Chapter Text
"So that guy was—your friend?"
"Well, yeah," said Jay. "But I haven't seen him in years. We were roommates, actually. Way, way back in the day."
Luke was looking at him like he could tell there was more to the story, and was dying to ask, but after 15 years on the road and in the studio and occasionally in bed with Jay he knew better than to pry—else risk sparking one of Jay's moods and ruining the whole night, or even the next few days of tour prep.
And the fact was, even if he had asked, there was nothing really to tell. It was so long ago; so much had happened since then. Jay had tons of old friends from the 2000s that he hadn't seen since his career really started to pick up. He'd had to delete his Facebook and change his number multiple times—a side effect of global fame—so it was rare that someone from that era broke through to his insulated bubble. When they did, he found it difficult to rouse up shared memories. Like they belonged to someone else entirely.
"Interesting guy," Luke said. "Maybe going through something right now, a bit?"
"Mmhmm." Jay wasn't listening. It had been weird, seeing Matt. Like a dream. The guy had not aged well, that was for sure. Kinda fat. Tired and ragged-looking. And clearly very disturbed.
Most of Jay's fans were cute young girls, but he did have an assortment of oddly-shaped gay men who commented devotedly on his Instagram posts and always paid handsomely for the highest tier of VIP meet and greets. None of those guys had ever come onto him with such a manic look in their eyes, or with frenzied talk about a time machine, though.
What the hell had Matt been up to all those years? Had he recently escaped from an asylum? (Did asylums even still exist?) A shiver ran down Jay's spine. The more he thought about the interaction the more freaked out he was. Something was wrong.
"Jay?"
"Sorry?" He started to attention. An image of Matt (young Matt, the one he'd known) in a kind of Hannibal Lecter-style cage and straightjacket situation dissolved in his mind's eye, revealing Luke's concerned expression.
"I said, do you want another drink?"
"Yeah. Thanks. Make it a double."
"We know you're fine," said Ben. "We just want to make sure."
"And, um, just because the plan today was our idea, you shouldn't… don't get the impression we're trying to, like, usurp you," Ethan said.
"If something happened to you, to your brain, we'd be seriously screwed," Michael agreed. "We need you. So let's just make sure this isn't a deadly aneurysm or a stroke or something."
Each of them was holding onto Matt, guiding him up the drive towards the hospital. Three against one was a tough proposition, even for someone as yoked as Matt, and especially right now, with his whole body hurting and exhausted after the nightmare of the last few hours.
In a moment of vulnerability after getting kicked out of Jay's show he'd groaned about his aching head and ass, which had turned into a confession that he'd kind of hurt himself earlier that morning and was feeling really weird and actually kind of didn't remember the last… oh, the last few days, let's just say.
The band's concern had been immediate and genuine. They were nice guys, really. Matt wondered where this timeline's version of him had picked them up. They were kinda familiar, like maybe they'd been a few grades below him and Jay at school, but he couldn't be sure. His immediate impression from earlier that day that they each represented some aspect of himself held true: Ethan was unflappably confident, Ben burbling over with amazing ideas, Michael a logistical wunderkind and courageous sneaker.
So he let himself be led by them along into the familiar emergency room, the site of many a denouement to one of his and Jay's adventures.
A doctor asked him a bunch of questions that he answered as truthfully as was reasonable, and then he drowsed as samples were drawn and the blood pressure machine pumped and nurses conferred and then just as it seemed like things were wrapping up, someone told him to stay put as a specialist was on the way. Dammit.
It seemed like hours later that a new doctor entered his room. She was a severe-looking blonde woman, her hair pulled back into a sculpted bun.
"What's up, doc," Matt said. "How are you? Hey, are we cousins?" Her nametag said Dr. Johnson.
The doctor didn't laugh. She sat down and started clicking around on the computer, typing something, examining the results.
"I'm feeling much better now, I swear," said Matt, even though that was kind of a lie. He really needed to get out of here.
"Matt, it looks like you have a minor concussion and a bruised coccyx," the doctor said. "I recommend a week or two of rest, hydration, and avoidance of screens whenever possible."
"Okay, sure, whatever," said Matt, knowing that once they let him go he'd be off like a rocket back to the house to ignore all of that advice and get back to work figuring out how to go back in time and correct this catastrophe.
"But it's your farandolae count that concerns me. It is extremely high. That's why I was called in."
She swung the monitor towards him. Rows of numbers filled the screen. Some were highlighted in red. Medical stuff, he didn't know. "Um… okay?"
"Do you know what farandolae are? Or what a high count like this in a human body might indicate?"
"Nnnno, should I?" Her gaze was intense, oceanic. She had to be right about his age, but he felt a surge of shameful guilt, like he had been caught playing his Gameboy under the desk in math class by one of his strictest, oldest teachers.
She brought her chair closer to him, leaned in and lowered her voice. "Matt," she said, "have you experienced anything strange in the last 24 hours?"
He swallowed.
"Have you seen anything unusual, unexplainable? Do you have any blank spots in your memory?"
