like too soon.]

We ended up in a room. Like, one of the tearooms. Had a screen for us to watch the rest of the, uh...the game in.

[If he sounds bitter, it's because he is.]

I guess some of the Mirrors weren't too happy about that.

[Whatever Jay was expecting, this absolutely was not it. A nice, safe room. A place for them to watch the game, like it's Sunday night football.]

[Jay just stares. He has to just...take a moment to process this.]

...You think that'll happen every time?

[God, if he gets a quiet room and a TV every time he dies, that's almost an improvement. Maybe he can ease off on the constant fear for a second.]

[Ha. Ha-ha.]

I hope to god there isn't an every time.

[He's not sure he necessarily wants to put himself in the line of fire like that again - except that he already knows he will, if it means that people like Clem or Max or Shepard or Jay don't have to. It's necessity. It's simpler. God, but it's - ]

[Better. It's better if it's him.]

There was nothing keeping us from strangling each other once we were there.

Oh.

[Scratch that; this room sounds terrible. It's easier to focus on what's concrete, to get the facts straight, than to consider the weight of "every time."]

Did any of 'em try anything?

[Sure, Tim's Mirror wasn't out on the field, but god knows how many others there are like him.]

[Archie stretches and resettles himself in Tim's arms. Nothing like discussions of death to lull a cat to sleep.]

Like, was everybody...okay in there, or...?

No one died. I think.

[He simply sounds tired. Resigned. Scratches at the cat's ears, idly, without really thinking about it.]

I wasn't really...I dunno. I was kinda checked out at that point.

[Huddled in the corner of the room, with Clem and a vague awareness that people were commenting on the game, that people were angry, that altercations were certainly happening, but mostly too lost in the fog of his own thoughts and the blood-smoke memory of his chest opening like a flower.]

[For obvious reasons.]

[That's something. At least things didn't manage to get worse from there.]

[And Jay would sure as hell have been checked out if he'd been in Tim's place.]

I mean, you'd just...

[Jay's eyes dart to the carpet, trying to think of anything but the thundering crack of a shotgun and a ragged, hollow space carved into Tim's chest.]

Makes sense.

[Very softly, the bundle in Tim's arms starts to purr.]

Nice as long as you as keep petting him, huh?

[Ignore the subject. Sweep it aside. Who wants to talk about their own death? Jay certainly never does; maybe he'll catch the hint and allow Tim the same courtesy.]

Think he'll behave if I put him down, or is this the only thing keeping him from taking the rest of the room apart?

[For once, Jay picks up on it. The evasiveness. The sidestep.]

[For once, he thinks he gets it.]

He'll live.

[Jay hasn't really gotten to see how Archie is around other people, but based on a sample size of two, he's guessing Tim won't be rid of him this easily. He can be a persistent little asshole when he wants something from you.]

I mean, the only thing he really seemed interested in was the cake. So, uh.

[Smooth, Merrick.]

I could toss it, if you're not a...cake guy.

Nah, it's...

[Jay went to all this trouble. Food here is...disposable in a way they could never afford to allow, chasing clues between white highway lines. Remember it: Clem's triumph, her strange, rueful little grin when she realized she could throw things away again, just for the hell of it, because she didn't need to ration herself constantly.]

I guess I might as well try it, right? [He has no idea if he's a cake guy; now seems as good a time as any to find out.]

[Jay shrugs, the movement lopsided and forced. He'd think this would be a relief, after watching it slowly sag and drip in the room-temperature heat, but now it's somehow managed to get him even more freaked out.]

[~~What's Jay supposed to do if he doesn't like it?~~]

[They toss it. It's nothing.]

[~~He wasted--~~]

[He didn't waste anything. He didn't even waste time, just the split-second of deliberation and the effort it took to pull it out of the fridge. It's nothing. It doesn't matter. It's not the last of their rations. It's not something he stuffed under his shirt and snuck past the register. He didn't risk anything for this. It's just a fucking cake. Calm down.]

[Jay offers Tim a paper plate.]

It's, uh... [Jay lifts a plastic cake server, one of the ones with a serrated edge for exactly this. For cutting cake. Birthday cake. God, this is uncomfortable.] Kinda melted. I mean--it's ice, ice cream cake, so I probably should've...

[Jay slides the server into the cake. It gives far too easily.]

Should probably taste the same.

[And with that, Jay's cut the first slice. Good job, Jay.]

You...want this one?

Sure.

[It's clear that something has put him on edge, but hell if Tim can discern what. The main problem is that his arms are currently full of cat, and he's pretty sure that setting him down will result in his melting slice of cake getting sprayed across the room in the resulting scuffle.]

[Ice cream cake. He's never had it before. Was that an intentional choice? Something new, and different?]

