the funtime friendship adventures of little shit and the reluctant truthsayer

[deadeyedchild]

He wakes up engulfed in a hot, smothering prison with no distinguishing qualities. Everything is white, mostly dark with some light seeping through, everything is uneven and collapsing. Fabric? He scrambles and can't find any edges, any way to breach the coverings. Where is he?!

He flails around wildly, trying to fight his way out but he can't seem to push any of it back. It's definitely fabric but it's too heavy for him, and the strangely cushiony surface he's on is vast and difficult to navigate.

Distantly, muffled, he can hear Tim calling his name. "Tim?" he answers, but his voice must be so dampened by everything on top of him, can Tim even hear him? He tries again, desperate: "Tim, help me!"

Nothing. He keeps struggling, having picked a direction that seems right somehow, crawling and fighting his way through. He can barely breathe in here. He has to get out. He has to.

There's a harder line of light up ahead. Escape. He scrambles for it like he's coming up for air, almost there, almost-

The air is suddenly a little cold on his sweat-soaked skin as he breaks free, though he's still on this same surface, something huge and equally, abnormally soft in front of him. He's not covered up anymore but he's still - wait, what the fuck is-

He can hear Tim a little more clearly now, but his voice is all wrong, deeper maybe, or just more resonating? He clambers awkwardly toward the edge of the surface and peeks over it.

Like a cliff's drop. He jerks back quickly, gasping for breath.

That was the floor. That was the floor.

He's on his bed.

"Tim!" he cries. He stands up awkwardly, shaking, wobbling unsteadily on the mattress, waving his arms and bouncing slightly. "Tim, I'm here!"

Everything's starting to make more sense now. Well, a certain level of 'sense'. He can see the rest of the room looming around him, his bedside table and his - that must be his phone. The pile of cameras, the windows. He can see Tim, too, looking like a fucking giant.

"TIM!" he yells again, enough that he hurts his voice and starts coughing a little. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He's about the length of Tim's palm and he has no idea why.

Must be Tuesday.

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[postictal]

"Sorry," Tim echoes contemptuously, and for a minute he can't think to say anything else. Jay didn't know, did he. He never knows. He never thinks about what he does, the effect his bullshit can have on everyone else. He wasn't thinking when he picked up that camera, when he took those tapes, when he started asking questions, when he nudged his way into Tim's life - Tim who didn't question it and wouldn't think to question it, because for the first time in years he'd had a friend.

Who've they been kidding. They've been playing nice, acting like they can carve out some kind of normal life between them, when it's bitingly, painfully, obviously not the case. Jay doesn't make friends, not ever - he makes convenient use of his things, and then he discards them. Tim's just the latest broken toy in the heap.

"You don't fucking use me," he spits finally, jabbing a finger at the absurdly tiny person on the table. "That's something decent people do, at minimum, is not fucking use people." There's no keeping the bitterness from his voice, the betrayal. It just never fucking stops with Jay, does it? "Guess last time wasn't enough for you, huh?"

[deadeyedchild]

Jay looks up then, unable to quell the urge to fight back, even as small and absurdly helpless as he is. "What are you talking about?" he snaps. "I was trying to help you. And I was scared. I didn't know what you were going to say. How is that using you?" He picks himself up, dragging himself to his feet. At least Tim can't punch him when he's like this, he thinks coldly.

[postictal]

Tim's hands slam down on either side of the table, rattling it. He's still shaking. Fuck, he can't stop shaking.

"What happened to Jessica?" he mimics savagely, looming over him. "How long did you know?"

His eyes blaze as he stares at him, and he tries to shake away the moisture that, again, threatens to prickle behind his lids. He shouldn't feel like this - betrayed, when it's been made abundantly clear that Jay will always put his answers above everything, above Tim.

"Was that you trying to help?" His voice trembles - he is not going to break down, not here and not at the mercy of a guy who is barely four inches tall. "That's all you think about, isn't it? You're never gonna trust me, not even when you're depending on me to get you out."

[deadeyedchild]

Jay loses his balance when Tim grabs the table, stumbling and falling back down. He stays sprawled there, looking up, though he can't quite look at Tim's face. This is so much worse than before. "That's not true!" he protests. "I - I thought you didn't know where she was, I was trying to ask something-"

He cuts himself off angrily. You suspected, Jay, part of you always suspected.

