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Who: Jay Merrick and You
What: Jay fell unconscious in Rosswood Park and woke up on a magic island. He's not yet sure if this is a good thing.
When: January 29th, morning
Where: The Storyteller's Temple
Warnings: Language, Jay being an anxious wreck; will update as things come up!

This is wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong. He's either still dreaming, or he's still hallucinating, or he's dead, because the only remaining option doesn't just happen.

Sure, maybe the supernatural exists, but it doesn't talk to you in your dreams, and it doesn't spare you from getting your memories scraped out of your head by ~~that thing,~~ and it doesn't drop you off in...okay, maybe it does drop you off in an overgrown, abandoned building, but not one that looks like this.

He leans up against something that definitely isn't a mana pool, because mana pools don't exist. His phone is gone. His camera--shit, his camera's dripping, and the viewfinder screen won't light up, and it won't even turn on, it just keeps making this thin, whining noise before fizzling out again, and come on come on COME ON this can't happen

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"No," says Tim. He shoves his hands in his pockets as he walks, scowling at the ground. Not physically. Not really. He just saw him a couple times, and knew he wasn't real. Just like how he thought - thought he wasn't real just now.

Well, that's gone to shit by now.

"Didn't see a lotta people from home."

Should he even mention Brian?

Tim doesn't exactly look thrilled with the answer, but the wording of it immediately catches Jay's attention.

He quits lagging behind, picking up the pace to walk alongside Tim.

"Wait, who else did you see?"

Deep breath. If he's from...he wouldn't know about Brian. He wouldn't know. He never found out about Brian and Tim is fully aware that it makes him unbelievably selfish to want to withhold that, to not be the person to drop that bombshell, but he can't just outright refuse and evade because that's prone to making Jay more determined.

Instead he takes a deep breath.

"Can we...not get into that right now?" He's aware of how it sounds. "I can - if you wanna get into it later, fine, but now's just...not a good time."

How is he supposed to get Jay up to speed while spilling the truth about Brian, of all people?

And how is he supposed to talk about the time he saw It - stark and black against the white of Monsun?

He still doesn't know whether or not It was real.

"Really?" he spits. After everything, after all the secrets and the lies and the doublespeak and the tape, after Jessica, Tim's seriously going to tell him not right now?

God, Jay wants to--to do something, to grab a fistful of Tim's shirt, yank him up to eye level, to press the bones of his arm into his windpipe, to make him talk, to--

Fuck.

No, no, no, come on.

Think.

He's not lying, he's evading. It's not even really a lie by omission; he's clearly, obviously pointing out the omission. He's telling Jay what he's not telling him. That's something.

Tim didn't tell him about the tape for a reason.

This, right here? This is it.

So he's not gonna freak out. He's not.

~~He's not gonna be alone again.~~

Jay takes a long breath, kneading at his forehead. "Later." Again, he forces himself to breathe, forces his voice to even out. "Fine. Okay."

Later isn't 'no.' He looks up at Tim, and he hopes the I'm holding you to that is visible enough that he doesn't have to say it.

Edited 2020-02-08 08:01 (UTC)

Well, he's pretty sure that's gonna get followed up on. Jay makes a commendable attempt to rein it in, though, so...good on him, or whatever. It's almost impressive.

Tim resists the urge to roll his eyes at that and keeps walking. They could technically take the mana pools to Denny, but Jay has all the looks of someone who's still adjusting to the circumstances, and adding magical teleportation to those circumstances is liable to make things worse.

Besides. They're both used to long treks through the woods. Even if these ones are considerably more tropical than your average kudzu-riddled Alabaman hiking trail.

"A lot can happen in two years, all right?" he says. "Look. You said you called and left a voicemail. I, uh...I never got that message."

The humidity is indeed getting to him, but beyond rolling up his sleeves, he tries not to visibly acknowledge it. He can't say he's experienced worse, but he's experienced similar; Rosswood could get to be a real armpit during the summer.

And then Tim brings up the voicemail.

He didn't get it.

"Oh."

He's going to have to say it, then; if he wants Tim to know any of it, he's going to have to say it again.

"I guess I, uh. I watched the tape." Jay lets that hang in the air. "I saw the trail you and, uh...I saw Jessica ended up in Rosswood, so I..." He coughs. "I went to try and see if there was anything...I dunno, anything that'd give some idea what happened after the tape ran out."

