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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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"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?"

Yeah, he doesn't seem fine. The idea of leading Jay in this state over to Tim's place and then introducing him to the plant tiger that he's got chilling there isn't super appealing. He also knows from experience that second-guessing him isn't gonna go over so well.

So Tim leans against the mana pool and breathes out a bit, closing his eyes.

"Well, maybe I need a minute."

Liar. He's used to this means of transport by now.

Through the buzzing in his head, through the too-bright sunlight, Jay squints at Tim.

"Ye--" Jay winces at the stutter in what he was hoping would be a snarky comeback. "Yeah, maybe."

He'll put up with it, though. Sure. Fine. He'll take a minute to catch his breath.

Jay screws his eyes shut and forces himself to breathe.

And as much as he hates to admit it, it gets a little easier with time.

Was that so hard?

He doesn't say it. He doesn't have any pride, and maybe he never did. No part of him that he needed to suck up. Jay's already seen him sobbing and helpless and worse. Not like his impression of Tim can get any lower. So, yeah. He's fine with taking the fall for this one if it gets Jay to slow down for half a second.

Eventually he breathes out, rolls his shoulders.

"You good?"

Jay blinks, screwing his eyes shut against the sun for longer than can really qualify as a blink. His breathing's evened out. His shoulders are still wound tight, the sun's still a little too bright, but at least he can string more than two coherent thoughts together in a row.

"Yeah." He wishes he had his hat, or his sunglasses or something. He resists the urge to pull up the hood of his sweatshirt to block the sun. Instead, he turns to Tim. "You?"

The question's only partly sincere. Tim looked fine. Tim's been doing this for years. Jay's pretty damn sure Tim isn't the one this break was for.

"Yeah." He shrugs, and keeps walking. He's...gonna have to cover a lotta ground eventually, with Jay being here. He's got his jacket, folded up nice and neat with his things. Brian's hoodie. And Jay doesn't even know - god, should he even tell him that? It's bound to come up sooner or later.

Cross that bridge when they get to it.

It doesn't take long to reach the place. There's a garden outside it. And also a tiger.

Tim doesn't so much as blink at either.

Jay...absolutely blinks at the tiger. Plant...tiger...thing.

"Uh."

Jay is a cat person. He can remember that much. But, being a cat person, he's got a pretty good idea of how badly a cat that size could fuck you up if it wanted to, even if it's got precious little stamen-whiskers.

Also, he's seen Roar. He's seen the behind-the-scenes footage, the surgery scars on the cinematographer who got his skin torn off.

He points at it. Them? The tiger.

"Is that okay?"

"That's just Butternut," says Tim. At their name, the cat lifts their head with a soft rumble, halfway between a growl and a purr. Tim scratches them idly behind the ears as they get up, stretch, rub up against his leg. "They're not mine."

Butternut fixes Jay with a curious look. They're a very affectionate kitty, but for someone who's never seen a tigerlily before, it can be a little disconcerting.

Oh, okay. The giant flower tiger is Butternut. That's fine, then.

God.

Seriously, though, based on how affectionate they were with Tim, they might actually be less deadly than they look.

And now they're looking at him. Great.

Jay weighs his options. On the one hand, there's keeping a safe distance from the, uh, Butternut, and keeping his skin intact. On the other hand, big kitty.

Fuck it.

Jay tentatively holds out a hand for Butternut to sniff. He's still poised to bolt if this turns out to be a terrible idea, but if he's gonna pull the kind of stunt he knows in the back of his mind would net him hundreds of angry comments on Twitter, at least he's doing it for cat scritches.

The tigerlily purrs, immediately bumping their head up against Jay's hand.

"I'm, uh...looking after them," says Tim, maybe a hair unconvincingly. He's been looking after them since basically he found them and brought them back to a couple kids who wanted to name the cat two different things. The poor thing was called two different names for a long while until eventually Tim more or less picked something in between.

"Don't worry, they're harmless. They, uh, photosynthesize. If you can believe it."

Butternut bumps their head up against Jay's hand, and--

--Jay's brain shorts out for a second. Big kitty. Big ol' kitty who eats by photosynthesis. Jay wandered into Rosswood like an idiot, got lost, panicked, got ripped into another dimension with another Tim who's got three years on him, ate some eggs, teleported across the islands by choice, somehow, and now the biggest goddamn kitty he's ever seen is pushing their head into his hand like they want attention. Like ██████ used to do.