"I didn't know what to do," he says, his voice split with desperation and anguish. "I thought they were going to kill me, I didn't-"

Coward.

And like a coward, he switches tacks.

"It'd be easier to trust you if you wouldn't lie in the first place," he says contemptuously. "Why didn't you tell me?"

[postictal]

The disgust on his face deepens with every stupid, fragile protest.

"Why do you think?" he snarls back, white-knuckled grip stinging around the table's edges. "You remember what happened last time you learned I was lying?"

A poor attempt at interrogation, some zipties, a stupid fucking little flip-knife, and a fatal gunshot wound to the liver later, Jay still hasn't learned anything.

But he's not allowed to lie anymore. The words still spill out scathing, boiling with venom.

"I did it to protect her." His finger stabs at him again, inches from little thing splayed on the table's surface. "Protect her from you. You have no idea what you are, how much damage you do." At least Tim learned that much. At least he's aware of it. At least he tried.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay opens his mouth to deny the accusations but he can't quite find the words. He ends up staring stupidly up at Tim, trying to process this. He keeps having to remember that Tim isn't lying, he can't somehow, that's what the not-cats had implied was happening. How far does that extend - is it only what Tim believes to be true, or what actually is?

This isn't really the time to wonder.

"What do you mean?" he asks, uneasiness clear in his tone, afraid of the answer. "What damage do I do?"

[postictal]

A tiny growl of frustration edges out of him - Jay's still interrogating him like this, probably unthinkingly, like the complete idiot he's always been - but, you know what, fine. Maybe Jay needs to hear this.

"We're the carriers," he hisses. "Don't you get that? We're the reasons that - that thing is out there. We spread it. The people we know, whoever we talk to - that's how it gets to them. That's how it's always gotten to them. Why do you think Alex, Brian, Sarah, everyone - why do you think they were doing just fine until they met me?"

His voice tears into something agonized and he pushes away from the table, one hand gripping the thick sweep of his hair in feverish, frantic, pained dismay.

"It's like a virus," he says, quieter, his voice thick. "It's a virus, and we carry it. You're tainted too, now. And every time we - anyone we - that's why it came after her." The look he shoots Jay is still smoldering, but the flare of outrage has begun to stammer and fade. "Because whether you meant to or not, you got her involved. You dragged her in."

He drops into silence, unable to scrub the static-laced snarl THAT'S YOUR FAULT from his mind, the sight of Alex with his gun trained on Jay and Jessica both while the dumb shit just filmed the whole thing, and Alex always did have the right idea. The right, horrible, twisted idea.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay keeps quiet for this tirade, his eyes downcast. Most of this isn't news, it's stuff he'd cobbled together during their time spent together, or at any rate he'd always known that was Tim's theory, and Alex's too, after a fashion. He knows Tim tried to explain this to him before, but that's a difficult memory to pin down, sort of clouded over. Mostly he remembers being angry and desperate, left tied up on the floor.

"I... I never meant to..." He slumps slightly, not sure what to say, how to come back at this, if he even can. Softly, almost petulant, he says, "I was trying to help."

[postictal]

"Oh, I'm sure," he snaps, the sarcasm blazing back with a vengeance. "You're always trying to help, you keep saying. But that's not it."

It's a terrifying, dizzying relief to know this is the truth, undiluted and unmarred, and Tim's just the tool (he's always the tool) that it's using to scrabble its way out into the open. No more secrets. No more secrets, for real.

"You don't help." He advances again, hands clenched at his sides, shoulders set in a firm, uncompromising line. "You used Alex and then you used me, whatever you could to do to get your fucking answers. Because that?" he spits, "that's all that's ever mattered to you."

[deadeyedchild]

"That's not true," says Jay immediately, though there's an instant hollow in his stomach, the sickening lurch of fear that it is. He shakes his head numbly, staring at the too-detailed grain of the table. His ears are ringing. He can barely hear himself when he echoes: "That's not true."

[postictal]

"Oh yeah?" Tim smiles utterly without humor, something cold and uncontained and vicious and patronizing, and spreads his hands with a resigned grimace. He forges on, voice heavy with contempt. "You know I can't lie to you, Jay."

God, he's getting some sick, sadistic thrill from this, from getting to finally lay it on him without any excuse not to. Jay asked; Tim has no choice, apparently, but to deliver. He's a liar, left without his lies. Maybe Jay gets it now, why Tim felt the need to lie in the first place. It's so much worse knowing.

