bigapplesauce | so I am grateful for this, this consciousness oasis

Current Location: Jay/Tim's apartments
Current Music: September 21st

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so I am grateful for this, this consciousness oasis

[OOC: Whooooo sorry this is so long. It is also spoilerific, if that matters to anyone haha.

Overall TW for gun violence and blood (in the main post), and pain, panic, PTSD, emotional surrender and coping with assumed impending death.]

Get back here! screams Alex, his voice reverberating, crackling, distorting through the woods.

Jay runs.

What! Alex shouts, challenging, it always sounded a little silly when Jay first heard it, this awkward nerd posturing in the woods to forces stronger than him, sure, it sounded silly before he'd seen, felt, what Alex was capable of.

The next time I see you I'll kill you!

Jay runs, frantic, his breathing labored, darting haphazardly between trees, he has to keep moving because it'll find him if he stands still for an instant, it will or Alex will, either way, he'll be dead.

He takes a sharp turn through branches that seem to be reaching out to seize him, and suddenly there it is, the gaping, glowing mouth of the tunnel where nothing good ever happened, he skids to a halt and he doesn't want to turn back but going forward is not an option, not here; he turns, out of the tunnel, into

into

a hallway

lower level of Benedict Hall, where everything is dirty and cracked with water damage, and at the end of the hall stands Alex, staring him down, gun in hand, gun raised and turned on him but Jay doesn't run, doesn't cower; this is the first time, he realizes, the first time he's seen Alex since before this began, the first time he remembers, because every meeting in between has been scraped out of his memory. This is it, the endgame, all he ever really wanted was to find Alex and help him, like he wanted, like he asked.

"Alex," he says softly, taking a shaky step forward. "Alex?"

The gun goes off and everything splits, the hiss of static filling his head, blurring his vision (or are those tears), it hurts so much, so fucking much, he can't - he has to - he staggers away, no clear aim, just away, into that little room, the little room with basement windows, blood all over his hand, oh god, he's going to die here, he's going to die ~~without knowing he forgave Tim, without Tim knowing it~~ alone

not alone

it's there, in the corner, watching, waiting, reaching out to take him, no no no no

He wakes up, abruptly, soaked in sweat, his chest seizing up. Can't breathe, he can't breathe. It's okay, it's all right, calm down, just a dream, just the same fucking dream you've been having every night, with only minor variations

why does he still hurt so much?

He struggles to get out of bed, twisted up in his sheets, falls face-first onto the floor. He curls inward, oh god it hurts so much, it hurts just like it did but it shouldn't, he's awake now, he's - his hand is warm and wet, he looks at it expecting blood, but there's nothing. Just sweat there too.

Rise above it, asshole. Stand up. Take a shower. Make some coffee. What time is it even?

The blinking light of his clock tells him it's just after three in the morning. He struggles to get up and he can't oh god what is wrong with him, what is wrong?!

"Tim?" he gasps, frantic and scared, but Tim isn't here anymore, he moved out, remember?

He's bleeding, maybe internally, something's wrong, something has to be wrong, because he can't breathe right, can't move, can't - he's dying, he knows he is because he remembers dying, remembers every second of it, it was lonely and frightening and now it's happening again and he doesn't understand why.

He gropes desperately for his phone and fires off a text.

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It's practiced instinct that has Tim down the hall and at Jay's door within minutes of receiving that frantic text, the buried fear and horror in the little black letters setting a cold trickle deep into his skin. He bangs on the door once, forgoing pleasantries or the slightest fraction of consideration on the behalf of any of their neighbors.

"Jay," he barks. He can't hear anything on the other side. Not footsteps. Not gasps, not screams.

The buzz of panic tingles in his fingers, through his spine, behind his jaw.

What the hell else got dragged through the Rift with them?

He bangs against the door again. Still, nothing.

Fuck it.

He's still got a key, so he jams it in and the door bangs open with a crash that probably guarantees their neighbors' eternal and undying hatred. He sees him at once, eyes drawn to the huddle curled and shivering on the ground, pained and pathetic noises leaking out like he's panicked, like he's seizing, god but the last time this happened Jay was out of it for weeks unless this something else. Tim crouches across from him and seizes him around the shoulders as gently as he can, tries to pull him halfway upright and against the bed and meet his eyes.

"Jay," he says again, a rough, anxious whisper. What is this, panic? Worse? God, but how he is he supposed to tell.

