remind yourself you made it [closed]

[deadeyedchild]

It's been a couple days now since Jay narrowly avoided another gruesome death, and he's starting to feel normal again. He's been avoiding Tim for the most part, and for no real good reason - just embarrassment at how much he fell apart, as if that's something Tim's never witnessed before.

It's stupid.

It's been even longer since Tim impulse-bought him Plan 9 From Outer Space, but that's what's now sticking in his head. That was nice. A little overture of normal friendship behavior. Tim's been doing a lot of that lately, asking Jay about himself, getting him things... patching him up isn't very normal but it was nice of him. What's Jay done?

So it is that on his way home from work he finds himself making an impulsive purchase of his own.

This is, also, possibly, stupid.

He doesn't exactly have a lot of loose cash hanging around, even with Aziraphale's generous wages. So much of it will always go into food and transit money and the stash in his sock drawer for tapes, just in case, for old time's sake, there's not much left over for non-necessities.

But this might be constrewn as a necessity.

It's something worthwhile, at least.

He lets himself into the apartment building, aggressively not regretting the purchase. He rides up the elevator alone, the musty scent of Aziraphale's shop still stuck in his nostrils. He hope it doesn't linger too noticeably on him.

He gets out on his floor and heads straight to Tim's place.

May as well just get this over with. Maybe Tim will think it's stupid. Maybe he'll like it. It'll get the reaction it gets.

He knocks.

Comments

[postictal]

For his part, it's getting to be easier for Tim to walk around without feeling utterly fatigued like he's been hiking for miles. He'd called the old moving place again, like he's been doing each day since walking there and re-applying, and they'd been kind enough - tolerant enough, really - to say they'd like having him back. He's never considered himself a model employee by any standards, but it stands to reason people in this city would be accustomed to hearing some pretty weird bullshit. Though, admittedly, the coma had been hard to explain.

It's been surprisingly, uniquely, bizarrely - kind of a good day. Or at least not a bad one. It even feels natural enough when Jay knocks and he swings the door open.

"Hey," says Tim. For a whole five seconds, it almost feels normal.

Then he notices what Jay's carrying.

"So, uh," says Tim, frowning. "Should I ask or do you wanna explain, or - ?"

[deadeyedchild]

"Um." He hesitates, looking down at the thing. "It's a ukulele." This, he knows, is obvious. It's in its little case, but it's not like there are many things that are this shape. He feels extremely self-conscious as he holds it up, offering it tentatively. "I got it for you."

This feels so much stupider now than it did before. He still knows so little about Tim. He knows his house was full of instruments, and he knows Tim used to own a ukulele, and was going to score Alex's film with it, but does that mean he's gonna want one now? Suddenly this just feels presumptuous and absurd. It wasn't super expensive but it wasn't cheap either. This isn't the kind of thing you just casually grab for someone.

"I - I still have the receipt if you don't, um," he babbles nervously, unable to finish the thought, staring at the instrument instead of looking at Tim.

[postictal]

"You got me a ukelele," Tim repeats in toneless disbelief. Jay went out and bought a ukelele. What does someone say to that when the only real gift he's ever received was a beer on his twenty-first courtesy of Brian? What does anyone say to that? He'd be wondering where Jay even got the idea that Tim would know how to play one, except that made its way into one of those old tapes, didn't it?

He couldn't have known it was one of those things Tim came to miss after Alex put a torch to his house. The music hadn't been much, nothing more than a prospective pipe dream, but it'd been the one thing that wasn't mired in the rest of his life's hopeless bullshit. It had been his.

"How'd you - I mean, I didn't know that you remembered." He stares. He's not sure how to take this in. Jay, standing here, holding a ukelele and saying he bought it for Tim.

It's without a doubt the nicest thing anyone's ever done for him.

And it, yeah, it kind of makes sense in that typical, impulsive Jay sort of thing to do when an idea seems great at the time but can quickly backfire but the gesture leaves him - touched, absurdly, that Jay would think to go out and just buy him a ukelele, let alone remember that Tim ever played one in the first place.

[deadeyedchild]

"Y-yeah." He's trying to figure out how to read Tim's reaction. Tim is so hard to read, and he always has been. He's... startled, sure. Why wouldn't he be? Why would Jay have done this - just gotten him something kind of fancy and nice and personal? It's not like Jay's ever done anything like that for him before.

Christ, he's always been such a shitty friend.

But he doesn't want to allude to that, not right now. For fuck's sake. This is just something he did to be nice, not to assuage his own guilt or some shit.

"Oh, it - it was on one of the tapes you gave me," he says. Tim still hasn't actually taken the thing, leaving him holding it awkwardly. "One of those... behind-the-scenes things Alex had you film, where he was asking you to do the, um, the soundtrack for the Marble Hornets trailer?" He swallows thickly. "And I remember you had, uh, a lot of instruments, so I thought maybe..."

He lets himself trail off.

"Do you like it?" he asks finally, absurdly. Tim hasn't even opened the case to get a look at it yet.

[postictal]

"I, uh - " He blinks at it.

He takes the case, shuffling back to let Jay in so he can flick the catches open and lift the lid.

It's smooth and simple, with a soundbox of dark brown wood, the tuning pegs bright and gleaming. Slowly, almost reverently, he runs a finger down the bridge, along the strings, tracing the frets.

"Thank you." He doesn't know how to meet Jay's eyes but he looks up regardless and tries to hold the other man's gaze. "This is really - I mean, just - I dunno why you - but, thanks."

