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[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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