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No matter how hard he tried, Tim still wasn’t good at getting sleep.
It had been hard before he realized what all was going on with him. When you keep waking up in random locations and finding blood in your hair, or your leg was broken, or that you had been fired from your job for not coming in for three weeks it didn’t exactly motivate a person to commit to sleep. Of course it always gets to you eventually, but that didn’t stop him from ignoring those urges the best he could. He fought off the compulsion to let his eyes close shut and he shrugged off the continued falling of his head.
He may have been tired but if this was what it took to be normal, so be it.
Didn’t really help anything once Jay showed up. It was like the delicate door he’d built in front of the hole that haunted his life was smashed down with one introduction. One action on the part of a man he barely could remember from his college years, and then it was all over.
The mask, the pills, the man in the hoodie, Alex with the gun, and that thing were all looming over him again. His life had spiraled back down into shit and he’d tried so hard to avoid that. He’d fought so hard to have that sense of normal again. He’d lost so much of his life already, so many parts were just gone from his mind, so much time had been wasted dealing with this illness, and then he kept losing it. He kept having that normal world slip from his fingers.
And the worst part was, he had no one to blame but himself.
Realistically, there was a weight to place on Jay’s shoulders as well. His reactions to the information he found was clearly strange, startlingly un-empathetic, and his need for answers was horrifyingly self destructive. His destruction just wasn’t contained to himself, sadly.
He was a cocktail of disaster and pain that seemingly couldn’t be deterred by anything anyone said. He found something to cling to and hold his mind intact with, and that was posting to that damned YouTube channel. It was talking with those stranges out in the void who watched him display the grotesque and personal horrors that were being housed in Alabama.
He made a display out of the pain of others, the death of stranges, and the breakdowns of his friends. He was diluted to expect that he wouldn’t end up receiving any retribution of his actions, and yet he still ended up with Tim on his side.
Tim couldn’t help it at this point, though. He’d tried the whole ‘stick it out alone’ shtick for years now, and all it got him was memory loss and job loss and pain. There was so much pain that had happened between the then and the now.
But he was done with being alone. He was done with isolating himself to try and get better. He and Jay both needed each other if they were going to be taking any kind of steps forward. They were going to need another person if they wanted to cause any actual changes in their lives.
They had their time in the isolation chambers, and now they were going to break out.
Still, with the both of them hoping from motel to hotel, there was a conversation that needed to be had about blame.
Tim had had that conversation. He’d started it when he realized that he was the clear source of the infection. He’d been having that conversation with himself since then. Everyday he laid down to go to sleep he would stare up at the ceiling and sink into that guilt.
The horrors of what he brought into these poor, innocent, people’s lives were there with him always. He only knew the ones that he could see on Jay’s stupid channel, but it was enough to have him thinking about all the other possibilities.
There were so many possibilities. Who was hoodie? What had happened to Alex exactly? Could he actually help Jay? What became of Jessica, if anything? Seth, Amy, and Sarah, what happened to them too?
There were a finite amount of people that he had proof had been harmed by this creature, but it was enough to show that horrible things could and would happen to them.
And it was his fault.
He was the pin point source.
There was never going to be a way around it.
He was blamed by nearly everyone other than Jay, and even that didn’t make any sense. He’d already told Jay everything he knew and he still didn’t want him to blame himself for it fully. If it had been anyone else he was sure they would have become incensed with him, but Jay didn’t.
Jay stuck by him.
He still did. He laid right next to him in every hotel they had. He held him every night and vice versa. Of everything Jay had been through, it didn’t feel right to still be by his side after the revelation.
It was needed, yes, but it didn’t feel right.
It never felt quite right.
“You know you’re not great at pretending to sleep, right?” Jay mumbled into his pillow. His head was turned toward Tim, but his eyes were distinctively still closed.
“You’re not even looking at me.”
“Your breathing gave you away. It’s too quick right now. Unless you’re having a nightmare, then you’re just awake.”
“You notice those kinds of things?”
“I notice a lot of things, but it’s not always necessary to mention them.”
“So paranoia is still a problem then?”
“Don’t flip this on me. We’re talking about you right now.”
Tim sighed, “Okay, but it is fair to point out that you’re supposed to be asleep too. You barely get any on a good day.”
“You know that I could say that same for you too, right?”
Tim let out a grumble which led to Jay to chuckle. He scooted his body closer to Tim, leaving his pillow behind, until his head was right up against Tim’s chest.
Tim felt his breath then. It was a slow rise and fall that showed no sign of panic in him He seemed the most normal then. He so rarely came off as being fully in his right mind, but there he was. Snuggled up against Tim and not showing any signs of deterioration.
He was normal again, and it made Tim ache.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. Just get some sleep, Jay.”
“Tim, come on.”
He noticed Jay start to sit up and put his hand on top of him. “Stop it.”
“I will, if you tell me what’s wrong.”
“Jay.”
“Tim!”
Eventually Tim got Jay back down onto the bed, his face being planted squarely on his stomach, as they both started to laugh. There was a strange domesticity then. They were just two survivors, really. Two people who had been blindly stumbling around in the dark trying to make it out alive. Yet they could still laugh, they could still find comfort in one another, and they could find love.
As their laughs slowed down, Tim eventually said. “I was just thinking about my childhood. I know this all started with me, but I just don’t know how.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I want to know why, Jay. I don’t know where to start, but I wish I could explain it more. I wish I could give you more answers. I want more answers.”
“I don’t know if we can find those answers.”
“Then what are we doing?”
He was surprised when he was met with silence after that question, but at the same time it felt right. It was the kind of question that had hung over both of them for awhile. Between Jay feeling compelled to upload the videos and the both of them running from place to place, what were they really doing anymore?
Sure, they were trying to make it out of this fight with the eldritch unknown and it’s corrupted protege, but else was there? What more were they going to do once they’d seen this fight to the end?
What was life supposed to look like once this was all over?
“Doing what we can, I guess.”
“Jay, I don’t know how long we can keep this up for.”
“We’ll run into Alex eventually, I know.”
“No, no, I mean, I don’t know how long we can make it through this with that thing out there. We can support each other all we want, but what kind of end game is there?”
“There isn’t one.”
“Then what’s the point?”
He felt Jay move closer toward him. He could just make out his figure as his face drew close to his and he was startled by the sensation of a kiss on the cheek. Jay’s breath was right up against his ear as he heard a soft, “We can make one when we get there.”
“And if we don’t?”
“We will.”
Tim’s hand clinged to Jay’s shirt, “It’s not like you to be optimistic.”
Jay rested his head right into the crook of the other man’s neck, “Sometimes it’s necessary.”
“Sometimes?”
“Right now, it’s necessary.”
Tim leaned his head against Jay’s, “Yeah, okay, that’s enough.”
He noticed as Jay’s body melted into his. His breathing stayed soft but it was clear that he was no longer awake with him.
Tim moved his body to encapsulate his partner’s then. He let his arms and legs surround his small form, but he didn’t move his head. It hurt slightly, but he could protect him then.
He was there for him.
He may have caused this, or maybe Jay had in bringing it back here, but he could still be there for him then.
He was there.
They were there.
And, for that night, despite it all, that was enough for that motel bed room. It may not have been in the past, or the future, but it was perfect for that moment.
He was enough, and he could make this better.