This was a trick. This had to be some kind of trick. The band, they'd ratted him out—they thought he was crazy, and they were trying to get him locked away somewhere, and if he got locked away then he'd never get Jay back—
"No, no, I don't—I'm not—I swear, I'm fine—" Matt couldn't help the note of panic from rising in his voice. He had to get out. The beep of the heart monitor soared.
The doctor put a warm hand on his. Gentle, soothing—the opposite of her piercing, searching look.
"Matt," she said. "Where did you come from?"
"Queen Street!" he practically hyperventilated.
"Right," she said, "but which one?"
"What do you mean?!"
"You don't belong here, do you?"
"How…. How do you know that?"
"Doesn't matter."
"Um, I'm pretty sure it really does—"
"No. I'm just here to help you. I promise. Do you believe me?"
Suddenly he wanted very badly to trust her. He could not ignore the fact that she clearly seemed to understand the gravity of his situation. Which is what he wanted, right?
"Can you help me?" he said. "Jay, he doesn't remember—I came here with him but he didn't know me—we changed things, and now he's—he thinks I'm crazy—but I have to get back to him—we have to fix it—"
"Shh. Calm down. Don't panic. You traveled with someone?"
"Yes. Yeah. Jay. Jay McCarrol. He's famous here. But not—"
"I understand. When was the divergence?" She glanced at the numbers on the screen. "Fifteen, twenty years ago?"
"Yeah. 2008," Matt said, incredulous that this was something he was even discussing with a stranger, a girl at that.
"Mmhm. Okay, listen. Don't give me the whole story—I don't need it—it's yours, and yours alone. Traveling is a sacred thing. You are bound to those you travel with. I have no privilege or purpose here other than to guide you the way that others guided me."
"Wow. Well, uh, that is some seriously ontological shit. You into Kabbala? Are you a Scientologist?" He saw Dr. Johnson speedily suppress the flicker of a smile. "So what do I have to do to get him back? Do time doctors have a pill, or something? I could sneak into his house, put it in whatever fancy fucking hot chocolate rich rock stars drink before bedtime—"
She shook her head. "Before you get him back you have to get you back."
This brought a screeching halt to Matt's flow of planning chatter. "…What?"
"You're going to have to integrate with your other self. The one who belongs here."
"You mean… I have to lose my memory? That's bullshit."
"No, no. The opposite. Think about it, Matt. When you arrived here you stole someone else's life, didn't you? Someone with your name, who's been living in this body the whole time. That's not fair to him, is it?"
Matt shrugged. "What do I care? I'll give it right back. As soon as I get Jay and leave the way I came in."
Dr. Johnson squeezed his hand. "But that won't happen unless you do as I say. To save your friend, you will need to know the things this Matt knows. The things he learned, from the divergence point onwards. Without integration you'll be flying blind. Blind and senseless and amnestic. It's a handicap of the soul—sheer selfishness, arrogance. To think that you could make your way without him. To think you know better than him."
Her intensity was affecting; his heart rate was starting to audibly climb again. It just so happened that a hospital bed was one of the few places Matt was capable of feeling even a modicum of contrition, and it wrenched at him now, a lurching feeling in his gut, like the whiplash of arrival all over again.
Selfishness. Arrogance. Jesus. Certainly some of the reasons he was in this fucked up situation in the first place. Oh, God. Jay. He'd done this to him.
"What would you do to save Jay?"
"Anything," Matt said. "Fuck, anything."
"Then come with me."
And she led him down the hall to a bathroom where as he watched she plugged the sink and filled it with freezing water and whispered to him as she held his head under.
Integrate.
He had done it to himself. Refused to move on. Followed Jay's career religiously as it rose. Kept the pain alive. Thought about Jay every single day. Oriented his entire existence around the memory of the best years of his life, and the worst month. Empty years followed. Eventually he found others who appreciated Jay the way that he did, thought he was a genius, were willing to spend hours watching videos of Jay being interviewed, giving studio tours, eating hot wings, explaining his lyrics, holding puppies.
Integrate.
He wore Jay like a hairshirt, like a crown of thorns. He'd gotten so used to it that sometimes he forgot that he'd ever really known him. Those were the good times. But it would never last. A lyric, or some reference in an award acceptance speech, would bring him crashing back to the old apartment, remembering some laugh, some look, some word spoken out of affection.
Integrate.
Memories calcified. He formed himself around them like a pearl. He could not possibly change; he had to stay the same person that Jay looked at with such trust, such adoration; and he had to remain the one who Jay had left, hatred and betrayal in his eyes. That was who he was. Would always be. Jay had changed, but Matt couldn't. He had to stay the same. Just in case. Just in case Jay ever wanted to come back. Pick up where they left off. It would be like no time had passed at all.
Integrate….
The Matt that walked out of the hospital, Dr. Johnson's business card tucked in his pocket, was not the same Matt that walked in.
