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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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Jay takes a long, slow, shaky breath.

He's only been here a few hours, but if he sits and thinks about it, sits and tries to breathe and take stock of how he's feeling, he can't exactly deny he's feeling...better. Better than he was. He hasn't needed to pop an ibuprofen since he got here. He could feel the sun through his sleeves, feel it on his face, and it's actually done something to ease the chill seizing up the muscles in his back. The weight in his lungs is a little lighter.

Could be down to having his first decent meal in a while.

With some effort, he manages to think: Probably not.

He looks up at Tim. Jay knows it's plain on his face--the worry, the hesitant thread of something approximating hope. He couldn't tamp it down fast enough.

Jay meets his eyes.

"So now what?"

That's the question, isn't it?

Tim almost wants to laugh at that. Wants to. The impulse is there, spooling up in his chest like a water balloon ready to burst. He seizes the impulse, bundles it tight, crams it down somewhere it won't come to light. That's not you. The point of this is to ease Jay into things, not freak him out even more than he is already. Save that conversation for later. Save conversations about souls and the kids who carry them for some other time.

"Good question," he says quietly. "I mean, I just...take it day to day. Anything else gets pretty exhausting."

It's so succinct. Looking one day ahead and seven years back, balancing all the variables in his head, constructing a Rube Goldberg machine where every possibility within every day branches off into a thousand others, trying to trace a line from yesterday to tomorrow that doesn't leave him bleeding out in his hotel bed or hunched over the wheel of his car or lying in the woods or coughing his lungs out in an abandoned hospital--it's pretty fucking exhausting.

Jay exhales, pressing his face into his hands.

He doesn't know this machine, doesn't know how the system changes when you switch out this many variables.

He knows Tim--well, he knew the Tim from years ago, barely, through scraps of paper and the occasional conversation over hotel coffee. He knew that Tim was a liar. He knew that Tim was the only thing keeping him alive.

He knows this Tim brought him back to civilization, offered him food and water.

He knows his camera, for all the good it'll do him here.

He knows he's got a tension headache crawling up the back of his neck. He knows it's not half as bad as the ones he remembers from back home.

He knows the eggs were more filling than anything he's eaten in weeks.

He knows he's exhausted.

"I...think I can do that."

He doesn't know if he's lying.

I think I can do that.

Tim can't tell if he's lying to himself or lying to them both or if he genuinely believes it. It's honestly hard to say. There's a good chance that it's up in the air. This is a new situation for one of them.

It'd be a new situation for Tim, but years ago (has it really been years?), it was Brian showing up on these shores (along with Tim murdering a sentient monkey on his behalf) and then them having to stumble through whatever came after that together. There was no hope of easing into it. Not with the way things were then.

They've been afforded a rare luxury here. And like hell Tim's not gonna take advantage of that.

He doesn't say any of that. What he says instead is far simpler.

"You need a place to stay?"

Jay looks up from his hands, still feeling the heat from the marks pressed into his face. Might bruise, might not. "I mean..."

Given what Jay's seen of the island, given the way Denny looks like something hammered together by hand by some kind of frontiersman, and given everything Tim and the rabbit told him, it seems like having a roof over your head here isn't necessarily a given. Jay's got more experience with that then the average person, he'll admit, but he always had his car when things got rough.

"Guessing I can't really go with my usual strategy."

And it's his first instinct to leave it at that, to shrug it off with a half-joke, but something tugs at his chest when he does. It's not enough.

"Thanks," he mumbles. "By the way. For the food."

Somehow, being nice to the guy is harder than being defensive and cagey, in part because he's not sure how sincere it'll seem, for him to be anything but an insufferable asshole. He shrugs, silent for a moment in the absence of anything else he can think of to say.

"It's not a problem," he says. "Anybody who comes through here's welcome to stick around. I don't think people really sleep here, but there's these houses all over. The islets off the coast, or the ones in the compound."

Bringing up that the compound used to belong to sentient monkeys who kidnapped people and wielded coconut guns feels harder to get into. In part because it was while storming that compound that he saw Brian here, of all people.

Jay squints, not fully processing what Tim's suggesting.

"What, just, like for rent, or...?"

What kind of rent would a grown-over survival island with a trade-based economy even have? Is he gonna have to grow, like, tomatoes or something? Probably more than tomatoes.

"No, just to...stay in. I mean, they're not furnished or anything but they don't belong to anybody and it's not like there's an economy here anyway." The house he shared, until recently, had been pretty barebones. And then they'd gotten him a bed.

