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The first thing that Jay notices upon waking up is the smell. It’s smokey in a rotten sort of way, and in his half-conscious state he sinks a little into a memory of his kitchen at 13 after Matt had nuked his Magneto action figure in the microwave. The smell had taken forever to scrub out, and Jay hadn’t been allowed to play Dungeon Master on the family computer for a whole month.
The second thing he notices, opening his eyes and preparing to yell down the stairs at Matt for melting his toys again, is that someone has put a creepy yellow filter on the sky. His irritation melts into confusion and then shifts right back to annoyance. This must be for a plan, some elaborate ruse that Matt dreamed up during the night, and Jay’s just too groggy to make sense of it. He drags himself up out of bed, coughing and wrinkling his nose.
“JAY! Jaybird!”
Footsteps come tumbling down the hallway and Jay’s door swings open into the wall with a bang before he gets halfway across the room. Matt’s in his pajamas still, and bouncing over to Jay’s window with a grin. He looks soft and delighted, like a kid on Christmas morning, and Jay’s heart does something stupid in his chest.
“Dude, holy shit, are you seeing this? It looks like freaking Dune out there!”
“Wait… this wasn’t you?” Jay asks, because Matt doesn’t seem like he’s doing a plan right now at all. He’s not even wearing his hat.
“This wasn’t- Jay. How the hell would this have been me?” Matt barks out a laugh.
Jay scratches at his face, shrugging. It’s still early and his fingers itch for the piano, brain never really waking up until his hands do.
“Okay, well, no. It wasn’t me. Obviously.” Matt swivels his head around to shoot Jay a look that’s equal parts condescending and amused. “It’s wildfire smoke from up north, blowin’ down and blocking out the city sun.”
Stretching his arms over his head, Jay ambles over to stand next to Matt at the window. “How North? Like, Muskoka?”
“Dude, way further than that,” Matt laughs.
“There’s… there’s more forests past Muskoka? I thought it was like… ice.”
Matt chuckles and reaches over to mess with Jay’s hair, wildly at first and then sort of just carding his hand through his bedhead. Jay doesn’t even care that Matt’s probably laughing at him, just kicks softly at his ankle a little for appearances sake.
“You dumbass. Hey! Remember when I melted Magneto to death?”
Jay sighs, “Yes, dude. I thought my mom was gonna kill you.”
“Hah! You’re crazy. Crazy, Bird. Your mom loves me.” Matt wiggles his eyebrows, attempting a leer, to which Jay feels nothing but a gentle kind of amusement.
He definitely doesn’t miss the days where a joke like that would send his blood boiling, palms itching. Matt’s put a lot of hours into softening his rougher edges– training the impulse to bite right out of him. Jay appreciates it.
Matt rocks forward on the balls of his feet, peering again out of the window. “I remember she got that um. That machine thing, y’know? For the air?”
Jay hums. He remembers that– it sucked in the Magneto air and washed it, or something. His mom would put it in his bedroom sometimes when his asthma was acting up. The name comes to him unbidded, from the deep recesses of his memory.
“An air-purifier.”
“Yes!” Matt snaps his fingers– startling Jay who takes a half-step back. His posture has straightened recognizably, a familiar energy suffusing him as he turns to grin at Jay. There’s a plan forming behind his eyes which will be impossible to stop once it gets rolling.
Jay coughs, again, and waves Matt towards the bedroom door. “Yeah, okay, just lemme get changed first. I’ll meet you in a minute.”
Matt bounds away towards his own room, practically skipping as he shouts, “This’ll be the one, Jay!”
Smiling to himself, hopeful at the potential they’ll play a show tonight, Jay takes another look out his window. It looks downright apocalyptic, the light filtered strange and dystopian. He’s half expecting to see a Mad Max style car chase down Shaw Street. The air in his bedroom is hurting his nose and itching his throat, so he wrestles with the old window and gets it propped open enough for a gentle breeze to get circulating, and moves to change into some pants and a button up– all the better to plan with.
—
Matt is out of his flannel PJs by the time Jay joins him in the living room, hopping from foot to foot on their sofa. He’s got his signature hat-jean-blazer combo going, which means he’s well into the swing of the day. Jay is briefly caught up in the absent twirling of a dry-erase marker between deft fingers before he averts his gaze and heads to the piano.
