postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

[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.

[What does he say to that? If it were anyone else, something simple like 'I never mentioned it,' would probably do the job. In this case, though, with the one person who might actually get it, what comes out is this:]

Neither did I.

[It's muttered, sheepish, because no matter how well Tim can relate, it's still weird. It's still unnatural.]

D'you, uh. [If he's trying to make the situation less uncomfortable, he feels like he's going the wrong direction. Too late now.] Remember...anybody else in your family? Before, y'know?

[Or is it just Jay who can't remember more than scraps?]

[Tim snorts, soft and desultory. It'd be cruel to pry, to demand: what do you remember? As if he would. It looked as though came as a shock to him, as much as it did to Tim, that Jay even had a sister in the first place. A reflex, like signing your name, muscle memory awakened and long-dark parts of the brain lighting up in a brief, instinctive flare that's gone just as quickly as it arrives.]

I think Mom was maybe...starting over, somewhere near the end. Seeing someone new. Moving. Starting fresh.

[Trying to have a kid that wasn't a broken fucking mess of hospital bills and medical insurance and pharmacological, chemical slurries trying to mend something that couldn't be mended.]

Didn't really see her much.

[Starting fresh, without Tim. Starting fresh, once she found a way to get rid of him.]

It's bullshit.

[It's muttered toward the floor, quiet enough to drop letters.]

[He was a kid. He didn't know what was going on, and she just decided to start over. God, it's a wonder he's not even more fucked up.]

[Jay tries to think back, to the patchy period when he started losing time. To the point when he set up the surveillance cameras. To the point when his apartment burned down, and he had to move from hotel to hotel, covering his tracks as he went.]

[Did his parents ever call?]

[Did they even notice he was gone?]

[Tim blinks, uncertain as to the origin of that spurt of vitriol, uncertain as to whether or not it was directed at him, possibly. (Try to forget it: the sound of cursing behind closed doors because you gave them the answer that was true but it wasn't the one they wanted to hear, so they acted like they weren't angry when they were.)]

[(Try to forget it: the days when you learned how to lie.)]

[Try to remember that this probably has nothing to do with you - selfish prick, assuming that Jay's entire world revolves around you and your problems, particularly here and now.]

Uh. Sorry?

[He's pissed off--that he can't hide, can't cover over with a viewfinder in front of his face and a false monotone--but it's not at Tim.]

She just...decided to 'start fresh', once you were out of the picture.

[Jay's parents didn't exactly listen to him, but at least they were there. Like, he got food, he got a roof over his head, he got a birthday, even if he didn't want all the noise and the chaos that came with it.]

Yeah, but why's it matter to you?

[It was his life, his problem - and he wasn't getting better fast enough for her, so she found something else to do with herself, instead of just waiting around on him to get better. Surely that's a sort of impatience, a sort of pragmatism, that Jay can appreciate, having exacted it himself numerous times.]

[But he doesn't say it.]

[In the grand scheme of injustices done to him, it takes a backseat to most else.]

[Jay looks back at Tim, head tilted slightly.]

[Where does Jay enter into any of this? Why does he matter? They're talking about something that happened to Tim. Why should it matter why it matters to Jay?]

Look, I can't know...why she did it--like, her motives, or whatever--'cause I wasn't there. And it's not like we can really ask her now.

[His shoulders tense, a muscle leading up his neck to his jaw twinging.]

Just...I don't think you deserved that.

[You literally did the exact same thing to me, and you didn't even have the excuse of having a life to go back to.]

[If she stayed, she probably would have ended up the same way as you, and everyone else: dead, or wishing she could be.]

[What right do you have to act like sanctimonious about people screwing other people over when you survived the last five years of your life doing practically nothing but that?]

[Tim shrugs.]

People don't deserve a lot of things. She ended up better off, right?

[Knowing the track record of people who know him - that was probably the smartest choice she could have possibly made.]

Well, that's something.

[At least someone benefited from screwing Tim over, right? Sure, that makes it all worth it.]

[That makes it all worth it.]

[Jay lets out a long breath, his eyes screwed shut. One, two, three, four, five. Breathe in, like Shepard said. One, two, three, four, five.]

You wanna play something?

[To attempt to clarify, Jay drops one arm, gesturing vaguely toward the Genesis.]

[Change the subject.]

[He's learned not to fight it, particularly now. Celebrating a birthday evidently means making sure that other people are happy so that they suspect that you might be happy, and at that point it doesn't so much matter that you're not the type of person who's ever really happy for any reason, let alone this one.]

Sure.

[Because it's easier than admitting that he's not sure of whether or not he does.]

Just pick whatever, I guess.

Cool. Okay, uh--

[Tim doesn't seem too thrilled. Again, anhedonia, but Jay suspects there's more going on than that. Not too hard to imagine why. Jay crossed a line, like he always does, but this time, he tried to smooth it over--not by switching focus to anything important, but by talking about video games. Like that'll do anything. Like this is anything but the world's most inelegant backpedal.]