Like--

Jay grits his teeth.

"For...for who? Whose are they?"

Hard to imagine an animal this big being somebody's housecat. Tentatively, Jay inches his hand down, trying to keep his distance from the petals that ring their face. If they'll let him, Jay Merrick is going to try to scritch Butternut under their chin.

"Belong to a couple friends of mine," he says, because that's infinitely easier than disclosing everything that the kids were and are to him. "When they disappeared, I kept taking care of them."

Just because Chara's back doesn't mean he needs to get into that now. Especially when the subject itself is so goddamned complicated as it is.

Watching that reaction to the tigerlily play out, again Tim feels the need to ask:

"...you good?"

Tim's gotten awfully perceptive, hasn't he? ~~Like he hasn't always been perceptive, like Jay didn't either ignore it or snap at him every time he pointed something out.~~

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm...good." Jay continues his tentative quest to give Butternut the scritches they so clearly deserve for being such a massive, good kitty. "Just haven't...'S been a while since I actually got to, y'know."

He gestures weakly at Butternut.

"I mean, like, even normal-sized ones. I'm..." He stumbles over it the way he stumbles over anything about what he is, what he used to be. There's always an element of guesswork, piecing it together out of the scraps he manages to find. "I'm a cat person. Or, was. I dunno."

His brain still sticks on what Tim said, though. Friends. Maybe Tim had friends back home, but the only one Jay's ever known about was Brian. Maybe that's the fault of the investigation, maybe Jay set his focus too narrow, but he doesn't think he did. Nothing about Tim struck Jay as a social butterfly. The guy seemed fine enough with dropping his whole life, basically, to help Jay with the investigation. It's enough to make Jay hazard a question:

"And, uh...friends?"

That somehow does not surprise Tim in the slightest. He remembers Alex only vaguely as a dog person based purely on the fact that he used to have one, but there's no personal memories in his history of Jay ever keeping a pet. But he never asked. Never had the inclination to get to know very many people involved in the filming of an amateur student film, and years later, they were both too preoccupied with running for their lives than anything else.

"Sure," says Tim, shrugging. Butternut is having a ball, rubbing up against Jay's legs with a low, rumbling sound like an idling motor. "I've been stuck here for three years."

He wasn't just sitting in his house doing nothing, much as he used to do exactly that back home before Jay found him. Especially since he was maintaining Denny for a good chunk of that time.

Makes sense. Sort of. Jay's not so sure, honestly, but he'll take it.

"Guess it's easier to meet people when there's not..." He looks up at the sky, gestures vaguely in the same direction. "Stuff."

Jay nearly jumps at the pressure on his leg, at the low sound that accompanies it, but then it all slides into place.

That's a purr. They're purring. They're purring, at him, because he pet them.

Jay bends down to scratch the top of their head, behind the ears, around the flowery ruff like it's a collar, trying to get the tough-to-reach spots. Almost inaudibly, and at a lilting pitch higher than Tim's probably ever heard him use, he mumbles, "Hey, there, Butternut."

When there's not stuff, sure, or maybe because of all the stuff that happened. Nothing like meeting people while under intense emotional duress. That's a real fucking icebreaker.

"Anyway, they're a real people person. People...cat. Whatever. They're a tigerlily."

'Cause, you know. Kinda obvious.

"Anyway, all the houses look kinda like this. This is one of the smaller ones." He gestures at the shack in question. It actually looks kinda nice. There's a garden outside that Tim's kept going in the absence of the people who...ordinarily would.

It does indeed look kinda nice.

"Guessing the--" He scratches at Butternut, People Cat, in lieu of the camera strap. "--landscaping didn't come with the rest of the property."

Tim doesn't strike him as a gardener, but Tim doesn't strike him as a lot of things he apparently is now.

"Nope," he says shortly.

And he leaves it at that.

"Like I said. It's been a few years. Some people picked up interior decorating. Some people keep pets. There's a guy who grows his own pot." And Tim, apparently, has a garden. It's more like he inherited it than anything else.

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[jay voice] gotta go FAST

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cw: severe injuries from a big cat

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