His nails dig into the cracks in the camera, into the meat of his other hand.

"It went...bad." His voice creaks higher, strained and sarcastic. "But I guess you or anybody could've told me that."

"Yeah," he says, a little tightly. How the hell does he talk about that? What happened after - and after even that?

He has to tell him. He has to tell him before these islands figure out a way to tell Jay for him, because this is a very real possibility, as Tim has learned.

"I'm, uh." He has to do this too. He has to do this now. "I'm sorry too. For - hiding all that from you. I didn't know how you'd take it, or if you'd just go off on your own, or..."

Kinda like he ended up doing.

Tim apologized.

Holy...He needs to take a second. Needs to process this. Tim's sorry, too. Tim didn't want any of this bullshit to happen, either.

He was trying to keep something like this from happening, the same way Jay was trying to keep the investigation on track. They didn't want the same thing, not exactly, but neither of them wanted this.

We're not gonna get anywhere like this, working solo.

"Sorry." His voice cracks, the same way he remembers. He just did this. Even without the ground shifting under him, the trees changing their configuration every time he looks away, that thing staring down at him from between the branches, he can do it again. Right now, he can make himself do it again. "Sorry, I--I shouldn't've flipped out on you. I was just--"

Scared. Scared Tim was planning to stab him in the back, just like Alex. Scared Tim knew something that would get him killed--get Jessica killed, and he wouldn't say a thing.

He can't be sure that's not true.

He still can't trust him. Not before, not now.

But there are bigger things out there to be scared of than Tim Wright.

"I get why you...yeah. I get why you didn't say anything."

"And I get why you were mad." He shoves his hands into his pockets. Wishes, not for the first time, that he could light up a cigarette. He's several months clean, now. He's not sure he'll ever really get used to it.

The kids he did it for aren't here anymore. He can't bring them back.

Maybe it makes it better, easier, because then he doesn't have to explain anything to Jay that way, but he'd take those complications even if it meant having to sit down and painstakingly go through years of living with them and living with their souls nestled up against his.

"That's...why I got so pissed at you, anyway. Hiding shit from me. Turned around and did the same thing to you, so...yeah. 'Course you'd be mad."

God, what a pair they make.

One with a black eye, the other wrestled to the ground. Both liars, in their own stupid goddamn way.

Jay snorts, rocking his head back to watch the treetops. On instinct, he tips the dead camera to match.

There's a lot--a lot Jay still doesn't know, but this, right now? This is closer to clarity than he's felt in months. Years, maybe.

If he can ignore the island, the magic, the talking rabbit, the massive gap in time, if for a second he squints hard enough that the leaves above him look like oaks, like pines, then he can pretend the pieces sliding into place are important. Significant.

They feel that way, even if he doesn't.

He's not sure what that means. Probably nothing, if he's honest. This hasn't gotten him any closer to tracking down Jessica, to figuring out Alex's motives for coming after them.

But maybe, after this, Tim Wright makes a little more sense. That's something.

"Yeah," he mumbles back, parroting Tim. "'Course you'd be mad."

"Well, what can I say?" He shrugs a little, crunching through the jungles of Ensō. Jay at his back, following him. Feels like moving through Rosswood in some respects, but...it's the furthest thing from it. The climate's wrong, the camera's busted, and they're actually talking to each other instead of making snippy commentary about what they do and don't remember.

"I've had...a lotta time to think about it. This. All of it."

With the shit that this place throws at him, he's had almost no time to do anything but think about it. No choice in the matter. When the specter of the man you failed repeatedly tells you in no uncertain terms that it's your fault that what happened, happened - well, he knew that already, didn't he?

He'd accepted that he'd never see Jay again. He'd accepted a lot of shit that's now come to pass.

He's learned to take it in stride.

Two years. Right. Makes sense he wouldn't be as wound up about it as Jay was.

Maybe Jay didn't even have to apologize.

...No, he probably had to. Great. At least he can take solace in that tonight, lying awake beating himself up for being a fucking coward.

At least he's out of Rosswood.

Breathe in, breathe out.

"Yeah, and I've had..." He moves to check his phone, but--right. Not here. Just a rock. "A couple hours, tops?" He shoots Tim a sideways look, eyebrows raised.