It retrospect, it should have been obvious that they'd disappear, after that.

He's getting off-topic.

"Oh."

He's never squatted in an abandoned building before. They don't sound abandoned, exactly, from the way Tim's described them. They sound livable, even if there's no furniture. With a blanket, maybe a pillow, it'll probably be more comfortable than the back of his car.

He can work with this. Maybe. He thinks he can work with this.

"Uh." He's not sure how to ask this without sounding weird. Probably because it's weird, and he's weird, and this whole situation's goddamn weird. "Where's...like, where do you...live, I guess."

He coughs.

"I mean 'cause you're...like, I dunno what the availability's like, but if I'm within some kinda decent distance of where you are, that'd probably be...safer? I dunno."

He stares at the ground. Preferable to watching Tim's reaction.

"I can show you, if you want." Maybe a few years ago, he would've balked at the suggestion. But at this point, there wouldn't be much point in trying to hide it. His location's obvious to just about anyone here. A few days of dedicated observation would strip away that smokescreen in a second. "I dunno if there's any empty places left on the islet I'm on, but there probably are. People come and go all the time."

If they're gonna visit the islets, it occurs to him that Jay might have to contend with the fact that Tim lives with a tigerlily. But he's gonna cross that bridge when he gets to it, and not before.

He's not at the point where he's ready to offer that Jay stay with him. Not yet.

God knows if he'll ever reach that point.

"Yeah." Jay nods a little too hard, a little too quickly. "Yeah, that'd be good."

He needs to find his way around this place as soon as he can. Last thing he needs is to get lost in an even more isolated wooded area.

They won't be sharing a room, won't be sharing a car, won't be sharing a wall, if Jay's mental picture of the area's anywhere near right, but ideally he'll be nearby. Within screaming distance, maybe. That thing might not be here, but if the talking rabbit's to be believed, this place isn't exactly the safest.

Better the devil he knows, right?

~~Liar.~~

He squints out the window.

"Which way?"

"You can get to them by mana pool. There's one near the Storyteller's temple, where you woke up, but we had one put down near here too." It's not really a surprise that Jay wants to get right to it. Tim shrugs and heads for the door. There's not really anyone else here, and most everybody knows him well enough for him not to do anything fucking stupid while he's out. For the most part.

He's had years to get used to mana pool travel. He's not expecting Jay to take it as well in stride.

"They're how most people get where they need to go around here."

Jay hisses through his teeth. Yeah, he saw somebody travel by mana pool, back at the temple. Looked...wrong. Sure, he's seen teleportation in movies and whatever, but that all looked fake. This wasn't.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. If he can deal with a talking rabbit and Tim wearing a tie-dye shirt, he can deal with this.

"Nice of 'em to do that, I guess." Public transportation, straight to the closest thing to actual civilization Jay's seen. Jay follows Tim to the pool, peering down at it warily. "So you just...chuck a flower in there, and it...?"

"Yep." And because he knows that there's a good reason for there to be hang-ups about this sort of thing for them, for people like them, he adds wearily: "I've been using these things for three years and so far I'm not any more or less fucked up than usual."

At least, not thanks to the mana pools. There were times when using that system of travel dropped him somewhere he didn't mean to go, but that was more an island-wide thing than his own fault.

Now doesn't seem like a good time to mention that.

Jay snorts. Not any more or less fucked up than usual. It's honestly more reassuring than if Tim had just insisted it was safe or whatever.

He's had space torn apart under his feet before, right? So it should be fine, right?

Still, Jay doesn't bend down to pick up a flower. His knees are locked in place.

He's walked into danger before. He went to Brian's house three times. It's the middle of the day (not that that ever fixed anything), and Tim's been doing this for three years without any ill effects (as far as he can tell).

He should pick up a flower.

He should pick up a flower.

He should pick up a flower.

Goddammit.

"So, this is...like, those are them?" He gestures at the flowers growing at the base of the mana pool.

Coward.

Tim watches for a minute as Jay stands there, seemingly caught in a mental trap of what to do next. He doesn't push it until Jay says it aloud. Tim reaches down and grabs one of the flowers, spins it between his fingertips with the same flat expression as usual.

"Yep. Just gotta focus on where you wanna go. I can show you how it goes, if you want."

The offer for help is just as likely to go over badly as it is...well, he's not gonna say well. He's pretty sure it could go over all rightand nigh catastrophic with a whole lotta in between, but they're not gonna get anywhere by standing here and talking about it. So.

That'd be nice. It's been a long day.