He was seeing double everywhere. There was the copy-shop where he'd made the "Best Friend Rice" slip for the Mandarin Buffet plan—but no, it was the place where he and the band had printed flyers for the first show of their long-running Rivoli residency; there was the NOW Magazine office he'd snuck into to place the call—no, it was where he and the band had been invited in for a print interview about what made Jay McCarrol an object of such devotion for Toronto residents…
Back at the house he told the guys the doctor had given him something that was making him super sleepy and went right up to his room. It wasn't really a lie. He was exhausted; but also he couldn't possibly fall asleep, not when a double helix of time was unspooling backwards in his mind, vivid and entrancing, like one of those 90s educational video intros where you soared weightlessly through a bright CGI museum.
It was a lot. He thought about Jay and began to cry. He was crying out of pity and grief for the part of himself that had been so bereft, so lost, for so many years. He was crying out of anger at the part of himself that had made one dumb, impulsive choice that had ruined everything. He was crying out of agonizing, tormenting, all-consuming jealousy towards the part of himself that had spent every day for the past seventeen years by Jay's side, in sickness and in health, till idiotic time travel crap do they part.
If he had known how much pain writing a single sentence on a whiteboard would have caused himself, of course he wouldn't have fucking done it—he was very good at protecting himself, staying out of trouble, always coming out on top—but in that moment he had only been thinking about hurting Jay. Making him see the error of his ways. Making him regret.
And Jay had always come back to him after he'd pulled stuff like that before. It always worked. That's why he did it. How was he supposed to have known about the occult mechanics of moving between dimensions? About all of Dr. Johnson's magical secrets, about the fact—well known by her and her people, whoever they were—that when you landed somewhere else, the soul could either overwhelm or be overwhelmed, and Jay—the Jay at the center of the gigabytes of precious memories that had just been poured into Matt's head—was trapped, dormant, locked beneath the domineering soul of a jerkwad rockstar who had called his fucking security on him, Matt, his best friend.
He was positive that if not for that unpredictable factor then his plan would have absolutely worked. He felt stupid and sorry for himself and he just wanted to talk to Jay. He couldn't do this on his own. He always thought he could and then it turned out he obviously fucking couldn't.
A week ago, a day ago, even, if he'd been sitting in this bedroom feeling sorry for himself like this he'd have put on one of Jay's songs, the familiar sound of his voice the only thing in the world that could reliably make him happy.
But now the thought made him sick. It would mean giving up, somehow. It would mean accepting that this world was the right one, the real one. Which it wasn't. He had known this whole time, he reflected, that something was wrong, that this wasn't the way things were supposed to go for him, and now there was proof, in the form of the mind and memories of this other Matt, which as the dust of integration settled were ceasing to be other in any meaningful way, they were simply his memories the same way that the memories of Ethan, Ben, and Michael were his.
Their voices were filtering up from below now, excited jabbering about the upcoming Jay McCarrol World Tour. In his years of fandom Matt had always resisted following Jay around tour before now; with him particularly reluctant to leave Toronto—for complicated reasons relating mostly to never wanting to stray too far from the places where he remembered being with Jay—the band had just focused on their cover set and lots of gigging and catching all of Jay's local shows.
But there was an RV parked out on Queen Street that hadn't been there yesterday. And Matt had, here, a somewhat better financial situation than he did in the other timeline (how had he let it get that bad? he found himself self-admonishing) and he had no job and three friends here who'd help him, and one more out there who needed help, badly, but just didn't know it yet.
"Okay, okay, new plan, guys!" he shouted, rushing down the stairs and launching himself into the living room. "Pack your bags! We're hitting the road!"
As Jay entered the tour bus, his band members gave him the usual cursory glances and silent nods. They'd become a little skittish around him towards the end of the sessions for the last album, but he was really trying to do better, be better, for this tour. He had his therapist and a psychiatrist on speed dial. And a psychic and a priest, and a rabbi, for good measure.
He beckoned to Luke, who departed the ongoing conversation about Meet Me In The Bathroom with an unecessarily dramatic sigh and came to sit next to Jay on the bed in the back, out of view of the others.
"You good?" Luke asked.
"Yeah, I'm good. Just…"
"Just?"
"Last night. It was weird. That guy… Matt. I'm a little worried. More than a little. I couldn't sleep."
Luke raised an eyebrow. "You think he's gonna, what? Get a gun? Track you down and John Lennon you?"
"Stop. I mean. I don't know. We are going to America… I don't know. God."
"Did you tell Reid?"
Jay shook his head. "I don't want to bother him with this. It's, like… personal, I guess."
Luke lifted a hand to Jay's face. Jay closed his eyes and breathed. They hadn't slept together since the last tour—since the last time Jay had screamed at him, told him to stay the fuck away, and Luke had slapped him, hard, and told him that he needed to stop being such a fucking abusive shithead or Luke would put his ass on blast anonymously on Deuxmoi.
Jay didn't even really like him. He was a great guitarist but his voice was annoying and he could be a real brat and he had too many strong opinions. But he was the closest thing Jay had to a real friend these days. And he was loyal.
"I won't let that man get anywhere near you," Luke said, very seriously. "I promise. He'd have to shoot me first."