God, but it feels like longer ago than it was, fiddling on the strings while Alex went on and on about his acoustic soundtrack and getting enough footage for the trailer, Tim reclining against the wall with the instrument in hand, Brian parked on the other side of the room as Tim contemplated the novelty of having, for the first and only time in his life, more than one friend in his apartment, if Alex could even be called that. It had felt achingly normal; he's sure it's what the average college kid did, sitting in people's apartments noodling on ukuleles and shooting the shit between the spurts of activity where they were getting actual work done.

Bittersweet as the memory is, stained with the moments where he flung Brian off the ledge and rammed the knife into Alex's throat, it still feels like a fragment of himself he can recover.

"Thanks," says Tim.

[deadeyedchild]

Thank god he finally takes it. Jay steps in and closes the door behind him, leaning back as he watches Tim inspect it. Jay feels his shoulders relaxing slowly, feels himself making a little ghost of a smile even. Tim does like it. This was a good move.

The eye contact is difficult to meet but he forces himself to hold it for at least a few moments before looking down at his shoes.

"I just thought..." He shrugs and makes his way further into the apartment, aiming to sit himself down on the couch. "You should have something. You know, something you... want to use. Since we're like... actually living somewhere again." He hunches over, gripping his elbows, keeping an eye on Tim.

[postictal]

"I, uh, hadn't given it much thought," he admits. He lifts the instrument from its case, tapping experimentally along the strings. The muscle memory jumps easily to his fingertips. All those times shit got scraped clean from his head, and his brain still remembers the little inconsequential plucking motion. Figures.

"I was actually thinking," Tim says slowly, uncertain as he begins automatically tuning it, coaxing sound from the strings and twisting the tuning pegs obligingly. "Back before it all, you know. I was thinking about a major in music? Didn't really go anywhere with it but, uh. Yeah."

He shrugs. He's pretty sure the overwhelming sense of confused elation bleeds over into the action intended to be nonchalant.

There's no way Jay could've known that, how that tiny thing had been something he'd been interested in pursuing. Or maybe he'd gleaned it from the sheer number of instruments lying about Tim's house, fucking oblivious as the man's proven to be from time to time.

"It, um." He swallows hard. "It - means a lot. That you remembered. So, uh. Thanks."

[deadeyedchild]

Jay perks up at that little tidbit. It was a good guess, then - maybe even a great one. He remembered something and he acted impulsively and it was a good thing.

"Yeah," he says. "I mean. I'm glad it's... yeah." He watches Tim tune the thing for a moment. "You're welcome," he adds softly, finally.

He doesn't remember ever doing this for anyone, really. Getting someone something, just an earnest act of kindness. It wasn't really something he had in him, after a while, and he doesn't remember much of what he was like before that. So much of him is gone now. All he knows is he wants to do better. Having a second, third, fourth chance at life is - well, he's extremely fucking lucky, and he's going to be goddamn grateful. He's going to do things right. At least some things. This one thing.

He toes off his shoes after a moment and folds his legs onto the sofa, looking absurdly like a kid waiting for story time. He's never seen Tim - not in person, not that he can remember - do anything he really seemed to enjoy. Everything was always fraught and desperate with them barely clinging to their bullshit lives, barely able to tolerate each other without ever asking questions, and now - this is unrecognizable to him. But he likes it. He could really fucking get used to this.

"Can you play anything?" he asks after a moment.

[postictal]

He perches absently on the arm of the couch, absorbed in the meticulous task of fine-tuning his spontaneous new gift.

Tim snorts.

"Nothing good," he says dryly. "It's really been a while. Never actually took lessons or anything. Pretty much just learned by ear, picked up stuff as I went along, that sorta thing." Tim's sort of thing, this weird, off-beat interest that happens to be the one thing about himself undefined by cryptic bullshit. It was never wrapped up in him so deeply it could never be extracted. Just some dumb college kid's hobby.

He smiles, wry and one-cornered. "Probably Brian's fault I got interested in it in the first place. So encouraging it was obnoxious sometimes."

[deadeyedchild]

Jay chuckles. There's a definite pang at the mention of Brian, the knowledge that he was so good to Tim before everything got so fucked, but he determines stubbornly not to let things wander down that path. Tim's almost smiling. He did a nice thing and he's not gonna ruin it. For once.

"Well I don't think I'm a good judge of what's good," he says easily. "I never had much of an ear for anything."

He doesn't want to sit here like an expectant spectator, though, so he gets back up and heads to Tim's kitchen to make himself some coffee. "Anyway now you can... figure out new stuff."

[postictal]

Figure out new stuff. Yeah. He'd never have thought he'd be grateful for the Rift for dumping them both here in this godforsaken universe but - in its own roundabout way, it's made things easier where they weren't, before. That thing doesn't stalk him every minute of every day, the oil slick of nightmare wrapped around the trace edges of his mind.

It's like they can be normal, almost. Living with their respective shit instead of vehemently denying it ever existed.

"Yeah," he says. He strums the tuned instrument thoughtfully, pleased at the sound that comes arcing from the strings. "Yeah, who knows? Maybe go busking sometime."

[deadeyedchild]

"Yeah, that'd be good," says Jay, turning to lean against the counter and watch Tim dick around on the instrument. "You can make decent money off that, I think. Like... Union Square or somewhere." He shrugs.

He pours coffee for himself and for Tim and carries it over to the little table, keeping quiet while Tim continues to fiddle around. He doesn't say much else, alternately watching and tooling around on his phone, and trying to cling hard to this feeling, the sense of normalcy and contentment. Hanging out, having a good time. This isn't going to last forever, he knows that too well, but he's going to grip onto it for as long as he can. Try to remember how it is, for those times when shit falls apart.