God, no. Never mind. He can pick a flower. He can throw a flower into a weird magic pool. It's fine. He's fine.

"I'm fine." He didn't mean to say it out loud, but he's already talking, and he's already bending down, yanking a flower up out of the ground so hard the petals nearly rip. "I mean, like, it's--"

He tosses it into the pool.

Not so hard.

"Fuck, wait, I don't know what the islet looks like."

He turns to Tim, for once making no effort to disguise his panic. "What do I do?"

"Just concentrate on the...uh, the idea of an islet, I guess? There aren't really any other islets around here. If we end up somewhere else, it's fine. We'll just head back. There's just the one mana pool for all the islets. No big."

Jay's definitely overthinking it. Now that he's brought it up, Tim's got no clue how to derail him from that other than to assure him that, most likely, they won't end up anywhere bad. Unless they somehow end up on Monsun.

Okay, okay, not thinking about that. That's a low probability.

He's fine. This is fine. He is definitely not visibly shaking like a leaf, and he is fine.

"That's, it's, uh--" Hell, even his voice is shaking. Get a hold of yourself. "That's just a--a small island, right? So just think of small islands?"

"Yep." He keeps his tone as even and casual as possible, mostly keeping Jay in his periphery. "I can do it the first time so you know what the place...looks like, I guess. I don't think it'll be an issue, but if you're, uh - if you're worried about it, it's not a problem."

That's probably the exact wrong thing to say, huh? The best he can do is pitch the words like they're having a normal conversation, and not treat Jay with kid gloves.

Somewhere in the back of his head, a familiar voice grumbles loudly through a lens fuzzy with static: just have a conversation!

Guess he learned a thing or two about acting after all, huh.

"I'm not--" It's obvious. He's being obvious, so obvious that even Tim's gonna comment on it.

He grits his teeth, throttles the desire to snipe at him.

Think about islets.

He mumbles his next words, his voice flat, jaw muscles still pulled taut. "Yeah I guess you can do it."

"Sure," says Tim, keeping his gaze dead ahead. Doesn't even wanna chance a look in Jay's direction; he can feel the tension radiating off the guy like a fever. "No problem. Brace yourself."

And then, as if keen on displacing them both from one awkward situation and snapping them straight into another, Tim concentrates on the islets.

The next minute, they're there.

He knew it was coming, but the way the scenery blinks out of existence still hits him like a freight train.

This isn't Rosswood.

This isn't Brian's house.

This isn't his apartment.

This isn't

This isn't

this isn't

HE'S FINE.

He's...not on the ground, exactly, but he's leaning hard against the ridge of the mana pool, one knee digging into the dirt. The camera's pulled up close, digging into the skin of his face. Is it on? Is it recording? Is it recording? Is it

Right, it's dead. It's broken. It's fine. He's fine.

Is he breathing? He's breathing. It's fine.

Tim's here. He can see it, can see him, out of the corner of his eye.

His voice is still strained, still an odd, slurred monotone, but he manages a few words. "Did we make it?"

Yep, could've figured.

Tim doesn't say anything for a moment. He's long since gotten used to the abrupt nature of being blinked from one position to the next, and while it's not something he finds comfortable, exactly, it's no longer capable of reducing him to a blind panic. Still, that doesn't mean he's forgotten what it's like, to grapple with the sickening drop in the pit of his stomach and the reflexive hitch in his throat for a coughing fit that'd never come.

"We're good," he says, again keeping his tone as steady as possible. This effort lasts for about as long as it takes for him to try and follow that up with a question that would probably sound reasonable if it was aimed at anyone else, but just has Tim braced for a sharp retort: "You, uh - you need a minute?"

They're good. They made it. They're--where? Islets. They're on the islets. The mana pool for the islets, which is where Tim lives.

Tim's looming over him like he's having a goddamn breakdown, which he's not. It just startled him is all.

"I got it." He intended it to come out sharper, with more of a bite, but it's a little tough to get his voice to cooperate right now. Everything's coming out quiet, the syllables slurring together. Not enough air, not enough...something. His tongue feels like it's numb, or swollen, or something. Won't cooperate.

But he's fine, and they're on the islets, so he's going to stand up.

He's going to...there. Jay stumbles to his feet, still clutching the edge of the mana pool. See, Tim? Doesn't need a minute. He's fine.

"Where'syour..." No. Again. Clearer this time. "Where's...your place? Which way?"

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tim misses his KIDS ARGH

of course he does!!!!

they are his children!!!

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