Chapter Text
Jay cranes his neck to see the full height of the hotel through the passenger side window as they pull into the parking lot. He gives up quickly when Tim drives too close to the building for him to see past the second floor, instead straightening back up and steadying the camera balanced in his lap. He stays behind in the car and absentmindedly films the surrounding lot while Tim goes in to check the vacancy. It all feels a bit strange. It’s not like this hotel is “too good for them”—far from it; even from the outside, he can tell it wasn’t anything extravagant in its prime. Still, over the past few months, they’ve gotten used to only pulling off the road when neither can stay awake long enough to drive anymore, and then finding the cheapest motel in the surrounding area. So this could be a nice change, even just for a few days.
He startles as the driver side door opens, jostling him out of his thoughts. He turns to see Tim slide into the other seat, looking a bit apologetic for the sudden noise. He clears his throat as if trying to appear nonchalant, which ironically sets Jay on edge. “So, uh, I’ve got good news and… potentially bad news.”
Jay stops fiddling with the camera, angling it towards Tim out of habit. “Potentially? What does that mean?”
“Well, whether it’s bad news or not depends on what you think about it.”
This raises more questions than answers. Jay opens his mouth to ask some, but shuts it just as quickly. Tim sees this as an invitation to continue. “They do have a room. Plus, it’s cheaper than the motel we had planned on stopping at.”
Jay raises his eyebrows, pleasantly surprised. “Wow, really? So what’s the bad part?
He pauses, looking almost reluctant to answer. “They only have the one room.”
“So? We’ve been sharing-“
Tim turns to look directly at him, the sudden motion somehow surprising them both.
“It’s a single.”
“So like… one bed?” He says, dumbly. He isn’t actually sure why this is a problem. They’ve shared a bed a few times, when there wasn’t another option, and it wasn’t weird. Besides, they’ve been travelling together for so long that getting upset over having to share a bed seems pretty childish to Jay. “I’m fine with that. I mean, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.”
Tim visibly relaxes, and Jay feels a slight twinge of annoyance that he was expecting a negative reaction. “Yeah, same here. Just wanted to check. I’ll go book the room.” As if trying to subtly avoid Jay’s stare, he awkwardly slides back out of the car seat and walks back into the hotel. Jay watches the sliding doors at the entrance for a moment before leaving the car as well to grab his bag.
He replays the interaction in his head over and over as he waits. Had Tim acted like that the last time they booked a single? He’s pretty sure it was only a few weeks ago, but his memory has been getting increasingly scrambled. Things have been a bit tense, so maybe he was worried it would be awkward this time? Or maybe it had been awkward those other times and Jay just hadn’t realized it?
Before he can go any deeper into his thought-spiral, Tim appears next to him again and grabs his own bag. Jay follows him into the hotel on autopilot, his steps feeling almost mechanical as they walk down the seemingly endless hallway to their room. He’s grateful for the hotel elevator, despite it looking close to breaking down. They don’t have much luggage, but he isn’t sure if he has the energy to climb multiple flights of stairs right now.
The room is… nice. A pretty generic hotel room if he’s being honest. Starchy white sheets and matching comforter that he can imagine will be uncomfortably warm when he’s lying awake from insomnia. Loud and surprisingly strong AC unit. A minifridge and a microwave. The works.
It does seem to have a balcony, though. The motels they’ve been staying at have only really had a covered porch that wrapped around the building and connected each room. He places his bag on the bed and steps out the sliding door to see the small concrete outlook. They have a corner room, so there’s only a divider on the right side. If he really tried to look, he could probably see around it, but his paranoia isn’t strong enough to violate a stranger’s privacy. At least, not right now.
“Was Tim a stranger back then?” he finds himself thinking. Though, if he was, then the same goes for Jay when Tim’s alter ego had broken into his apartment.
Jay sighs and walks back into the room. He really doesn’t want to debate with himself over who hurt who worse. He’s supposed to be past this by now.