Time is weird, even without outside forces screwing around with it.

(Wait, is Tim older than him now?)

"Yeah, I..." What does he say to that? It's completely correct. It's not as if Jay's had ample time to process this. And, god, what happens when he has to tell him what happened to him? He should probably do it sooner rather than later - do it under his own terms and under his own power, before the islands pick an inopportune time for him.

He's just not sure how one goes about opening that conversation. You'd think that after years of awkward conversations like, hey, so I shared souls with a quantum clone of you and now I know your entire history, he'd be a lot better at this, but no. No, it turns out there's just not a manual for that kind of thing.

"I can't fix what I fucked up," he says, finally. "I can't...undo that. But I can say that I'm sorry about it. And I wish to god that I'd...gotten that voicemail."

"I mean, I...it's not like I can either."

Jay watches his shoes. It's easier to look at than Tim's face, than what Jay's pretty sure is complete, honest sincerity. Feels like cold hands on the back of his neck. Feels like he's doing something wrong.

"And, I mean, at least..." He runs a hand through his hair, eyes still locked on the ground. Tim should've gotten the voicemail. Tim wishes he got the voicemail. Maybe then, they could've worked this out back home. Maybe Tim could've called back. Hell, maybe he could've picked up. Maybe he could've driven out there, yanked Jay out of Rosswood before that thing found him. Maybe they could've stumbled back through the tunnel, back through the parking lot, back to their cars, back to some cheap motel. Maybe things could've gone back to normal--well, not normal. Familiar.

Maybe Jay's wasting his time thinking about bullshit that didn't happen.

"At least I got out of there somehow." With a broken camera, no phone, and no way to get home. "And we...we met back up, even it it wasn't...yeah."

He doesn't know how to do this. Doesn't know how to talk about this. Doesn't know how to think about this.

Tim's throat closes.

"Yeah," he says. The word's a little rough, a little rasping. Meeting like this is better than...better than what actually comes of it. Is he just delaying the inevitable? God, he is, isn't he? He has to say something, he should say something now, but -

But he doesn't know how to broach the subject, and Jay's...he just got here. For fuck's sake, he just got here.

"So," he says, regrouping, "the place is called Denny. And it's...I mean, it looks like it was built here, 'cause it was. So it's not like an Arby's or anything. But there's food and water there and pretty much everyone here is a little weird so nobody really stands out."

"That's real reassuring; thanks." Jay feels a muscle twitch at the edge of his mouth, a half-formed smirk. So Tim thinks Jay won't stand out in a crowd of weirdos. He can't say he's surprised.

"Didn't think anybody'd miss home enough to build a whole Denny's from scratch, but, uh."

He spots the mural. There's rabbits, some other stuff and...

WE GOT FRE SHA VACA DO

"Who, uh...who painted that sign?" He can hear it in his voice, the exact same tone he's heard people take with Alex. He hopes to god that mural wasn't Tim.

"That was Connor," he says, deadpan. "I dunno what any of it means, but I've learned not to ask."

He's long since accepted that he will not understand a good seventy to eighty percent of what Connor says, and he is okay with this. They come from different points in time. There's just no avoiding it.

The interior is..."rustic" is probably the nicest possible word for it. It looks like it was built out here, mostly because it was. The chairs and tables were put together by hand, the cutlery has been alternatively transmuted or carved by hand, and so on.

Tim navigates the place with an easy familiarity. Hopefully the question won't arise of how he knows this place back to front.

Connor. He mentally files the name away.

Tim steps inside Denny, and Jay follows. He didn't consider how much of a relief inside would be, but there's finally a real roof over his head, walls, a visible perimeter. He can see where this place ends. The dull pain in his chest eases slightly.

Still, he takes a wary glance out the windows, keeps his back to the wall.

He tries not to stare too long at the other patrons.

He holds the dead camera close to his chest.

The place looks like one of those old frontier towns, all wooden planks and uneven edges, but it's a hell of a step up from anything in Rosswood. This place is clearly being taken care of.

More interesting: Tim walks like he knows where he's going. He sidesteps a loose floorboard that Jay trips over, snakes between the clusters of tables and chairs like it's nothing. Maybe he's a regular. Two years is more than enough time to learn your way around a restaurant.