[Maybe it was just reflex. Don't overthink it, Tim. Don't you dare pretend, for even half a second, that you're worth anyone's additional effort.]

[He glances around the room, wondering what to do with his purring passenger.]

Should I...put him down, or what?

[Oh. Right. He can't eat the cake to keep it away from the cat if he's holding the cat. He can't take his slice of soft, runny birthday cake if Archie's gonna knock the thing out of his hands, and he definitely can't take it if both his hands are full of Archie.]

I guess, yeah. I'll just. Uh.

[Jay holds the slice up and out of cat-range with one hand, shuffling between Archie and the cake. If he tries anything, Jay'll have at least one hand to block him.]

[Archie, for his part, finds this whole arrangement very interesting, leaning forward in Tim's arms and sniffing at the air. He stretches his neck for a better look, pushing lightly at Tim with his back legs like he's considering making a break for it before Tim even sets him down.]

Edited 2018-07-03 06:44 (UTC)

Mm, nope.

[He hooks his forearm around the cat's chest, as though that might keep him from breaking free, and gingerly starts to lower him to the ground.]

This stuff isn't poisonous to cats, right?

[Just checking to make sure that the worst that could happen is that the cat accidentally destroys and eats a cake, and doesn't die in the process of doing so. He has no idea what's lethal to cats other than, he thinks, chocolate? Or is that dogs?]

It's not poisonous, I don't think, but it's...

[Archie lets out a soft, displeased complaint of a meow as Tim sets him down. He trots toward Jay instead, twining between his legs.]

[Gingerly, trying not to step on the cat, Jay holds the slice of cake out to Tim.]

Don't think he can really digest it.

[Now that Archie is safely - semi-safely? - out of the way, Tim can accept the plate and stare at it like he isn't entirely sure what to do with it, before remembering that it is actually his birthday and therefore? Therefore, he is gonna have some goddamn cake.]

[He can't remember the last time someone got him a cake for his birthday.]

[He can't remember if anyone ever has.]

No cake for you, [he tells Archie firmly, shoveling a plastic fork into the dripping slice.]

Nope.

[Archie meows.]

No cake for you.

[Jay cuts a sizable slice of his own. There's still a lot left. Great.]

[Meow.]

[He cracked the clear plastic container the cake came in while trying to pry it open, but it's still better than nothing. Should be able to keep the cat out, even if it's not enough to spare the table if it starts fully melting. Jay puts the top back on with a flimsy, unconvincing snap.]

[He can feel the pressure of two tiny front paws, halfway up his leg.]

Yeah, nope.

[He reaches down, takes Archie by the front paws, and gently lowers his front half back to the floor. Retrieving his slice at last, he turns back to Tim.]

How's it, uh. How is it?

It's good.

[Half-melted, sure, but it still tastes fine. Presumably, anyway. He doesn't really have a metric for how ice cream cake should taste, but it's sweet, and chilled, and it should probably taste nostalgic. It should probably drag him back to days in mid-June and outdoor birthday parties, hands sticky with sweat and melted ice cream and the shrieks of children darting after one another like scraps of colored paper on the breeze.]

[Maybe, if he concentrates hard enough, he can pretend that it's a memory, and not some imagined, idealized picture of how he likes to think kids would be.]

Never had this before.

[He's never had ice cream cake before. Not once, in his miserable life, has Tim Wright had ice cream cake.]

[And he likes it.]

[And this is pathetic--like, really, honestly pathetic, but there's a thought that's crept up from the back of Jay's head that he's not fully willing to smother: He did something right.]

[He pried into Tim's early years, dissected what he could, laid the whole thing bare for the internet to pore over and comment on and theorize about. He learned what kind of medicines he's allergic to, picked apart his childhood anxieties, watched him grow up, in a way, through the eyes and the scrawled notes of doctors. When faced with the kid himself, the flesh-and-blood person the notes couldn't fully describe, he hadn't been able to do a thing. He barely pried a scrap of useful information out of him, and more than that, he hadn't been able to assuage his fears, hadn't been anything but a vaguely threatening stranger, prying into his life again.]

[It's not like a slice of cake can fix any of that.]

[But maybe, for once, he's not making Tim's life worse.]

[And it's pathetic, to feel like that's some sort of accomplishment, like giving the guy cake instead of splitting his chest open and broadcasting his secrets on the internet is anything other than the bare minimum. And maybe Tim's not happy, exactly (anhedonia) but Jay gave him something he liked, and it made Jay...well, not exactly happy himself, but...]

[It feels good, to know that Tim likes the cake.]

[At the risk of sounding like an after-school special, maybe that's what having an actual friend's supposed to be like. Just, where it feels good to see the other person...somewhere approximately in the neighborhood of happy.]

[Or maybe he's overthinking it.]

[Sounds about right.]