He tries to croak out a response when Tim calls his name, but he can't make a sound above pathetic little whines; he hears the key turning in the lock and the door crash open but he can't turn to look, can't do anything but try to hold himself in, like parts of him are leaking out, even though he's whole, there's nothing wrong with him so what is going on-

Jay's head lolls uncomfortably when he's jostled and shifted upward, and he blinks up at Tim, no idea what to say, how to account for himself.

"I'm," he whispers, breath shuddering out, and he looks down at his hand which is clamped over his gut, where the bullet was, and he still doesn't understand why his fingers aren't sticky with blood. "It hurts." It comes out soft and almost childish, and he huffs out a breath but that just sends a new wave of pain clawing through him, causing him to seize up and curl in harder, head pitching forward against Tim's shoulder. "What's happening?!" tears out of him in frustration.

Hurts?

Tim's eyes rake over him, taking in the hand clamped over his middle like he's bleeding but there's no wash of crimson seething out. What is this, psychosomatic? Nightmare?

"You're not hurt," he says, forcing a steady note into his voice, trying not to let the breaking crest of Jay's terror engulf whatever tenuous calm he still has. "Nothing's wrong. It's okay."

Maybe it's not. Maybe he's a liar. Maybe it's something worse. Maybe it's not panic.

But he can't see anything.

But it's not in the nature of every injury, he remembers grimly, to be visible. He knows that. Better than anyone.

"No, I - I'm-" He lets out an agonized hiss through his teeth, pressing his hand harder against his stomach, almost as if he's trying to compress the pain into submission. "I was dreaming about - about Alex," he says between shallow breaths. "He shot me and I woke up, and-" His teeth clench and his words unfurl into a shapeless cry. "I remember, I remember what it felt like, okay, I remember everything, it - it felt like this. It felt like this."

This isn't just some cramp or a burst appendix. He can feel the fucking bullet. He can still feel the impact, rattling his bones.

"Tim," he says aimlessly, panicked, looking up at him with eyes even wider than usual. "What if it's taking me back?"

This isn't right, this isn't - it's not right. Tim can't see anything but he's never had to see things to know they were real, did he?

Whatever this is, it's real. It's real enough to reduce Jay to this, shivering and damaged and shrunken thing begging for help, eyes wide and reflecting that sunken horror of things unfathomable. That fear, many-clawed, that reaches out in desperation - what's happening to me, and the icy seep of knowledge that it's a question without any comprehensible answer.

His hands tighten around Jay's thin shoulders and the man's still quaking, like it's a seizure or an injury or worse, the rolling black pits of his pupils dilated, his breath dangerously rapid and uneven.

"I'm not gonna let that happen," Tim snaps out viciously.

Maybe he would have, not too long ago.

But it's just like how that thing came after him, how he found Jay curled and shaking on the ground, and he launched himself at an impossibility to keep this tactless little moron tethered to reality with its grass and dirt and labored breath, and fuck but he'll do it again.

"Come on, buddy," he mutters, cupping one hand by his head to keep his eyes steady, keep him looking at Tim, keep him here. "Stay with me, remember?"

Jay stares at him, uncomprehending, faint fragments of memory coming up from nowhere, from what was always fog: Tim supporting his weight, hauling him into a bed in a shitty little hotel room, helping him swallow the pills he wasn't grateful for.

He still doesn't remember Tim telling him to stay, but he's seen it, heard it through his own camera. His fingers grip loosely around Tim's arm, trying to brace himself. He's so fucking cold, trembling, terrified, and the worst thing is he knows he was asking for it, he fucking earned this, and it's coming back now, you don't just get a free do-over.

"I couldn't," he says, breathless, "I couldn't save him. I couldn't save Alex."

"That wasn't your fault." And it wasn't, it really wasn't. Alex had led him along by the nose, strung him along for years and years, and at that point it probably hadn't even been Alex anymore. If anything, it was -

"It was mine." The ruthless edge reenters his voice and his hand goes to the back of Jay's neck, supporting him. "I spread it to him, I killed him, and that's on me." He breaks off to glare at the ceiling, eyes darting as if in silent demand for the nameless entity to emerge and explain its damn self. The Rift. It's always the Rift. It knows their heads intimately, it's proven that much, it knows where to stab like he needs the reminder and it knows what nerves to prod to reopen old wounds.

"So whatever's happening to you can just cut it out, okay?" he demands to the ceiling, a furious litany ground out between bared teeth.