Inside, Tim is crouching down, rifling through his bag. He grabs a change of clothes and straightens back up, not bothering to look at Jay as he shuts himself in the bathroom. After a moment, Jay hears the faint drumming of the shower. Hopefully a nicer room also means the hot water won’t run out before his turn.
Alone, Jay studies the bed. It doesn’t look like it’ll be cramped, at least. He decides to take the left side—there’s a table nearby that he can charge his laptop on, and it’s closer to the door and the bathroom. Tim often wakes up in the middle of the night and smokes before he falls back asleep, so he’ll probably want the side next to the balcony anyway.
When they first started motel-hopping together, Jay would wake up after Tim had already stepped out. Sometimes from the door shutting, other times because the thing following them around would force him awake somehow just to taunt him from a dark corner. It felt a bit like sleep paralysis those times. Jay would only feel like he could really breathe again once he heard the lock clicking open and Tim’s heavy yet quiet steps returning to his bed. They never talked about it, and Jay hasn’t tried to bring it up, half out of embarrassment for his ability to sleep being so reliant on the other man. But he’s fairly sure that Tim knows already, even if neither acknowledges any of it.
~~~
By the time Tim returns, Jay is sitting on his side of the bed and has immersed himself in looking through the footage from the past few days. He’s already gone over some of it, but for some reason he finds himself re-examining parts he’s already seen. As if that thing or the hooded person will suddenly appear in the background for a few frames. He’s aware he’s being paranoid, but nothing’s been in the footage for at least 3 days now, and the sudden calm almost feels worse than the chaos they’ve grown accustomed to. Besides, even though he knows he’ll find nothing, it’ll just make him more restless if he doesn’t cave and check again.
He barely registers Tim sitting on the other side of the bed, but slowly loses focus in his work as he feels Tim staring at him. Or at least, in his direction. He glances up, following the line of Tim’s sight to make sure there isn’t anything else in the room that Tim might actually be looking at, and satisfied, goes back to watching the footage. He’s almost done now, but feels slight dread at the thought of having nothing else to busy himself with. The secondary realization has also begun to set in, that if Tim isn’t watching something past him, then he’s been watching Jay for the past few minutes. Is he waiting for him to be done? If he had something to say to Jay, he usually wouldn’t bother waiting.
Jay replays the same clip a third time in a row, no longer paying attention to the footage itself. He can feel a twisting mass of anxiety growing in his stomach. Jay is fully aware he’s probably overreacting somehow, or being paranoid, but for some reason he’s more on edge now than he has been the entire week. The sudden lack of strange activity the past few days, combined with this calmer environment—it should be letting him relax for the first time in months, maybe years. But it’s having the opposite effect, and Tim acting weird isn’t helping.
“I don’t think you’re gonna find anything new from that tape.”
Jay is pulled back into the present by Tim’s slightly stiff, but lighthearted jab. He’s so riled up by his own internal monologue that he almost snaps at Tim, but dials it back significantly.
“Just… wanted to be sure. I don’t like that we haven’t found anything this week. It’s… everything’s too quiet.”
He hopes Tim doesn’t press him on why he was looping that tape for so long. Hopefully he assumes Jay is just tired. It’s not too far from the truth, anyway.
Tim makes a quiet noise of agreement. “Hood guy might be busy keeping an eye on Alex. As for… that,” He makes a vague gesture, which Jay takes to mean the (Man? Thing?) that’s been haunting them, “maybe it’s got something to do with us being farther away.”
“Could also just have less of a reason to mess with us, since we haven’t made much progress.”
Tim breaks eye contact and sighs, almost inaudibly, and Jay feels a pang of something. Irritation at himself for being so stuck on how their efforts have stalled, maybe. Or he might be frustrated with Tim. He isn’t really sure why; it’s not like Tim said anything he didn’t agree with. But Jay feels caged, and he doesn’t know how to get out.
