take these broken wings and learn to fly [closed]

[postictal]

His head throbs, a single continuous pulse feathering into variations on the same painful theme.

Tim groans and feels his muscles clench as he tries to roll over. A familiar soreness suffuses his entire body, the kind of soreness that takes its sweet goddamn time fading out after -

After -

Well, shit.

All it takes is a cursory glance at his phone for Tim to groan again and slap the device down as he gets slowly, agonizingly, to his feet. He runs fingers over his clothes, through his hair. No twigs and leaves, no mat of mud and blood drying in stiff clumps. His skin remains unscuffed from the phantom tug of undergrowth, his clothing miraculously clean and whole.

And, most importantly - no mask.

Tim breathes out, long and slow, and tries to suppress the faint prickle of relief. Unless his less agreeable self has suddenly gotten way more meticulous about cleaning up after its habitual wrecking of shit, an eerie number-laden message on the network is all he's got to worry about. That'd be a first. He'd almost be grateful for the little bastard if it wasn't set on making his life fucking miserable every chance it got. Regardless, he'll count himself lucky when he can.

Everything still hurts by the time noon hits him square in the face with a bright burst of sunlight through the slats in the shades, and the hiss of crisp fall air. It's surreal that Tim has to remind himself that time is still a thing that exists; absurd as it is, the existence of anything outside his own problems always comes to him as a shock. Like, you know, the weather.

So Tim goes out and buys a Ouija board.

This is - so goddamn stupid, he doesn't think he has a word for it. It's stupidly optimistic. It's a stupid idea, period. But he's out of options, and he feels like an idiot buying something like this, some plastic board at the cheapest magical bullshit place he could find. It's this or ask Asmodia to play telephone every day, and he's about had it with dragging other people into his and Jay's collective shit. She's got better things to do - safer people to spend her time with, no doubt, who are less liable to catapult her life into a complete sanity-draining nightmare.

He enters the apartment, keys rattling over the door, and jiggles the wide, flat box with faux enthusiasm.

"Bought you something," he deadpans.

As usual, the apartment doesn't answer. He pauses in hopes for a gust of chill wind to stab at his shoulder, or for the roll of paper towels to dislodge themselves from the counter - anything that would confirm that he didn't just announce his stupid impulsive baseless purchase to an empty fucking apartment. Like a moron.

Comments

holy fucknuts this got long

[deadeyedchild]

After Asmodia had left, Jay had kicked around for a few minutes, failing to knock anything else over, before sulkily drifting back to his apartment. It looks like Tim had started packing all his shit up. Good thing it's still here. Not that he can get to any of it. Not that he needs to.

What is he supposed to do with himself?

Eventually, he'd slept. No idea how that happened. When he comes back out of it, shuddering from the horror of it, he looks at his hands and is immensely disappointed to see they aren't as visible as they'd been in the dream. Figures.

His dormant phone, still sitting where he'd left it on the bedside table, buzzes loudly. What the hell. Who is trying to contact him and what is he supposed to do about it? How is it even still charged?

None of that matters because the text, while listed as being from a private number, is immediately recognizable. Fuck. Fuck. Tim did wake up like that.

He drifts out of his room, up the hall, and into Tim's apartment.

He's there, no mask, just... standing, and then inching around, birdlike and curious. Going nowhere. They don't seem to notice Jay and Jay doesn't plan on giving them any indication of his presence; all he can do is hang around and keep an eye on them.

Whenever Tim's phone goes, they pick it up and reply. Jay gets as close as he can without making contact to see it's all strings of code, stuff probably (hopefully) no one will be able to (or care to) decipher.

He waits for a long time, nervous and tense, but nothing comes of it; finally, Tim's body is allowed to lie down, and Jay watches, helpless, again, as Tim seizes up in his sleep, and then settles again.

Jay watches him breathe.

The sun comes up and Tim wakes, eventually, and Jay watches him discover what's happened, frustratedly tossing the phone, checking over his clothes, apparently concluding he hadn't gone out. Jay continues to watch him, feeling incredibly creepy about it, but by now it's too late - he's pretty firmly locked into haunting Tim all day. It's not like he was going to leave him alone after that. Not like Tim knows he's here. Not like it would help if he did.

Whatever.