It's all a lot to take in, all things considered. It's enough to make the words stick in his throat, buried under all the input. Still, he follows after Tim, eyes wide and jaw locked shut.

"You, uh." Well, how's he supposed to do this? Here, have some dried meat that came from a tigershark. Literally, it's a tiger-shark hybrid. It's edible, though, so don't worry. Yeah, no. He'll just stick with "meat." It can just be meat. "You hungry? Anything like that?"

He moves toward the back, and then...no getting around it, is there? He ducks behind the counter and starts picking through the baskets upon baskets of assorted shit piled on the shelves. Most everything is in baskets.

He definitely knows his way around, though.

Feels almost like they're robbing the place, even though Tim already explained the whole no-economy thing. Nothing's gonna happen. Tim looks like he's done this a thousand times.

Is he hungry?

How long has it been since he's eaten?

"S...sure." His jaw aches. His head aches. He can hear the murmur of voices behind him. He wants to know what's in the baskets--that's something he can act on. That's something he can do something about.

He rounds the edge of the counter, peering over Tim's shoulder.

~~If Tim wanted him dead, he would have done it already. You can't poison somebody with this many witnesses.~~

~~Quit being so fucking paranoid.~~

He reaches out to one of the shelves, about a foot away from Tim, and lifts the lid of one of the baskets. There's a strong scent--something fermented, maybe, or preserved in salt. Jay wrinkles his nose. "What is all this?"

"Mostly just stuff that people drop off. I mean, if they're not gonna use it, we might as well." They've got some eggs. That's not nothing. They're hard-boiled, but that'll still do. "A lotta dried meat and stuff. Eggs too, if you want 'em."

It's not like he can swing a ketogenic diet here, however much he'd like to. And - fuck, what does he do about meds? He's gonna have to ask the Storyteller, maybe, 'cause he can't imagine Jay being willing to admit that he might need them full time now.

Or maybe he will.

He doesn't...know what happened past that. Does he?

Briefly, Jay weighs the benefits of picking what looks good off the shelves versus letting Tim pick.

If they were in a 7-11 or something, the answer would be obvious: he'll pick. He'll cover the cost.

Unfortunately, if his mental model of the island is right, then there aren't enough people for an FDA. No standards, no quality control, just "stuff that people drop off".

~~And again, nobody's gonna try and poison him with this many witnesses around, least of all Tim.~~

Jay sighs, shrugging. "Whatever's good, I guess."

Well, that covers it. Tim gets a plate and sticks a smorgasbord on it - dried meat, some eggs, a bit of dried fruit just to round things off.

"So. This place is...Denny."

Might as well get that out of the way. It was on the mural, but it pays to mention it. It's not Denny's. Just...Denny. Singular. Chara's suggestion. He's not gonna get into the deal with Chara, though, in part because they're not here anymore. No need to bring it up.

Right?

"Denny." He shoots a brief glance at Tim as he sets the plate warily on the counter. He keeps a hand on it, keeps it in his line of sight. "'S this like the thing...?" He gestures vaguely with the camera, hoping Tim will catch on. "Where they find an old sign and there's, there's a letter missing, but nobody knows any better, so they just call the place, like...well, Denny?"

Tim knows better. Though, from the patchy memories Jay can scrape together of their time on the road, chances are Tim hasn't seen any of the movies he's talking about.

Maybe for the best, as far as that crap Planet of the Apes remake is concerned.

And that's more rambling from him than Tim probably wanted to hear, so Jay picks whatever looks safest--beef jerky, he thinks--and shoves it in his mouth.

Oh god.

Oh god, he hasn't eaten in a while, has he?

It's all he can do to force himself to chew, to take his time, to not swallow the piece of jerky whole and take another handful off the plate. Three pieces of jerky and two hard-boiled eggs in, he realizes he's failed.

"No, that's just...what it's called. By choice, I guess." He has no idea how to admit that he's the one who named it that at the behest of a small child with a devilish sense of humor, so you know what? He's just not gonna go there. Not a lotta people know that anyway. Jay hardly needs to know it too.

Right away, it's apparent that Jay hasn't really eaten recently. This is, based on what Tim remembers of Jay's lifestyle, not all that surprising.

"Don't make yourself sick or anything," he warns him, frowning, before filling a cup with water and setting it down in front of him.

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