“Give me something light, um, airy! Hah!” Matt beams at him, gesturing encouragingly.
Jay launches into the music, combining lingering low chord progressions with something plucky in a higher octave. He pictures wind blowing in off the lake, whooshing overtop busy Toronto streets. Plays Matt’s hat being swept off his head, golden tufts flickering in the air.
“Yes, exactly!” Matt chirps, bouncing a little before turning to scribble a title across the board. Jay tinkers with the tune a bit, letting the staccato loop as he turns to catch what Matt’s writing.
“Bottled Air Plan! We–” he underlines this and hops down to the first bullet point, “–get ourselves one of those nifty little air-purifiers from Canadian Tire.”
“Oh!” Jay grins, lets the music take on a bit of a science-fiction feeling.
“We, uh, purify a bunch of air, right? And then bottle it up–” Matt makes dramatic sucking noise, drawing a little bottle adorned with a smile.
“We bring air… to the Rivoli?” Jay interjects. He's not following, what would they need bottled air for?
“Yes, man! We go ‘oh hey, did you notice how the air outside is poison? Well we, Nirvana the Band, have got the solution, and all for the low low price of a single show!’”
Jay stops playing, turning fully on the bench to look at Matt. “Wait, what? Is the air poisonous?”
“Oh my god Jay, where have you been? Forest fires! Smoke! Smog! The heat-death of the planet! The sky is fucking yellow, man!”
Yeah, right, Matt had been saying something about that earlier, hadn't he? It doesn’t really feel like he’s gonna die of heat anytime soon, and besides– they have a pretty good air conditioning unit. Jay shrugs, giving his best, most beseeching look, the one that works like a cheat-code against Matt’s irritation. Matt sighs dramatically and gives up on the rest of his tirade, hopping down from the couch and over to the piano, where he extends a hand to Jay.
“Let’s get this show on the road, dude. We can hash out details on our way to the store, okay? Who knows how long this smoke’ll last for.”
Jay nods amicably and lets Matt pull him up, swaying slightly into his friend as he stands. Matt’s hand is warm and kind of sticky, and holding it plucks at the happy little strings of his heart. He stays close behind Matt even once he’s let go, hoping to squeeze the most out of the warm feeling in his chest.
—
Any lingering sense of calm Jay feels is smothered as soon as they step out the front door into the post-apocalyptic daylight. The air out here smells worse, way worse, and the yellow sky makes his insides squirm.
Matt, somehow undisturbed, has already bounced ahead, verbally ruminating on the differences between passive and active air-purifiers. Jay trails after him, moping. He drags his feet all the way down to their streetcar stop on King Street, coughing and wincing at the tightness in his chest.
“Matt, I really don’t feel so good.”
Matt spins, leveling a disapproving look at him. “Nobody feels good right now, Jay, look around!”
Obligingly, Jay looks at his fellow pedestrians, who all seem to be just as miserable as he is. Maybe Matt’s right and he’s overreacting. He turns back to his friend, who’s idling in place, rocking back and forth on his heels. His skin has a faint orange hue under this weird new sun, and the unfamiliarity of it makes Jay itchy.
“Fine, just. Can we be quick this time?” He whines, pleading.
It’s a tall order, asking Matt to limit his sidequests, but Jay follows it up with a cough that sounds strained and feels scary. Matt stares at him as he tries to catch his breath, head cocked and eyes a little too wide. Jay can tell he’s half here, listening to what Jay’s saying, and half tilted into the rabbit-hole of his latest plan. He wants to tug him over into reality, and can tell that the right combination of words in just the right tone will have him ushering the two of them home for a video-game day, plan postponed.
Jay’s loading up another complaint, angling his head in a way that he knows Matt finds pathetic enough to surrender to, when a streetcar pulls to a screeching stop beside them. Matt’s eyes jump from Jay to the road, the rolling LED display reading 504, and then his hand is on Jay’s back and he’s being led onto the streetcar and into the next step of the plan.
—
The Liberty Village Canadian Tire is a bit like a spaceship, Jay thinks. Bigger on the inside, with escalators and electronic product kiosks that are like something out of a Jetson’s cartoon. There’s a plant section and a bike section and, inexplicably, a Party City. The two of them frequent this location pretty often to buy supplies for schemes, so Jay can pretty confidently say that it’s never been this empty before.
