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Matt and Jay are ten. It's the week of Christmas, 1995. Doom has just come out on the PlayStation, and id Software is selling a promotional tie-in action figure that can only be purchased at the EB Games at the mall. Matt is beyond excited. He's positive he's about to get a PlayStation for Christmas, and has spent the last few weeks daydreaming about all the games he's going to play, including Doom. The Doom Slayer action figure looks really cool. Matt's been counting down the days until winter break, and now that they have time to pick them up, his seatbelt can barely hold him back with the amount of bouncing off the walls he's doing. Jay is almost as excited. He knows he isn't getting a PlayStation for Christmas, so he's very much looking forward to using Matt's.
Matt's mom barely slows the car to a stop before Matt is jumping out of the vehicle and dragging Jay with him.
The mall is packed to the brim. Seemingly everyone in Mississauga is here — children excited to be on break, exhausted mothers chasing after said children, teens looking for a place to hang out, and hurried last minute shoppers fill the walkways. Holiday music blasts overhead, pumping Christmas cheer throughout the building. Two small children run past with a shriek, followed quickly by a mother screaming at them to behave.
Jay starts to sweat, hands twisting in the hem of his shirt. The flourescent lighting bears down on Jay and makes him wince. Their destination is at the other end of the mall. In front of him, Jay watches as the mall stretches and twists into eternity. His chest feels tight. The crowd is so dense. He's sure he's going to lose Matt and never be able to find him again, and then he'll be all alone in the mall, forced to live there for the rest of time, surviving off of food court pretzels and lemonade and—
"Bird? What're you doing?" Matt is a few steps in front of him already, looking back expectantly. "Come on, dude! Thoey're gonna sell out if we don't hurry!"
It's hard to breathe in here — everyone else is sucking up all the oxygen. "Lotta people in here…" Jay mumbles, fidgeting with his hands and looking at the ground.
"Yeah, so?" Matt looks impatient and annoyed, bouncing on his feet. "It's Christmas."
"Gonna lose you…"
Matt makes a big show of groaning and rolling his eyes, "Here, Bird." He closes the distance between them and links their arms together. "Just don't let go of my arm and you won't lose me, 'kay?"
Jay clutches his arm and takes a deep breath, "Okay." He does feel a little better now that he has something to hold on to — now that he has Matt anchoring him.
Matt starts leading them through the crowd. He's confident and unbothered, slipping expertly between shoppers. As they maneuver, Jay can feel the other people bumping against him, colliding with shopping bags and unsupervised children. He's holding Matt's arm for dear life— it's the only thing keeping him from being adrift at sea. If he loses Matt now it's game over. He'll be lost at the mall, forced to listen to stupid Christmas music for the rest of time because he lost Matt and his ride home and—
"Ooh! Jay, look!" Matt sees something in a store window and bolts, his arm ripped from Jay's grasp.
The raft pops from under Jay. He's officially lost as sea with no hope of rescue.
The world starts to bend. He's in the middle of the crowd. Everyone is so tall, moving so fast, bustling with a Christmas spirit that's never felt farther from Jay in this moment. He can't see Matt anymore, can only see legs and bags and children that all morph into one big blur. He can't breathe. He's frozen in fear. Frosty the Snowman blares overhead, louder than anything he's ever heard. A nervous whine starts in the back of his throat and works its way out of his mouth. His fingers knit together and form tangled knots. He can't see, can't breathe, can't find Matt, can't find Matt, can't find Matt…
"Bird?" A hand on his back makes him jump.
Jay peeks an eye open. He comes back to his body to find that he's sitting on the floor, curled in a ball, rocking back and forth a little. His hands are over his ears. "Matt?" He's looking up at his best friend, who has thankfully, miraculously, somehow found him.
"Bird, what are you doing, man?" Matt's mad at him, eyes darting between Jay and all the people around them. He's practically vibrating. "I told you not to let go of me!"
"You ran ahead!" Jay feels about one second away from crying. He hates this mall with all its people and festive music and stupid bright lights. "You let go of me…" He pouts, putting his head back between his knees and pressing his hands harder over his ears. He doesn't want Matt to make fun of him for crying.
Jay can't see Matt anymore, but he sounds the way he does when a plan is actively going wrong and he's trying to find a new angle: flighty and frantic. "Ahh, okay, Bird, we gotta move, alright? I think I see a cop." He tries to put his hands on Jay's shoulders, but Jay yells and shrinks in even further on himself.
Matt's voice gets closer to his ear. He still sounds mad, but less so, now. He's speaking slower, through gritted teeth, saying, "We gotta move out of the middle of the walkway because you're freaking eveyone out and someone's gonna call that mall cop over to kick us out, and then we'll never get our Doom Slayers, okay? Bird? You want your Doom Slayer, right?"