Finally, after an agonizingly boring period of not much, Tim goes out. Jay hesitates for a while, and then resolves to follow him for that too. He'll just have to stick close to Tim, and hopefully - hopefully - there won't be a need to make his presence known. Tim really doesn't need to know he's being stalked. Does he. Wouldn't that just be like old times.

Jay stares, stunned, as Tim walks into a ridiculous looking magical bullshit store.

Oh holy shit. No way. No fucking way.

Tim is actually buying a damn Ouija board.

Jay can't stop laughing. Finally, some good comes out of no one being able to see or hear him (possible exception of the fortune teller sitting at the back of the shop, who glances up with vague unease whenever he drifts close) - he can lose his shit and no one will care. It feels good to laugh, inasmuch anything feels like anything. He hasn't laughed in... fuck knows how long. Not like this, not outright hysterics. It's just too funny. Too fucking funny. He's a fucking ghost and Tim is buying a Ouija board. How is this real. How is this his life.

It gets gradually less funny, but he still finds himself snickering periodically as he follows Tim home.

And, finally, Tim speaks to him, gives him permission to make his presence known. Well, good. He decides to give it a moment before 'responding', then delicately taps Tim's hand.

never apologize for length

[postictal]

The pinprick of ice that seeps into his bloodsteam is as good an indication as any.

"Yeah, I know," Tim says sourly, setting the box on the table and unpacking it with willful emphasis. He has committed to this, and fuck if he's gonna apologize for it if it turns out to work. He's out of ideas. He's betting Jay is out of ideas.

So. Ouija board it is.

"You got any better ideas?" he fires over his shoulder into the seemingly empty space. "Would you rather Asmodia come babysit every time you want something to do?"

Maybe he's feeling a little bit defensive.

Maybe slightly defensive, and slightly dumb.

Whatever. If it works, it's worth it.

He sets the planchette on top of the board, some cheap thing with either not enough effort put into the ~spooky looping letters or not enough - Tim can't really decide. After a moment's hesitation in which he feels even goddamn stupider, he flicks off the lights, which doesn't do much to decrease the room's lighting or make the room feel any more spiritual or mystical or whatever bullshit, but Tim doesn't have any candles.

"Wanna at least try?" he tentatively launches into the ether, and reluctantly puts one hand on top of the planchette.

[deadeyedchild]

Well. It's nice to see Tim can find something to snap at him about even when he is literally incapable of speech or any action whatsoever.

Jay rolls his eyes and watches Tim set everything up, even going so far as to turn out the lights. Ooh, spooky.

And now Tim's waiting for - what, for Jay to ~guide his hands~ to the answers? What fucking ever.

Well, he drew a line in some flour and he knocked over a roll of paper towels. No sense in not trying this.

He sighs heavily and lowers his hand down to the planchette. It passes through, as expected, but for a second there's something - else.

"Whoa." He pulls his hand back sharply, staring down at the cheap looking thing, then lowers his hand again.

He's not moving it. He's not. But it is... moving, gently, slowly. Is Tim doing it? Jay frowns and thinks very hard about moving toward "I".

[postictal]

Tim watches the planchette listlessly for a moment. He never got the damn point of these things, but wishful thinking is pretty much his baseline now. He keeps his hand still and -

And that wasn't him.

The planchette budges, creeping along slowly, and Tim feels his eyes widen subtly.

"Holy shit," he mutters, watching it slide over to the I at an excruciatingly sluggish pace.

He's not sure whether to be pleased or mortified that this idea is proving to have some merit to it after all.

[deadeyedchild]

Holy shit is right. Jay laughs a little, somewhere between relieved and incredulous, and keeps moving the thing - from I to C to A... on and on until, after an entire minute, he manages to deliver the entirely pointless and yet pretty necessary message I can't fucking believe this.

He's not even sure what to say. Is it working because he's getting better at moving things or because he's a ghost? Does it matter, at this point?

Message complete, he pulls away, waiting for Tim to reply.

[postictal]

It takes a painstakingly long time for the message to eke its way out, and when it finally does Tim can't suppress his bark of shaky, incredulous laughter.

"No shit," he says, the words made breathy from the first flicker of mirth he's felt since - longer than he cares to remember, really. "Well, hell. I guess - I mean, not really a solution, but - it works, right?"

At least it opens up the avenue of communication. Relatively easy communication. He can't help but feel - relieved, weirdly. It wasn't all just for nothing. It wasn't.