[He takes a bite of his own slice, and--god, sweeter than he remembers. Good, though. Tim's not wrong.]

Welcome to, uh. [He gestures, wide and awkward.] Ice cream cake.

People didn't celebrate this stuff. I never...you know, never bothered.

[What was the point? Getting older another year. Another year of meaningless, formless, pointless crawling around on the face of the earth like that's some kind of accomplishment, when all he's ever done is leach time and money and resources away from other people, from better people, from people who have more productive things to do, and he's the one who needs extra treatment - a loan to get him going. A reason to be trusted.]

[Years of being an investment with no discernible payoff. Just a fucking parasite, sat on top of whoever decides to give a shit about him next.]

[Was it any wonder that he never bothered? He's certain Brian tried to get him to tell him, once or twice. Or maybe multiple times. Certain that he has memories of being wheedled, patient and persistent, or being told that if he didn't say anything Brian would simply pick a day and throw a cupcake at him then.]

[Maybe he did have those memories. Once.]

[Most of those days are gone.]

[Tim doesn't talk about his past much. Not that Jay really blames him, now that the whole 'might be the first one to have seen it' thing is out of the way.]

[Jay knows Tim's got issues. Jay knows, probably better than anyone else at this point, what those issues are. He's seen them scrawled across yellowed forms, always distant, always clinical, usually in terminology Jay had to look up.]

[But then little things like this come up. How people didn't celebrate this stuff. The way Jay suspects he's still never seen Star Wars or Jurassic Park or Ghostbusters or any of it. The way the tiny glances Jay's gotten into his music taste seem entirely incomprehensible.]

[Jay's not fully sure how to wrap his head around it.]

[So he shrugs.]

Kinda overrated, to be honest.

[He stares at the floor, poking at the slice on his plate. He only remembers fragments, sensory details. The overwhelming sound of it. The way he could sit motionless, watching the balloons bob and weave until suddenly he couldn't, because someone gripped his shoulder and told him he should be out playing with his friends.]

Cake's good, though.

You did stuff like this?

[He can probably remember - not specific days, but certainly specific moments. Maybe he can remember the low, slowed-down Alabaman drawl of a set of parents singing "happy birthday" to a toddler of an Alex Kralie, in the way that wasn't just through a lens.]

[Except - no. Probably didn't know him at the time.]

You remember any of it?

[Tim...wants to know?]

Yeah.

[Jay chokes down another mouthful of cake and tries to think back. Tries to give Tim something coherent. Some kind of narrative he can follow, because it's not like he can just cut all those brief, choppy impressions together and play them back for him.]

[His hands itch for the camera. Worse, they itch for something much older, the stack of unlabeled tapes he just knows are lying untouched in the back of some closet, gathering dust. Home movies, circa '85 onwards, formats shifting every few years until they just...stop.]

[He assumes they stopped. He's got no reason to, though.]

It was always...a lot. Like, a lot of people. No matter what I said, they'd always just...my mom and dad, they'd invite the whole class. And it's not like I really knew any of 'em, either, so I'd just...

[Jay dips his head, shoulders hiked.]

...watch.

And there'd be cake and pizza and all that, which was probably the best part of it. And the other kids'd bring presents, which is...honestly kinda weird, now that I think about it. Like it was the admission fee to my living room or whatever. So there'd be these presents--which was kinda exciting for a little kid, y'know--but it wasn't ever really anything I was into, and my little sister'd take 'em all anyway, so I'm not sure why I even--

[He freezes.]

[Little sister. He knew he didn't grow up in that house alone, he knew it, and now he's got a--]

[--not a name. Not even a goddamn face, just a blurry silhouette, gangly as he is, because his memories couldn't account for the absence.]

[There's a pressure against his leg, and he tenses, plastic fork skittering across the plate. It's okay. It's fine. It's just Archie, staring up at him expectantly. Still not quite breathing, the tension not quite unwound, Jay reaches down to scratch the cat behind the ears, along the curve of his jaw.]

[It might be the longest that Jay's ever allowed himself to talk at any one time, at least in recent memory. It's not like his memory is the most serviceable thing most days, but it's different, when it's in the moment - not just written out in text.]

[Guilt is a familiar taste: fermented and sour and bitter as copper, like the tang of sweat and post-nightmare adrenaline sick in his throat. Guilt because, once again, it's something he never bothered to ask. Something he never thought about, and, from the way it arrests Jay in the moment, it seems it's something that he never thought much about either.]

[The choice to leave it be is, in that instant, about as tempting as simply getting up and leaving.]

[Wouldn't that be simpler? Pleasant, even?]

[He swallows, hard.]

Didn't, uh. [Speak around it: the knowledge that you don't ask anything that you don't have to. That, in the end, you're hardly any better than Jay for it.]

Didn't know you had a sister.

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