"Everything you've ever done was to further your own shit. I was your friend when I was useful, and you saw the guy who had literally no one else and realized just how easy it would be to use that." Ragged, furious, bitter Tim, petty Tim, who can't resist driving home just how much Jay's failed at everything he's ever done. As if Tim's any better. As if he can claim some kind of immunity from this. "Even when you're trapped, even when you're dying, even when the only lead you have is lying there gagging on the floor - it's always gonna be the answers that come first. Today just proved it." Or it would have, if Tim hadn't already known it. Guess death really doesn't actually change a guy. Jay's still the same lying, ignorant fuck he's always been, and the only difference now is that Tim can make him aware of it. For all the good that does.

[deadeyedchild]

"No," says Jay, half protesting, half begging. He's on his knees, his hands on the table, smaller than small. "Tim, I-"

What. What, Jay. Can any part of you deny this? You never really got people even when you were still one of them, and once you'd become nothing but paranoia and questions what was left? Tim's telling the truth, you coward, you little shit. He's telling the truth and you're small and useless and you have nothing to say.

He digs his hands up into his hair, holding his head, curling over himself.

"I just wanted to do something," he whispers. "I had to do something."

I just wish it wasn't this.

[postictal]

Stripped of his lies and sarcasm, Tim has nothing else to say to that.

"Yeah, well. You did a shit job," he says harshly. "Jessica was safe, and she might end up dead because of you. I almost went the same way as Brian, and Sarah, and Seth - because of you."

He's still chilled to the bone, the ache of how much he sounds like Alex stinging his eyes.

It's not a lie when he shuts his eyes and rasps, barely audible, "I think I should have. We both should have. We were the only two who deserved it."

He shivers, hugging himself with arms that are no longer rigid and trembling with unspoken rage, and he feels small and pathetic and stupid again. He can't stay here. Not when Jay's just going to question him about his motives, again and again, because he'll never trust him and he never did and, fuck, Tim knows that's also perfectly deserved.

He snatches the keys off the table in a scrape of metal against wood and yanks the door open, whipping it shut before he can listen for Jay's protests. It's not like he can follow him like this. Small mercies.

He locks the door behind him when he stalks out, dashing a hand across one eye.

[deadeyedchild]

Tim left him trapped, again. And he deserved it, again.

He can't get down from the table like this. It doesn't matter. He doesn't know what he'd do anyway. His arms buckle and he collapses, curling up into a fetal position, pathetic, shaking. Tim's right. He's right, he's right, and he's probably always felt this way and he's only saying it now because of what's happening to him today.

Tim wishes he was dead. Wishes they both were. Jay didn't accomplish anything, everything he did that led him to his final fucking moment was all useless. All of it.

He shudders with a voiceless sob, glad Tim can't see him like this. He stays there on the hard, unforgiving surface he can't get down from, knowing Tim might not even come back, and this time there's no one to come get him out. Gradually and for lack of anything else to do he drifts into fitful sleep.

He wakes up hours later with a start. The first thing he notices is the light is different - coming in the windows at a harsh angle, bright orange. The sun is setting.

The second thing he notices is he's normal again, still sprawled awkwardly across the table, not quite able to fit on it anymore.

He gets down shakily. Still no sign of Tim.

He makes himself some cereal and eats numbly, staring at the wall, gingerly putting the bowl in the sink without transforming it. What happened to his little camera? Knocked out of his hand with the kitten thing attacked him, probably still on the floor in the Base. Probably crushed under someone's foot by now. It's just as well. Probably better that way. He's not sure how much it recorded.

He moves to the bed and gets into it, pulling the covers all the way up, curling again onto his side. He doubts he'll be able to sleep again for a while but it doesn't matter. If Tim comes back he wants to at least look unconscious.

He ends up pulling his phone under the covers, looking in dull incomprehension at the various texts received throughout the day, other rifties texting everyone about their various problems. Someone he doesn't know asking about Greta. Better not get involved. It's not like you can help.

But he needs something to do. He always needs something to do.

He should leave Daine alone. He should leave everyone alone. That's what Tim thinks. This is all his fault and he should just hole up and never talk to anyone again.

But he can't stop himself. He always has questions and he always needs answers. He sends her a text.