"No," Jay protests, but he chokes on air and spit the next second, coughing violently, bracing against Tim's arms. He reaches out with one hand, groping at the bed, it's too hard to stay up like this, he needs to be horizontal.

"I should have - I didn't-" he says hoarsely as he struggles to get up, struggles through the searing pain, he feels like he's being pulled apart, opening the wound up even though there's nothing there there's nothing there this isn't real

well if it's not real what is it? How are they supposed to fight this?

It's only natural that it comes down to something they can't fight, isn't it. Something they're not sure is even there. Something inside, that can devour him from within. Tim couldn't stop it before and he can't stop it now.

"Don't," he says, the word a frantic hiss. "Just stop. Don't move."

Or what? He'll reopen a wound that isn't there? How do they treat this? This isn't like a headache howling at his temples or a burning pressure in his lungs, and if he still had his medication he'd give it to him, he'd give it to him now but he can't because it's gone. Even if it weren't, there's no guarantee it would have even done anything.

He can feel himself scrabbling for something to do, something to say but he can't do anything because he's helpless because he's always helpless and crying and broken and that's all he's ever been good for and okay he's gonna go ahead and stop himself there.

"Hold still, okay?" Maybe if they - treat it like an actual injury? Maybe it's like the day he woke up, mask fused to his face, and it's just - just the Rift fucking with them, it's favorite extracurricular activity.

Jay hesitates, but his hold on the sheets slips and he slides back down, collapsing fully and pathetically into Tim's arms.

"Ffffck," he growls under his breath, shaking, he can't stop shaking. Tim's talking like he has a plan, but it doesn't matter whether or not he does, Jay's too certain nothing will work, this is it, the wound come back to kill him all over again, the Rift's fucked up way of taking him back, whatever, and they can't waste their time fighting something that can't be fought because he's done too much of that already.

"Tim-" He grasps weakly at Tim's sleeve. "Don't - don't go. Don't leave me."

It's like holding something damaged, something thin and hollow-boned and fragile, this skinny little pale, dying thing in his arms. There was always something dully alarming in how thin and lightweight Jay was, how carrying him to the car had taken hardly anything, he really was just some scrap of paper fluttering in whatever direction, and he feels even worse now. As if he's actively bleeding out.

But there's nothing there.

"All right, buddy," he mutters, and hopes that it's soothing, hopes that he can hear, hopes that's enough warning because, sorry buddy, in the next moment he's darted one arm beneath Jay's legs and other around his back and is awkwardly hauling him up, one feverish surge to his feet to get him on top of the bed and lying down again.

"It's gonna be fine." He is a liar. "You're gonna be fine, okay?" He is a liar. "I'm right here."

~~He is a liar.~~

Jay lets another torn cry as Tim lifts him and deposits him again, and lying down isn't actually any better, but at least it feels more appropriate. He reaches out and grabs Tim's hand, which is weird, really weird, but he grabs it anyway and holds on as tight as he can.

"Tim-" He seeks out Tim's eyes, his reassurances barely registering. It's suddenly so frighteningly, vitally important that he say this. "I - I'm sorry. I'm sorry I left you. I shouldn't have left you. I'm sorry."

"You're not dying," he says automatically, but there's absolutely no conviction behind the words. He's, what, confessing? When has the man ever admitted he was wrong, let alone apologized for it in any kind of genuine, actual way?

It means - fuck.

He's scared.

He must be really -

"I told you to run." Broke out the word between coughs, even as he grasped at his hand and hoped that maybe, impossibly, he wouldn't leave like everyone left - "That's not your fault."

"Yes it is!" Jay grits his teeth, trying to push himself up into a position more suited to arguing, but that's a fucking bust; he collapses back down, coughing, struggling to breathe, the only thing holding him steady is Tim's hand.

"It is my fault," he says, weaker, refocusing his eyes on Tim's. "Don't fucking - say that." He squeezes his eyes shut, his free hand finding his chest, gripping on like he's trying to slow his heart or settle his breathing. "I'm sorry I - I left you, and I lied, and I shared all your secrets on the fucking internet, I'm sorry." He can barely get the full sentence out, his voice tight and strained with each new wave of pain rippling through him, god, it's so much, when is he just going to pass out?

"I did everything wrong," he says, looser, defeated, on a labored exhale. "Everything, from the beginning, I did it all wrong, and - and this wouldn't have happened if it weren't for - I'm just sorry, okay? I wish I could... I'm sorry."

