Tim W█████ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
postictal) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bigapplesauce2015-08-05 10:39 pm
postictal) wrote in bigapplesauce2015-08-05 10:39 pm
take these broken wings and learn to fly [closed]
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.
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.
no subject
He looks at Tim, vaguely stunned, only able to look because Tim can't look back.
He drifts over slowly, because he has to do something. He didn't realize Tim thought they were - he almost wrote that they were friends and then he chickened out, because he didn't... is that what they are? He considers Tim one, but it's always kind of been in a there's-no-other-word-for-it way. He certainly never thought they'd be using the word out loud, gently, like this.
Jay reaches out and taps Tim's hand gently, the signal meant to draw him to the Ouija board. He drifts over to the board and waits until Tim is in position, and then carefully, patiently spells out, We'll be okay.
He can't promise that and he doesn't really know what it even means, much less if it's true, but it just feels like the thing to say.
no subject
He looks up at the space where he assumes Jay must be, guarded, nervous, weary, but faintly, tiredly - relieved. One corner of his mouth twitches, his expression softening by increments.
They've gone a ways from angry fistfights beneath streetlights in a darkened parking lot.
"Yeah," says Tim. "I think we will be."