[Jay stumbles over his own feet on the way to the makeshift gaming rig. If Tim says pick whatever, he knows what he's gonna pick.]

[He pulls Sonic 2 off the top of the stack.]

This is, uh...Sonic. I played it a lot when I was...I mean, I kept playing it. Came with me to college. I kinda, like, I got into speedrunning at one point--like, playing the game really fast by, like, exploiting bugs and stuff.

[Shut up. He does not care. He will not care about your long, weird love affair with Sonic the Hedgehog. Just get to the point.]

So I guess I'm probably...biased, but I...thought if you're gonna start somewhere, this...It's a good game to start on. It's...co-op, so we can both...y'know, play at the same time. Like, cooperative.

[Jay sinks the cartridge into the slot with a satisfying thunk.]

[Timothy Wright has very little knowledge of what Sonic is supposed to be or do, aside from the fact that he evidently prefers to accelerate at great speeds. He is also, nominally, a hedgehog of some kind, though there's nothing about his design that particularly evokes that, in his opinion.]

You'd know better than I would.

[What a perfectly diplomatic, neutral answer. He's getting better at that, see. At not being an inflammatory son of a bitch.]

I guess just remember that I'm...probably a beginner in terms of, uh, technical skill.

That's...it's about what I expected, so, uh.

[He switches the TV on, followed by the console. The screen flares to life with garish color and peppy music. Jay has to resist the urge to hum along with the synthesized chorus of Se-gaaa.]

I guess just remember that I'm a...a beginner at...teaching.

[He grabs two controllers, jerking the unwinding cords away from Archie's paws. That, inevitably, just gets the cat more interested.]

No, c'mon...

[He manages to hand Tim his controller, even with Archie batting at the loose cable.]

So that's, uh. [He gestures toward the screen.] The characters you can play as. Blue guy--that's, that's Sonic--goes fast. Tails, the uh, the orange guy, he can fly. You got a preference?

Which of them is better for beginners?

[Maybe they should've invested in a cat toy or two. Or a cardboard box for Archie to play in. Cats fucking love cardboard boxes, right? They climb in them, bite them, roll all over them. That's just basic cat knowledge. They love cardboard boxes.]

I mean, as long as you don't get angry that I'm probably gonna fuck this up a bunch.

[His hand-eye coordination is...passable, he supposes. He has no idea how musical reflexes might translate to video games.]

Is he gonna pull the plug on us or anything like that?

[Tim has a...very good point there. He stands up again, setting his own controller back on the chair.]

Hey.

[He bends down, making an odd, whispering noise in an attempt to get Archie's attention. Pss-pss-pss. God knows why it works, but it does, and Archie's eyes are now on him, even if his claws are on the controller cord.]

[He could head back to the closet to get some kind of cat toy, maybe even a bag of treats, but this is easier. He reaches for the pile of napkins on the table, wadding one up in a ball.]

[Certain that he's got Archie's attention, he tosses it. Archie drops the cables and scuttles after it.]

[Jay settles back into his chair.]

He's...he likes to chase stuff.

[Back to the matter at hand, at least for the moment.]

[As long as you don't get angry.]

[He'd scoff, like that's not even a possibility, but honestly...he knows it's a possibility. Nearly five years on the road, plus one in Wonderland, have made him...twitchy. But he's not gonna let it happen. He's not gonna get pissed off at Tim because he's bad at video games. That'd be stupid.]

I guess...like, the camera follows Sonic, so I guess, maybe...I dunno, you can start with him and see how it goes.

If you say so.

[He's still mostly watching Archie, surprise, surprise. The animal in the room makes for a more compelling distraction than the pixellated figures on the screen, brightly-colored as they are, but he eventually manages to tear himself away from Archie's endeavors to reduce some napkins to shredded tissue paper, and picks up the controller.]

[The weight is strange and unfamiliar in his hands. Lighter than he thought it would be. It really is just...weirdly molded plastic.]

He's supposed to be a...hedgehog. Right?

[Jay's full attention is on the screen, but behind him, Archie's dug his front paws into the napkin ball and is kicking at it furiously with his back feet. He's disemboweling the napkin. Truly, a mighty hunter.]

'Supposed to' being the operative word, I guess. Words. The nineties were weird.

[Still, this means Tim has actually heard of Sonic before, which means Jay isn't entirely starting from nothing.]

I got the options set, so, uh, just press the...the button on the right there, with "Start" on it. That should...start. Might have to switch controllers if it gives you Tails.

...all right.

[He doesn't know half this jargon, but he suspects he's going to have to learn. This is what "birthdays," apparently, are: learning to play as pixellated hedgehogs and listen to irritating soundbytes as they clip through levels on occasion.]

[It's still a better birthday than he can ever remember having.]

[That counts for something.]

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