He doesn't add you'll be better off without me, but it's just because he needs to stop and breathe.

"Shut up," he says, unable to infuse the words with any rancor whatsoever. "It was me. I was the source of it."

It'd be kind of hilarious, almost. Two idiots trying to heap unequal amounts of blame on themselves instead of each other for once, a dizzying reversal of that spat-out conversation in a darkened parking lot. There's something mildly, bitterly amusing in that.

Or there would be, if Jay didn't happen to be dying.

"You weren't even you half the time," he says, and now he's just seizing words for the sake of talking and keeping Jay grounded and here for however long it lasts - because he refuses to think, entertain at all, that this might be something permanent, that this might be the Rift's fatidic little warning that it's going to be dragging Jay back.

It can't. It won't. It can't and it won't. Tim's stood up to something so big it stretched his mind into unknowability before and he can do it again, can't he?

He doesn't - he can't - he won't let himself be alone again.

"You were doing fine," Jay murmurs, a tired little echo. "You were getting better."

This is so stupid. There's nothing Tim can do about having been targeted as a boy, why does that negate Jay's hand in all of it? He looks up, his vision is really blurry now, blurry and wet because he's crying, great, fuck, this is the last thing he wants to do in front of Tim.

The idiocy of that hits him in seconds. He saw Tim stripped bare on camera too many times. He shared Tim's condition with the goddamn world. He can handle Tim seeing him cry.

"You'll be okay," he says. "You don't need me, you can - you'll get your meds back and you'll have friends. Johnny and Daine trust you, they want to help you, and they can help you better than I ever could, so just - just let me go, Tim."

He's so fucking tired. He's just so tired, the hurt is so encompassing, his body is so drained. He just wants this to be over, again.

"Cut the bullshit." A chill lifts the hairs on the back of his neck while Jay blanches an alarming shade of sickly white. Fuck, but it's terrifying to hear him talking like that. Jay who went down struggling and gasping, still earnest, still and always just wanting to help, armed with nothing more than a camera and a self-righteous need to fix everything, and he's folding like he's something broken. Fuck. Because he is something broken. He was dead.

No. The Rift doesn't get to do this. It isn't allowed. It doesn't get to toss him here and then yank him back. And he can't tell - if this is out of some twisted sense of obligation, if he actually cares at all about the man bleeding out from some phantom injury, or if he's simply so selfish that he can't bear to be left alone again.

"I'm not cleaning up another one of your goddamn messes, Jay," he growls, even if it was never Jay's mess to begin with, it was always Tim's.

"Do you see any goddamn mess," Jay counters with ragged, transient half-grin. There he goes, finding a weird roundabout way to blame him for his own death, well, it's only fair. "Look, I don't know what this is, but you might not be able to stop it, and I - you don't need me, Tim, fuck, you don't even like me." He knows that. He's stupid but not that stupid.

He finally lets go of Tim's hand, shuddering and writhing in another wave of agony; a flailing hand catches one of his pillows, which shrinks and hardens instantly beneath his hand, shaping into another fucking camera. With an enraged, wordless yell, he hurls it across the room, smashing it against the wall, the effort landing him curled towards Tim, shaking, moaning softly. That fucking hurt, but he's so sick of goddamn cameras.

"It's gonna be okay," he says feverishly, his hand groping back for Tim's.

Fuck, is this what it's like to watch him seize, knowing the outcome but helpless to prevent it? One hand clenches and unclenches rapidly, fingernails tearing tiny red crescents into his skin. Whatever it is, it's only getting worse. It'll keep getting worse until it hits the point it's building toward.

That tired inevitability. Story of their lives. It was only ever going to end the way it did.

He looks at Jay, despair clenched icy and sick in his throat, watching him shiver in the throes of whatever it is he's caught in. And he's right, fuck - it was only pure circumstance that they even met, and circumstance that bound them in the inescapable loop of hotels and reluctant camaraderie and questions without answers.

"I wouldn't have tried to keep you safe," he says, low and uneven, "if I didn't like you a little bit."

It tastes like a lie.

"It doesn't matter." Disregard everything, ignore it, lie. Run from the problem, Tim, even as the product of all your failures lies sick and dying from some invisible illness and you can't do anything to stop it. It doesn't matter if they're not friends, really - he just knows they're the only two people in the world who get each other in the way they do, and whether he likes Jay or not, their lives are just too goddamn tangled for them to pick their separate ways out anymore.