[deadeyedchild]

It's - weird, and nice, to see Tim looking almost happy for a change, and Jay smiles a little himself. This is good. It works, stupidly. For a moment he's too excited to think what he should say next.

After a moment of consideration, he nudges the planchette along. He has to be efficient here, not exactly one of his strong suits, but he does his best, cause this is gonna get annoying.

This isn't like the paper towels.

That was accident. Can't do it again. Trying.

October 1st

[deadeyedchild]

Jay continues to prowl around Tim's apartment like a cat, periodically attempting to interact with the world with no success, periodically getting his attention for another Ouija conversation. There isn't much to say, and for once they aren't really pressured to fill the silence. It's almost nice. He could almost get used to it.

But it's boring, too. Not that life was very exciting before. This is a level of boredom he never thought he'd achieve.

It's not until afternoon that he manages to finally do something, which is knock a fork into the sink, much more violently than he meant to. Fuck, that was loud. He reaches in to try and pick it back up and-

-and he does.

For a beautiful moment the fork is floating in midair before it falls right through his hand again, clattering even more loudly the second time.

[postictal]

It's bitterly ironic that Tim has and is continuing to only really get along with Jay when the other man is dead. He hasn't had much to do outside of finally getting off his ass to call his boss over the issue where he went missing for over a week - he only learned the actual span of time in which he's fallen off the workman's map once he bothered to call and learn it firsthand - and several gratuitous apologies and a mostly-true story about the unexpected loss of a friend later, he's got semi-regular work hours again.

He's got a ghost-like not-friend periodically hovering in his apartment, a cryptic freak of a neural roommate occasionally renting room in his skull, and it sure as hell isn't normal, but it works.

Morning shifts are a special kind of hell, to say nothing of returning to the sound of something rattling loudly in the sink. Tim shuffles into the kitchen, not sure what to make of sight of a fork skipping around the diameter of the sink in a lively rhythm with no outside stimuli to speak of.

He frowns at it. It's not a terribly big leap to decide that something about that just - isn't right.

"Jay," he says slowly, drawing out the word cautiously.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay turns - Tim missed it, of course, he always misses it - and taps Tim's hand to indicate that he wants to use the board.

Once they're situated he spells out, a little faster than usual (is it because he's excited or because he's getting better at moving the planchette?), I picked up a fork!

He's like a fucking child reporting on his day at school.

[postictal]

Bemused, Tim lets Jay guide him pointedly to the board so he can spell something out, the planchette moving rapidly with his apparent eagerness to communicate whatever it is he's so desperate to communicate.

Tim raises an eyebrow.

"Uh," he says. Clearly Jay's happy about this which, okay, he supposes it counts as progress compared to where they were before.

"Think you're becoming more solid?" He almost doesn't dare nurse the hope.

[deadeyedchild]

He deflates a little at the question. Solidity isn't so much the issue. It's more like he can just - interact with things. He still hasn't been able to do it on purpose.

Maybe. He spells the next word a little slower. Progress.

He'll take it, all right?

Before Tim can move his hands away he proceeds with How was work? He tries not to dwell on the utter inanity of making small talk on a Ouija board. Again: he'll take it.

tw: self-loathing

[postictal]

Either way, he's getting better at touching things, isn't he? That's something, right?

Tim was never meant to be the optimistic one out of the two of them. That was always Jay; Jay and his stupid, persistent search for answers and his simplistic belief that some solution was lingering just out of reach, ready to resolve everything all nice and neat.

Doesn't matter much, anyhow, as Tim gets the poltergeist equivalent of a clumsy subject change. He resists the urge to roll his eyes. Barely.

"Fine," he says tonelessly, depositing his keys on the tabletop beside the board in a jangling spill. "Boring. Guess I should be glad they took me back, what with how unexpectedly high maintenance I can be and all."

Some of the old bitterness seeping in. It's never easy getting jobs, less easy to keep them with him being the way he is. No one wants to hire someone broken. No one wants to hire someone like him.

October 2nd

[deadeyedchild]

His phone has been going off a lot today. Each time it's some different person Jay's never heard off complaining about - apparently, having the flu. Alllll right then. Is that really this newsworthy? Poor fuckin' them.

At least he can't get sick like this. He drifts away from his phone, out of his dark apartment, and over to Tim's. Still empty. He should be home from work soon.

He feels pathetic, like a stay-at-home spouse. He has to find some way to entertain himself that isn't just... drifting around.

