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

[deadeyedchild]

"No, I don't!" Jay snaps, matching Tim's defensiveness with frustration. His voice sounds strange, a little hollow, with a little bit of a buzz behind it, like a recording. He talks wildly, desperate to get everything out before he disappears again.

"This isn't like your medical records," he says. "I'm not sharing any of this with anyone. This is you and me, Tim! We're all that's left and I'm barely even here. Why do you have to keep this from me, when I'm the only other person who's gonna even understand? I wanna help you, like you - like you're helping me." Again he pulls his arms around himself, looking down at the floor, his shoes hovering an inch above it. "Why do you have to deal with everything by yourself? Why can't we-"

He breaks off, partly because he doesn't know what else to say and partly because he's fading out again. He tries to grip onto himself, to hold himself there. He's finally starting to get the hang of it, feel how he's doing it, but it's so hard.

[postictal]

Tim looks at him hard, watching Jay simmer in his helplessness and his distress, until he has to look away. He can still see him in his periphery, a vague, semi-transparent shimmer in the corner of his eye.

He raises a hand to swipe it through his hair, pushing it from his eyes.

"I can't," he says, the words feeling torn from him, carved away. "I can't, okay? I can't get rid of it. Every time I try, it - bad things happen. It comes back. I can't."

He doesn't look at Jay, hovering in his bedroom, upset and frantic and fading like an old photograph. He can't look at him right now, he -

If he could stop acting like a goddamn hypocrite for once in his life -

He doesn't meet Jay's eyes, glaring at the floor, his tone stiff and heavy with disgust. "Happy?"

[deadeyedchild]

"No," answers Jay after a moment, looking back up. "I - I didn't know that. I'm sorry."

Makes sense. Of course he wouldn't have a choice. Of course he wouldn't be allowed. That would just be too - too fair, wouldn't it? Tim's been trapped his whole life, by one thing or another, and Jay played right into that system, and now - now he'd give anything to undo it. If he had anything left to give.

He should say this. He should tell him this.

He floats forward a little and reaches out to him. "Tim, I-"

And then he blinks right out. His hand passes through Tim's shoulder and he yanks it back sharply. No. NO.

He can't make it - he can't - he can't do it!

"Goddammit!" he screams in frustration, reaching up to rake at his hair and he can't even do that. "Fuck off! Let me go!"

He doesn't know if the Rift can hear him, and if it can he's sure it doesn't care, but it doesn't matter. He's so fucking sick of this.

[postictal]

He breathes out, long, formless, slow, while Jay processes. Some spiteful part of him wanted, still wants to simply let him figure it out, maybe demonstrate - look, Jay, watch me toss this mask out the window and pass out and wake up with a nosebleed and that fucking thing staring at me across the room eight hours later - but he viciously tamps it down.

It's almost worth it when the other man apologizes.

He actually apologizes. Not in the muttered, resentful sense, not as an afterthought. He looks genuinely taken aback. He looks genuinely sorry.

And then he's gone again.

"Shit," Tim says flatly, shutting his eyes as that familiar, creeping chill touches his shoulder.

"God." He shakes his head, resets everything left in disorder except his mind, can't fucking fix that, and shoulders his way through the bedroom door to start unpacking his goddamn groceries.

Not like they can do much else when Jay's like this.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay watches him go, feeling more miserable than ever, worse than he has in days. He drifts out to watch Tim fuss around the kitchen, wondering if he should try to draw him over to the Ouija board, but - no. He doesn't think he can handle getting rejected for that. And he has too much to say for the stupid board.

He opened a box. He opened a door.

He can do this.

He drifts back over to his apartment, where there's a pen and some loose paper still sitting out.

It takes him hours - actual hours - and the result is messy and awful and barely legible, because he can't hold the pen right and the amount of pressure he can actually apply varies wildly. But it'll do. It'll have to.

With immense effort he picks up the paper and carries it - well, not through his door, the paper hits the door when he moves through it, and he has to struggle ridiculously to get it to slide under the extremely narrow crack between door and floor, but he manages eventually.

Will Tim even care anymore? Does he think Jay doesn't want to be around him?

This is the best he can do.

He slides the letter under Tim's door, then drifts in and waits.

[postictal]

He doesn't keep track of where Jay goes or what he does. He doesn't care. Any secrets Tim could possibly still have to him have all been laid bare.

Even dead, the man can't help but pursue whatever answers might be out there. Even ones that don't exist.

It's hours until he hears the crisp crinkle of paper as it's shoved beneath the door, and he looks up.

"Jay?" he says uncertainly.

Silence.

He stands, approaching the door with a wariness that's not particularly justified.

It's not Jay.

It's a letter.

It certainly looks like Jay wrote it, what with the untidy scrawl, the infrequent strikethroughs, the smudged ink.

He glances around him, absurdly, like there's anyone around to judge him for it, like he'd be able to tell if Jay was hovering over his shoulder anxiously awaiting his reaction. With a roll of the eyes that feels more perfunctory than anything else, Tim frowns at the rumpled piece of paper and begins to read.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay isn't prepared for how deeply uncomfortable it is watching Tim read what he's written, so before Tim gets very far he turns away and floats further into the apartment. He doesn't have an object, here, other than to distantly alert Tim to his presence, rather than by tapping him, as though he's looking over his shoulder. He does want a response, though he's terrified of what it'll be.

What a stupid letter. He should have waited. He should have rewritten it.

He drifts sulkily around the kitchen until he decides to place his focus on a spoon lying out. He picks it up, slowly, with great effort, and taps it very gently against the counter. Good. Not a clatter this time, but a purposeful noise.

[postictal]

Tim was never a particularly speedy reader. He didn't excel at academics, period, though it was never a lack of ability so much as just a lack of incentive. An academic future was just never gonna be in the cards, and he never saw much of a point in learning past the basics. It feels fucking juvenile like this, like a letter passed in class, but it's the only kind of communication Jay has available to him that isn't immediate.

He guesses he can see the appeal in that.

He reads slowly, methodically, squinting to decipher Jay's crooked handwriting - considering he wrote this while intangible, it's actually kind of an achievement - until finally a soft clink alerts him of the other man's presence.

Tim lets the letter drift onto the table and considers it silently.

"I know you're trying," he says.

He falls silent.

He doesn't know what to say.

"I'm just - "

Tim looks at his hands, and swallows. He's better at this, he realizes, when he can't see Jay's face. When he can't feel his inquisitive stare burning two holes at the back of his neck, when he doesn't have to watch his face crumple or his features screw up in frustration or anger.

"I'm new at this too, okay? This whole - friend thing."

Are they friends? Is that what they are? Does that count? He has no idea. He doesn't know how friends are meant to work. The only friend he ever had was Brian, and he's pretty sure those kinds of relationships aren't meant to end with one supposed friend shoving the other to his death.

For all his derision over Jay's earnest uncertainty, his lack of an ability to competently navigate any kind of social interaction - when has Tim ever been any better. He's just as lost as Jay is. Maybe even more so.

He doesn't know how this works.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay's expecting derision, sarcasm, hostility. Not... not this. This is... it's... he doesn't even know what to do with it.

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.

[postictal]

Ouija board it is, then. He balances fingertips over the surface of the planchette and watches it slide evenly over the board as Jay spells it out, slow and careful.

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."