When neither man says anything else, Jay returns his attention to his laptop. He saves the file containing the footage and turns off the laptop, reaching over to place it on the bedside table. He makes sure it’s still plugged in, and the cord isn’t being pulled by furniture, and then gets up to stretch and get ready for bed. Tim says nothing, no longer watching him as Jay grabs some clothes and heads into the bathroom to shower.
~~~
Tim is already asleep when Jay returns, discarding the towel he used to dry his hair on the floor by the doorway. Or at least, he’s pretending to be asleep. Jay can’t hear him snoring, but he has no idea how soon into falling asleep people start snoring. Jay wouldn’t blame him if he’s faking. He’d probably be doing the same.
Jay slides under the covers on his own side, careful not to jostle the bed. The room is lit only by the moonlight streaming in through the balcony door, but it’s enough to make out the outline of Tim’s back. He finds himself staring, thankful the other man chose to face away from him.
As he waits to fall asleep, he mentally runs through the events of the day yet again. Driving. Stopping at a gas station and puzzling over the map. More driving. Deciding on a few motels and hotels in the surrounding area to check for vacancies. Even more driving. Arriving at their current hotel. Tim going inside to talk to the front desk, then returning to update Jay. Going back to book the room. Walking to their room together. Looking through footage until his eyes hurt. Showering. Staring at Tim’s back in the dark. It all starts to blur together when he thinks back on it.
But he keeps going back and mentally replaying one specific moment. Tim telling him there’d only be a single available. He loops the memory in his own brain, playing and rewinding it over and over, checking for any hints of what he missed the first time. Some cue in Tim’s wording or body language that would explain why he’s being so weird about this, the final piece in the puzzle of their conversation. Of course, he can’t find anything new in his own memories. If that was possible, they probably wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. All he ends up doing is lingering on the indecipherable look Tim had when he told Jay about the room. It wasn’t disgust or anger. He kind of looked… guilty? With a bit of something else mixed in. Jay’s instinct is to call it annoyance, but he’s very familiar with what Tim is like when he’s annoyed. This was a bit different than that. Sure, Tim might’ve been a little frustrated or tired, but there was something else that Jay still can’t get a read on. It almost reminds him of—
Oh.
Right.
It reminds him of how Tim looked at the abandoned hospital, the last time they went. Nowhere near as distressed this time around, but that same base instinct. Hiding something but fearing that he’s to blame for that something affecting others. At least, he assumes it’s for a similar reason this time.
Now that he rethinks the rest with the new theory in mind, it all makes a bit more sense. Tim is hiding something again (Jay tries not to consider this alone for too long) and it has to do with them sharing a bed. It would explain how awkward their interactions have been today. Now that he’s more aware of when it’s happening, Jay has discovered that Tim is a really bad liar.
But what exactly is he hiding?
Jay knows Tim isn’t going to admit anything before he’s ready. Pressing him on it might get him to come clean eventually, but not without things getting tense between them. He doesn’t want to risk another fight now that things have finally calmed down.
After the initial stab of anger, a mix of worry and curiosity seeps through him. Whatever it is, Tim isn’t hiding it to endanger Jay, or to prevent them from stopping Alex—it’s likely the opposite. It would be like him, Jay muses, to decide to bottle whatever’s worrying him so much up and hide it deep down inside himself. He might not ever intend to tell Jay if he can help it. Which is… fair, he supposes reluctantly. Jay wouldn’t want to admit every single thought he’s had about this situation either, no matter how upsetting. Especially the upsetting ones. But Tim also tends to internally blame himself for things that are out of his control, and it seems to Jay like this might be the case.
Despite his thoughts running a mile a minute, the paranoia might as well be background noise by now and he feels himself sink further into the bed. Just before he slips into the darkness behind his eyelids, he has a realization. What if this isn’t related to the tapes?
But he has no time to entertain this idea. As soon as it drifts through his mind, his eyes flutter shut and he falls fast asleep.