“Matt, is it just me or is it like a ghost town in here?” Jay feels his shoulders creeping up around his ears. Everything about today has been weird and different and unpredictable. Tugging on the hem of Jay’s blazer to get him to follow down the right aisle, Matt scoffs.
“You’re such a wuss, Bird. Everyone’s probably just staying at home to avoid the toxic fumes.”
Right, yeah, toxic fumes. Jay really wishes he was staying at home, too, and not wandering this dizzyingly expansive Canadian Tire. The air in here is cleaner, he thinks, but his lungs still feel like someone is clenching their fist around them whenever he tries to breathe too deeply. He’s glad he’s not the one on vox, because if they manage to play a show tonight he isn’t sure he’ll have any air left in his body to speak.
They stop in the homegoods sections, and Matt looks at the sparse selection of air-purifiers with grave intensity. He debates the two options available out loud, and Jay tunes him out, scuffing his sneakers against the dirty linoleum floor and trying to psychically project his discomfort into Matt’s brain so they can be done quickly. Man, it’s really starting to get stuffy in here. Is it possible that they’ve used up all the good air and are starting to breathe the bad stuff instead? He coughs against the itch in his throat, which turns out to be a terrible idea because when he tries to breathe in again afterwards it’s about a hundred times more difficult.
“Jay, dude, are you okay?” Matt’s risen from where he’d been crouching, examining the product labels. He grabs Jay’s shoulders and shakes him a bit.
“Is it getting- um- hard to breathe in here?” Jay wheezes, strained.
“Uhhhhh, okay, y'know what, let’s go home Jaybird. You sound… not good. Like– bad, even.”
Grabbing one of the air machines seemingly at random, Matt rushes them towards the self checkouts and then out onto the street. It’s a blur of light and sound, really, Jay doing his best to keep from panicking at how painful his chest feels and how he’s pretty sure the inside of his nose is gonna smell like campfire smoke forever.
“We’ll just get an Uber, ‘kay Birdie?” Matt fiddles with his phone with one hand, anxiously tapping on the purifier box with the other. “It’ll be faster. You’re fine, though, right? You’ll be fine.”
Matt continues talking, repeating vaguely positive and overly assertive affirmations about Jay’s wellbeing even after their ride shows up. He crams himself right next to Jay in the backseat, and Jay responds by gripping onto his knee through the hole in his stupid jeans. He might be digging his nails in a bit, but Matt doesn’t complain or shake him off so it’s probably fine.
“Jesus, man, the air really got to you, eh? I forgot about your gay ass asthma. Should have brought your medicine, probably. Egg on me!” Matt’s rambling gives him something to focus on, at least. “Just take little breaths, Jaybird, that’s it. Fuck, you sound bad. No, sorry, please don’t freak out. Stop freaking out! God, you’re such a nerd.”
Matt chatters the whole way home, a firm weight against Jay’s side that is helpless to resist folding into for security. When they pull up in front of a familiar red-brick facade, he tumbles out of the car and up the steps well before Matt, imagining a forcefield around their house that will clear his lungs the second he crosses the threshold.
It doesn’t work, and when Jay gets inside and feels the exact same way he crashes bodily into the wall, unable to think any further. He tries to take a big breath but the air has gone all evil on him and gets caught halfway into his lungs. Tears prick at his eyes so he shuts them tight and covers them with his hands for good measure. His chest feels like something’s sitting on it– like Matt and all his stupid gym muscles are crushing him as tight as he can and ugh he doesn’t want to be thinking about this right now this is not helping.
Matt’s hands are on his shoulders, guiding him down into the couch. “Birdie, c’mon man, just breathe dude. Where’s your fucking- uh- puffy thing? Inhaler? Where’d you put it?”
Jay shakes his head, gasping. He doesn’t know, the stupid thing is so small and inconvenient it’s like it was begging to get lost.
“You don’t remember? No, of course you don’t–” Matt’s ranting follows him, unseen, as he frantically moves around their shared space. There’s the sound of objects thumping to the carpet and drawers being thrown open. “–It’s only the thing that keeps you alive Birdie, why would you need to know where it is, huh?”