Jay nods miserably into his knees.
"Okay, great! So can we move out of this crowd so we can go get them? I won't let go of you, okay? I promise." Matt kneels down in front of him and removes Jay's hands from his ears so he can hold them. Jay looks up at him with wet eyes. "Can we get out of this crowd, please?"
Jay takes a deep breath and nods and stands up. Matt leads him quickly out of the crowd and over to a hallway meant for staff. Jay sits back down and curls up immediately, his back to the wall. He feels exhausted. The holiday music is still blasting overhead, so he puts his hands back over his ears. He doesn't feel very talkative anymore.
Matt leans against the wall and catches his breath. He peeks around the corner and sees the mall cop heading in the opposite direction. Phew. He lets Jay sit there and collect himself, observing the way he's covering his ears. He really does look scared. Slowly, the empathy subroutine in Matt's brain kicks on. He sits down next to Jay and bumps their shoulders together lightly.
"Busy in here, huh?"
Jay nods into his knees.
Matt watches the shoppers go by. All of Mississauga must be here today. Somewhere, a kid shrieks, high-pitched and ear-piercing. The holiday music is still playing. "Too loud?"
Jay nods again.
"Yeah, I hate Christmas music, too." He scuffs a shoe across the lino. "Fuckin' weirdos. I bet Frosty the Snowman touched those kids."
Jay doesn't answer, not that Matt expected him to. He watches his friend some more and then scans the nearby stores. He forms a plan. "Stay right here, okay, Bird? I'll be right back, I promise."
Jay's head shoots up for the first time all conversation and he stares at Matt with wide, panicked eyes.
Matt starts pulling a sale standee from the nieghboring store the few inches it needs to cover up Jay's position. "I promise I'll be right back. No one's gonna bother you here, alright? You're hidden. No concerned moms, no mall cops. I'll be gone five minutes. Ten, tops. And then we can go to EB Games and get our action figures and I'll call my mom to pick us up and we can go back to my place, okay? And we can play all the video games we want."
Jay narrows his eyes but ultimately nods. Matt finds himself breathing a sigh of relief.
He scrambles to his feet, "Stay put, I'm serious. I'll be right back."
Jay spends the time that Matt is gone with his eyes squeezed shut. His hands don't leave his ears. It's still hard to breathe, but easier than it had been in the crowd. He tries to distract himself until Matt comes back by seeing how long he can hum for before he has to breathe.
"Birdie, hi," Matt returns after an indeterminate amount of time, nudging his foot with his own to get his attention. When Jay opens his eyes, he sees Matt taking the plastic wrapping off a box. He pushes on his ears as the plastic crinkles gratingly. "Here," Matt says, opening the box, removing its contents, and then quite literally tossing the trash over his shoulder. "Try these,"
He's holding headphones. The kind that fit all the way over his ears, even if they're not as chunky as the kind Jay has back at home (his mom had bought him another pair after Matt had destroyed the first. Jay doesn't wear them as often as he used to, but he still uses them when things get too overwhelming, even if Matt makes fun of him). The sounds of the mall are muffled about as much as they were before, but at least now he has his hands free. He takes a second to get acclimated, breathing deeply. He rubs his hands up and down his knees a couple times. It helps.
Matt is standing above him, anxious to see if his plan had worked. He'd heisted the headphones out of a nearby store. It hadn't been very hard — it had been fun, even. Still, he'd like to know if it had been worth it. "Well? Do you like them?"
Jay nods. Once to his knees, and then, after a moment of consideration, a second time more confidently to Matt's face.
Matt breaks into a huge grin. "Wicked! Can we go to EB Games now?"
Jay nods again and picks himself up.
"Don't let go of me this time."
Jay glares daggers at him, but Matt just keeps grinning like a fox.
They make it through the second half of the mall without incident. Jay holds tight to Matt's arm the whole way, still nervous, but the headphones were definitely helping. They let him block out the noise of the crowd a little, and focus on Matt leading the way.
The Doom Slayers are awesome. Matt raves about just how awesome they are the whole ride home, his mom listening politely but absently from the driver's seat. They spend the rest of the afternoon on the couch in Matt's basement. Matt plays Chrono Trigger on his SNES with the volume on low for Jay, who is content to watch him until he feels well enough to take the headphones off. He takes a nap on Matt's shoulder until his mom shows up to take him home.
The whole ride back, Jay grins wide. He can't stop talking about his new action figure and how good Matt is at Chrono Trigger.