"No, it doesn't." At least on that they agree. "I meant it, okay, when I said I needed you, cause you were the only thing keeping me alive for a while, but you - you couldn't." His head rolls back with a little strangled gasp, oh god, he can't keep pushing through this, it's too much. He rasps out another sickly cough. "You couldn't stop that thing from taking me and you can't stop this thing either, okay?"

He's so scared. He's so fucking scared. He's going and he's gonna be gone for good, and just because he felt this before doesn't make it any easier now. He grips onto Tim with both hands, desperate to get through to him before it's too fucking late.

"It wasn't your fault," he says through teeth and tears. "It's not your fault now. Please just let me - just - I'm so sorry."

He can't keep stringing words together. He sinks down a little, fingers still wrapped tightly in the fabric of Tim's shirt, his shoulders quaking as he tries to pull himself back together. It's a losing struggle.

It's not fair.

It's fucked that that's the first panicked thing he thinks. It's not fair. He already watched this happen once, watched Jay fold down into a terrified tremble until that thing snapped him up in a flare of static. He's seen it printed behind every blink and replayed in every staggered nightmare, hands itching to stop a thing utterly beyond his power to stop.

He has to watch it again. Helpless to stop it. Again.

"Don't," he says, and he hates the pleading note that creeps into his tone, as if Jay has any control over the clearly incredible amount of pain he's in, but it spills out in a tumbled rush. Why is the he the only one that's still here. "I don't wanna be by myself again."

That's all it is, isn't it? Just that selfish desire to not be the only one again.

Jay blinks up at him, caught off guard by the admission, so close to what he'd always felt (but he'd never wanted company, just an accomplice). Yeah, so maybe Tim doesn't particularly like him, is still angry and bitter about everything, but they're still the only two people who knows what this was, know what they've been through. They don't enjoy each other's company but it's not like the loneliness they spend with other people, who can't possibly understand why they're so fucking fucked.

"I'm sorry," is all he can think to say, quieter and more desolate. "I..." His fingers slip down, unable to close his hands onto anything anymore, his chest heaving with rapid, uneven breaths, vision starting to darken beyond use, oh god, no, no, please not yet.

"You're gonna be okay," he mumbles, all run together like one word. "Gonnabeokay."

Tim doesn't need him. Never did.

He'll be better off.

No, no. No no no no nonononononono.

Stay with me buddy, he tries to say it but the words creak out rusty and soundless. It's the same, it's always the same. It's like every nightmare, every time he's seen the footage scrubbed back and replayed.

It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.

Liar. Liar. Liar.

The thready little pulse fluttering in one of those too-pale, too-thin wrists stutters and flickers out.

It always happens like this, doesn't it.

Their endings were always going to be afterthoughts, pained scratches stitched over something achingly, profoundly unremarkable until one or both of them were nothing more than dead streaks on the ground.

He suffers the extremely odd sensation of feeling his body shut down.

He's more alert than he should be. Actually he's getting more alert all the time. His eyes slip shut and his arms and legs go limp, his heart gives out, but - he's still here, he can hear, or - sense? - Tim breathing. What's going on? Is he just trapped in his body now, is this what a coma is like?

And then his body is just gone. Blinks right out. Swept back up into some formless void.

But he knows he's here.

He still knows who he is.

Tim? he tries to say but nothing comes out, he is nothing, no body, just - consciousness, presence. Is he a fucking ghost now?

Whatever he is, he's adrift. Nowhere. Can't find Tim again. Can't find anything. Can't do anything. Inactive, intangible, but awake. Waiting. Fuck knows what for.

As easily as he slid into Manhattan, he's gone again.

Tim supposes it makes sense.

The Rift must like to keep things tidy. Just like that thing that lurked in the fringes of their minds his mind now, just him again and whatever void it dwelled in. Maybe that's where Jay was always meant to go, and this was just the pit stop.

The fragments of the camera aren't fragments anymore, but the camera isn't a camera either. All the meticulously labeled cameras in Jay's careful stack have fallen apart, into sets of keys, plates, various household items, even an empty pasta box somewhere near the bottom, whatever items they were before Jay came along and altered the course of their structure.

Tim slides to the ground and folds his arms around his knees, head buried in them.

He never had a funeral for Jay before. He guesses this counts as a second chance after all.

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so I am grateful for this, this consciousness oasis

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