More clattering and cursing, and then a frantic clamoring of footsteps up the stairs. Jay maybe blacks out for a second or two, because it seems like no time has passed at all before Matt’s in front of him again– presence marked by panicked huffing breaths that make Jay wonder if the air has poisoned them both.
“Here man, try this.” Big, fumbling hands grab Jay’s wrists and tug them not-so-gently away from his face.
There’s a hard, small shape being thrust into one of his palms and he recognizes the inhaler Matt got from back when he had COVID. It’s alien to him, the mechanics of this device so different from his own, and in his oxygen deprived state he has no idea what to do next. God he wishes he could breathe. This would all make so much more sense if he could breathe. He closes his eyes again and this time sees stars.
“Jay, c’mon man, are you stupid? Forreal?” Matt hisses, and his voice is taking on that pressured tone that means he’s deeply freaked out and trying to transmute the feeling into anger through sheer force of will. “Here, I’ll do it. Moron.”
Cool plastic presses gracelessly against Jay’s lips, shoving inside his mouth. He makes a startled, wheezy sound as his eyes fly open to see Matt’s pinched expression.
“Chill, man, I’ve got it,” He says, hand not holding the inhaler coming to rest on the back of Jay’s head to hold him in place. “Just breathe when I say, okay?”
Jay warbles a muffled agreement, and Matt does some weird twisty motion with the plastic that releases a familiar rush of sharp, tangy medication into his mouth.
“Alright, breathe in Jaybird,” Matt demands, and Jay does.
It’s not instant, really, though it might as well be. The physical relief and the anticipation of it are hard to separate, so Jay doesn’t bother. He imagines a Brick Breaker interface in his chest– the solid asthmatic squares being chipped away by Matt, or his Ventolin, or by both at the same time.
The plastic gets tugged away from his mouth and Jay blinks his eyes open. When did he close them again, anyways? Matt replaces it with his hand, covering Jay’s mouth with a sweaty palm.
“Just hold that in for a sec, right, Bird? Maybe, um, a couple secs? Not. Uh. I mean, like, seconds. Obviously. Shut up.”
Jay hums. He kinda wants to speak up and tell Matt that he knows how this works, thank you very much, but that wouldn’t really help his point. Unrelatedly, he doesn’t totally mind how firmly he’s being held in place, Matt’s hands bracketing him from both sides. He’s got a bare knee balanced on the couch cushion beside Jay’s thigh, and is leaning way over into his space in a way that makes him feel like he’s being wrapped up in a big warm blanket. Jay remembers how they used to make pillow forts in their basements during sleepovers– how Matt always fought to make them way too small so they had to curl up into each other in order to fit. He claimed it was for ‘structural integrity’, and Jay didn’t argue because then he’d have to admit he didn’t know what either of those words meant.
Matt’s hand lifts from his mouth. “Is that better, Jaybird? A little?”
Nodding, Jay exhales. He lets himself lean forwards, forehead resting on Matt’s sternum as he takes a deep, purposeful breath. A hand cups the nape of his neck, thumb rubbing fidgety patterns into his skin, tacky with nervous sweat.
“D’you need another dose?” Matt asks, once they’ve both calmed down a bit, tension settling.
Jay takes a testing breath in, lungs wheezing and crackling like T.V. static. He nods without sitting up, sorta just rubs his face against Matt. It feels nice, and he doesn’t make any move to get up.
“Okay. Okay,” Matt mutters, pulling him back a little with the hand at his neck. Jay doesn't really want to try figuring out the alien-inhaler, and he trusts Matt, so- whatever. He opens his mouth again, eyes slipping shut.
“Um. Sure. Right. Yeah that’s… um. Normal.” Matt sounds strained, kinda high-pitched. His hand leaves Jay’s neck to tilt his chin up instead, slotting the puffer back between his lips with an uncharacteristic mindfulness.
Breathing in dutifully, Jay opens his eyes to see Matt staring down at him with an electric intensity. The backlight accentuates the glowing pink of his ears, his frazzled hair. When did he lose his hat? His eyes are as wide as saucers, not plates but from space, and deep as black holes. Dark matter. Jay smiles, breathes out.
“Thanks, Matt.”
“Um. No problem. Problemo. Yep.”
