postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

no.
but it's gonna stick with you
the memory of it.

[It depends, really, on how much he wants to accept really happened.]

[But Tim's head is crowded enough with unwanted memories as it is. He doesn't need more on top of everything else. Particularly those involving ~~Brian~~.]

great

[Throw another one on the pile of dead Jays. For once, he remembers being this one. Too bad he's fake.]

did any of it actually happen

i checked and the tape's got a four-day gap
there's just nothing there

few days i think
however long the event was.

[That's all that counts. Those memories that did happen.]

can't have been more than three or four days

[So the convention was real. Sneaking in, trying to find evidence, interviewing that guy at two in the morning, all real.]

better than seven months i guess

[He ~~needs~~ wants the footage from those days, but he knows it's gone wherever the rest of that world went.

Wait.

no no no no no]

we're not still sick are we?

shouldn't be.

[The answer comes quickly. Too quickly. Then, almost wryly - ]

no more than we were already anyway

ha.

[No more than Tim already was.]

if i never take another blood test in my life it'll be too soon
same goes for the smell of bleach

guess that explains how shaun and georgia ended up

[He's lucky he didn't have to grow up with blood tests, at least.]

yeah
michonne's world was pretty messed up in a whole different way
i guess that was just the other side of things

not so much a zombie apocalypse as a
barely contained
zombie
political crisis

[Don't think about Alex. Don't think about Brian.
Don't think about what would've happened if Tim and Clementine hadn't gotten you out.]

you think michonne's world has stuff like that going on somewhere else?

honestly?
anything's possible.
i guess you could always ask.

[Ha ha, yeah right.]

sure

hello, person i've talked to once in my life
or
hello, actual child who put zombie guts on me because apparently that's a thing now
let's talk politics

[Jay's the one who brought it up, but he was thinking more along the lines of "rhetorical exercise" than "thing he's now going to think about asking every time he sees either of them".]

fine don't ask her
you're the one who said it

[And thus Tim and Jay's fragile sense of cooperation decoheres and crumbles after about thirty seconds, and no one was surprised.]

[The forces that keep the multiverse in motion breathe a collective sigh of relief.]

didn't realize just mentioning it was enough to lock me into finding out

[But dammit, now he actually wants to. Thanks, Tim.]

[Jay, oh my GOD.]

no one's locking you into anything
do whatever you want

that's what i'm planning to do

look do you want to watch a movie

what

[He knew this was a bad idea.]

a movie

do you want to watch one

[Why.]

[Why.]

[He - ]

[Okay, wait. No. This makes sense. He figured the two of them must've talked since she saved their asses.]

did clem tell you or something

[Wait. What?
Is there something he's supposed to know? Is there something he's missing?]

did clem tell me what

she saved our asses so i said she should watch a bad movie or something sometime
like i guess as a thank you

is that

were you not

[For a moment he was relieved because he could accept this sort of awkward offer for socialization as a misguided attempt to pay Clem back, which made it marginally easier to stomach than the thought that Jay just offered that out of the blue out of a genuine willingness to interact with Tim more than necessary.]

[But it wasn't, and he did, and ]

[Well.]

oh

[Oh.]

this isn't
*sent too early
this isn't that
i was just going to watch a movie

[Just a distraction, that's all it is. And that's all it was before this all started, when everything Jay did was a 'distraction', wasting away into nothing in a studio apartment.

Does he really feel like he needs someone to supervise him? To keep him from, what, backsliding into whoever he was before he picked up the camera?]

it's less weird if there's more than one person

i mean it's fine if you want to

[Good GOD can he stop being a socially stunted middle schooler about this.]

do you want me to ask her

wait are we combining plans

[Ah yes, Jay thinks, this is why he never engages in social interation. He's getting stressed out over a movie night.]

how many movies are happening tonight

you said it'd be less awkward if there was more than one person

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