Possibilities elude him. He was never good at filling his time.

He doesn't know why he does it, but: he floats into Tim's bedroom. There isn't much to see. Unmade bed, bottle of pills, some clothes.

The jacket.

He looks at it dully, hanging on the doorknob of Tim's closet. He wonders why Tim even keeps it. How did it even - end up here, with him? Was he wearing it when he came through?

Come to that, where did the mask come from?

The more he thinks about it, the more he feels an uncomfortable prickle running through his non-body, dread pooling in the core of his being.

He moves slowly into the closet.

It's small, and there's nothing in it apart from a few hangers, and a shoebox on the floor.

Jay stares at it for a while, then lowers himself down. He reaches out and rests his fingers over it, over the lid, and tries to let them settle there rather than pass through. It takes a lot of patience, but after a long time he starts to feel it beneath his fingers, solid, something to touch.

Okay. Yeah. He can do this.

He curls his fingers slowly and lifts.

It comes up. His grip is tenuous but it lasts long enough to tip the lid off, onto the floor.

He shouldn't be able to to feel his stomach lurch but he does. He recoils from it, that face he knows too well staring up at him. Why does he have it, why does he keep it?

He hears the door open, Tim coming in, but he can't bring himself leave the closet, still crouched in there, staring at the mask.

[postictal]

The hums of his phone seem too frequent to be little more than people chiming in on the network to complain about how shit they apparently feel, but that's exactly what it is. Tim scowls and leaves his phone behind. So they get a few days where they feel less than average. Tim gets that every day and they don't see him complaining.

Mostly because he doesn't know anyone who would care. The only person who might is in a halfway state of dead-but-not.

Yeah, right now Tim's done stewing over his own faults and inadequacies, so he goes out to pick up some goddamn groceries. He throws everything into a few bags in a way that can't really be called efficient because he spends too much time surreptitiously dodging aisles with people in them and too little time actually keeping track of what he's grabbing of the shelves, but he gets the necessities and stumps back to the apartment, bags in hand.

Jay is conspicuously silent when he enters and deposits the bags across the kitchen counter, particularly considering he's been getting better at affecting solid objects, and has begun to resort to that as signals of his presence rather than brushing through Tim with icy wisps for fingers.

Tim pauses partway through his halfhearted attempts to unload whatever meager groceries he succeeded in retrieving, and frowns.

"Jay?" he says slowly, eyes roving over the apartment's dissaray.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay hears Tim's voice, asking for him, and he still just sits there, not sure what to do. The longer he stares at the mask the heavier he feels, like something is just pulling him down, pinning him there.

He can't leave Tim waiting. Tim probably won't think to look for him here. He has to get up and do something.

He shifts to the side, meaning to phase through the door, and instead his shoulder strikes it with a loud thump and he grunts, grunts audibly, and then he freezes.

He looks down at his hands. He can see his hands. He can see through them to his knees, see through his knees to the floor, but - he's not flickering. He's there.

[postictal]

The sound of something very physical ramming into something in his bedroom elicits a sharp jump, his entire body tensing. For a moment he has to remind himself that it's not - it can't be Brian flicking through his belongings in a hood and mask, because Brian's dead.

But who else could it be? It could be Jay but then - it could be something worse.

Instinct propels him forward as silently as he can - which is, really, not very silently at all, but he feels slightly less ridiculous moving at a steady creep than a full charge - until he can grip the knob and fling the door open.

Nothing.

No people in hoods or masks with cameras. No tall, thin streak of nothing hiding in the corner.

"Jay," he says slowly. It has to be him. He has to be in here.

He feels cold.

"Jay," he hisses again.

[deadeyedchild]

Shit. Fuck. Okay.

He presses his hand to the door, and he can do it, he can touch it, and he pushes gently.

The door swings open with a soft creak, and he looks up, curled up against the closet wall, shrinking, already afraid of what Tim's reaction will be.

"Hey," he murmurs.

[postictal]

The closet door swings open and -

Okay.

Tim's not really sure how to react to that.

On one hand - Jay's visible and seems to be pretty aware of the fact, and this kind of sustained manifestation is probably a good sign since it's a definite improvement compared to the past few days.

On the other -

"Jay," says Tim, flat and slow and with the drawling warning tone of a man who doesn't want to know the answer to the question he's about to ask, "what are you doing in my closet?"