Jay sighs, “That sucked. The air shouldn’t get to be on fire like that, man.”
“Well it’s not- I mean. Yeah, no. It shouldn’t,” Matt rises from his position bracketing Jay, takes a step back from the couch. “Actually, y’know what, I’m gonna get this air cleaning thing set up. Can’t have half of the band succumbing to fucking. Uh. Consumption! Hah!”
He darts up the stairs, only stumbling a little, leaving Jay on the couch with the tang of Ventolin still on his breath.
—
“Jay, you are the dumbest man alive.”
“Hey!”
“No, seriously.” Matt says, whirling around to face Jay, air-purifier in one hand and the other anxiously rubbing at his forehead. He’s standing in the middle of Jay’s room, which has been invaded by the evil smoky outside-smell. “How could you have possibly thought it was a good idea to leave your window open to the noxious fucking vapours all afternoon?”
“Maaatt…” Jay crosses his arms, leaning against his bedroom doorframe petulantly.
“Oh my god dude, you shouldn’t even be in here! The toxins, Jay!” Matt leaps towards him suddenly, a manic, wild look in his eyes. He pushes Jay into the hallway, slamming the door to his bedroom behind them.
“Matt, it’s okay. I’m feeling better, see?” Jay cranes his neck, tries to catch Matt’s jumping gaze.
“No, no, we need to wash the air, Birdie. C’mon, my room,” Matt spins, grabbing Jay’s wrist and dragging him along to his own barely-used bedroom. Jay sighs. It’s pointless to intervene when Matt gets possessed like this– better to just hang on for the ride and hope it doesn’t take them anywhere illegal or flammable or to some awful combination of the two.
Jay doesn't get to spend much time in Matt’s room, anyways, so this is all a bit exciting. It’s not unlike the feeling he gets when Matt’s shirt rides up and he catches a glimpse of his boxer shorts or the pale skin of his stomach. Something only vaguely off-limits that he used to get to see all the time, back when they were younger and before Matt had gotten to be so weird about all the more vulnerable parts of himself.
He’s shoved towards an unmade bed while Matt fumbles with an overloaded extension cord under his desk, getting the air-purifier going. Jay sits, moving some scattered Magic cards out of the way so as not to crush them and risk Matt’s wrath. He watches as his friend, mumbling darkly to himself, gets the machine whirring and then moves to dump his laundry basket– shoving dirty clothes against the crack under the door. Jay lets this play out for a minute, until Matt starts saying something about finding duct tape and he decides it’s probably time to re-direct him a bit.
“Matt, c’mon. Come over here,” He calls, going for soothing and sailing right over the mark into pleading. He grabs at the edge of Matt’s blazer as he paces past, stopping him in his tracks. “I’m fine now, promise. Here, you can come check.”
Pulling Matt down to sit next to him, he tugs at his fidgeting hands and places them over his ribs, where he’ll be able to feel his lungs expanding and contracting. “See? Almost back to normal.”
Matt exhales– a terrible, trembling thing– and collapses like a puppet with its strings cut. His head knocks onto Jay’s shoulder with a painful thunk.
“You fuckin’ scared me back there, Bird.”
“I know, man, I’m sorry.”
Jay goes quiet to concentrate on breathing slowly, clearly. Matt is quiet, too, and Jay knows it’s so he can listen. After a minute or so Jay shuffles them backwards so he can lean against the headboard, taking Matt with him, who grumbles but readjusts accordingly; letting his head slide down to lay on his chest. Jay wraps an arm around him, because it seems like Matt’s in the mood to allow it.
“M’sorry for freaking out,” He mumbles eventually, words warm against Jay’s skin.
“Sorry for having an asthma attack,” Jay replies. Matt pinches him, but lightly, so Jay just squeezes him a little in response.
“I’m sorry for making you go outside,” Matt retaliates. “Let’s not do the plan today, okay? We can have a video-game-day instead. Would that… Would you like that?”
Jay smiles to himself, leans down and smushes his face into Matt’s tangled hair. “Yeah, can we?”
Matt nods, but doesn’t make any move to get up. That’s okay, Jay thinks, we can stay like this. The strange yellow light isn’t so scary from inside of Matt’s room, and he’s even getting used to the smell of smoke.