October 3rd

[deadeyedchild]

Jay wakes up - again with no idea of how exactly he fell asleep in the first place - feeling something strange, something he hasn't felt in a while. It takes him several moments to pin it down.

He feels hopeful.

He looks down at his hands, a ritual movement by now, and he can see them, better than he could yesterday. He can feel himself, and what's better is it feels stable.

It's wearing off. It's getting better. Maybe he'll come back to himself, gradually - even get his body back. Maybe this is whatever Daniel did, just working very slowly. Even if he doesn't come back all the way - people can see him, hear him, touch him now. If he stays like this - this can work.

He passes through his door, which takes a bit more concentration than it has been - intangibility is something he can turn on and off now - and then heads into Tim's apartment.

[postictal]

It's getting less alarming to see Jay just up and gliding through his door, though Tim's not sure he'll ever really get used it. Hopefully he won't have to, and Jay's going to slip back into reality, piece by piece, and it'll fix itself.

Their problems never fix themselves. That's never been a luxury of their lives. But Tim - did this already. He pulled Jay out. Maybe reality just needs some time to catch up, though he's not entirely able to convince himself that that's all there is to it.

Or maybe he's just come to expect the worst after everything.

For the moment, he's not gonna think about expectations. His or anyone's.

"You're showing up more." He holds out one of his hands, not to waft through Jay's specter, but almost in vague comparison of the degrees of solidity separating the two of them.

[deadeyedchild]

"Yeah." Jay's actually pleased, to see him, to show his progress. He reaches out and gives Tim's palm an awkward little fist bump. There's a bit of a static tingle, but contact is made. He smiles. "I think I can hold it now. Like, it's not as - tiring as it was. So I think maybe I'm getting better."

So nice to be able to just fucking talk. Talking has never been his strong suit, it's weird to be so happy to do it.

He drifts past Tim into the apartment, not really having anywhere to go, just testing how much easier he finds it to move around now. "I feel like I'm improving pretty fast," he says. "Like, every day it's getting a lot better. So maybe..." He turns to look at Tim. "I don't know. Maybe I'm gonna... come back. Just on my own."

Is it bad luck to voice it? Well, whatever. He figures they deserve a fuckin break.

[postictal]

It's a slightly disconcerting feeling to have Jay's knuckles brushing against his palm but - not. Still, it's a vast improvement over the days earlier, where he'd assumed it hadn't worked, or that Jay would be trapped as a faint gust of air until they could figure out how to reverse it. He'd privately considered contacting Asmodia again, asking for her expertise on this whole thing since she seemed to have a pretty even grasp of ghost physics.

"Maybe," says Tim, letting his hand drop back to his side as he watches Jay float in aimless patterns about the apartment. "I did pull you out. If that was enough, maybe it just - I dunno, needs time to adjust."

He shrugs, hating for a moment the open uncertainty their lives always reside in. They're never sure, not of anything. But then, Tim had to get accustomed to that long before now. He'll manage. Always does.

[deadeyedchild]

"Yeah." He floats over to the kitchen. "Hey, if I can sustain this, I can at least start like... living, again. I can make this work." Having a body is kind of exhausting anyway. As long as people can see him - he can talk to them, and he can interact with the world - he'll be okay.

"I mean I can... I can help you with... whatever." He turns away, feeling incredibly shy about this even after their weird breakthrough yesterday. He fiddles with Tim's coffeemaker. "Make coffee or food or whatever. Or I mean. I can..." He hesitates for a long moment and turns back to face him. "In the dream, with the zombies, you kind of... you turned into... but they couldn't see me, you know? Or at least they couldn't hurt me. So if that ever happens again here I can... I can follow you, and I can help keep people away, right? So you won't hurt anyone."

He looks down at the floor. "I mean. I'm hoping that doesn't happen again, but just, if it does... I want to help."

[postictal]

Tim doesn't look up at him again, skimming the cheap grout on the kitchen countertop with restive fingertips. He doesn't like to think about that dream, particularly the moment where he stopped being him. He can remember that in distressingly clarity, though his recollection of what came after is spotty at best.

Maybe that's better.

He's pretty sure he doesn't want to remember.

"That's probably better than just hoping for the best," he says with a tiny shrug of one shoulder. Eager to redirect that particular thought, he snorts softly. "And hey - at least this way you're not turning anyone's keys into cameras."