entrancelogs | + Let's go for a dreamwalk! + [OPEN PLOT CATCH-ALL]

He's trying not to let his expression screw up in distress when she rips the velcro free from the cuff and straps it around his upper arm. He shivers as the cuff starts to compress, despite her urges that he just relax so that it will go by faster. It never goes by faster. And the man isn't going away.

The doctor tuts, managing to make his high blood pressure ("elevated heartrate") sound like something that's his fault, like he's personally responsible for not staying calm despite the presence of a man who isn't supposed to be here standing there and watching him.

"All right," she says, the disapproving twist still not wholly erased from her tone. "Arm out, Timothy. And try to relax, this time."

He can't look when she slides the needle into the crook of his elbow, and the loop of plastic tubing starts to fill with red.

He can never look.

He's starting to feel dizzy anyway.

The needle digs into the flesh of Tim's arm, and Jay nearly gags.

He hasn't seen a needle in years, but this is enough to remind him how much he hates them. Always scared to get his shots, that Jay. If he'd just relax, this would go much easier.

He glances back, sees the doctor slip the vial out from the tubing with a soft pop, sees red against yellow, and he has to focus on the ceiling.

Pull yourself together.

It takes entirely too long. She has to repeat the process once more when it turns out she didn't get the right vein, or...or something. He's not actually sure why. He just keeps his arm held out obediently, even when the air turns muzzy with cotton and his temples pound and he can't breathe in through his nose anymore.

"All right," says the doctor, the words distant, as though being heard from underwater. She pinches the site of his skin and the needle slides out easily, cleanly, and with practiced motions she tapes a little patch of gauze to the point of red that remains. "All done. You did great, Timothy."

He doesn't feel like he did great. He doesn't feel -

His head's spinning, and the strange man is still there.

The doctor manages to steady him before he keels over completely, and gently eases him down so he's lying on the cot. His heart thuds a stuttering, double-time beat, as if realizing that it's pumping less than its fair share of blood.

"Just lie down and breathe, okay?"

He's breathing. He's breathing.

But he's also craning his neck, scanning the room to see if he's alone.

(He isn't.)

Just lie down and breathe, okay?

The words and the sound of tiny lungs hyperventilating are enough to tear Jay's attention away from the ceiling. Tim's looking straight at him, pale and shaky and he's not a monster, so why is Tim looking at him like that?

(Jay knows why. It's because he's not real.)

"It's alright," Jay snaps, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Then the guilt sets in. Tim's just a kid. He's scared. He doesn't need Jay yelling at him.

"I mean..." He runs a hand through his hair, scratches at the back of his head. "Sorry. You're doing good."

The doctor's writing something down - cross-checking his current prescription with prescriptions they've already tried, and he's not going to do anything other than lie there, and flinch when the man speaks, again. He's clearer than most, and he isn't going away. He won't go away.

The doctor starts to say something, but it doesn't breach the fog that's clouded his brain. Her words don't cut with the same precision that Jay's do. He isn't going away. It almost feels like he's getting clearer.

"It might take a few more tries," the doctor's saying, "but eventually, we'll get it right. I'm going to put in the order for your new prescription, and we'll see how this one goes. Okay?"

She phrases it like a question, but he knows it's anything but. He doesn't have any choice but to nod, a fractional, miserable jerk of his chin, and the doctor looks, briefly, satisfied.

"You did really well today, Timothy," she says. "Just wait right there, all right?"

Where else is he going to go?

Jay watches as the doctor leaves, waits until he'd be out of earshot if not for the obvious.

He gives Tim a moment. Somehow, the kid looks even worse off than before, his chest barely moving as he lies flat on the cot.

"Hey." He doesn't get close this time, forcing himself to keep his back flat against the wall. "How're you...holding up?"

Why can't he just leave him alone? He's worse than the tall man - at least he doesn't stick himself into Tim's head for great long stretches of time like that. He can't get away from him and now he can't get away from this man, either.

Tim covers his face in his hands, but he can still feel him there, in the room with him.

"...go away."

The plea is unspoken, but it leaks through regardless.

It isn't a punch in the face, but somehow this hits harder. Tim's trapped here. He can't just leave; all he can do is cover his face in his hands and beg Jay to leave him alone.

He has to get out of here. That much is abundantly clear.

But he can't leave yet.

"I've just got one question, and then I'll...and then I'll leave."

He'd ask if that's okay, but he knows in his gut it isn't. He's interrogating a literal child who can't escape even though it's clear he wants to, but Jay can't leave empty-handed. He can't.

"If I'm not the right one, what does the 'right one' look like?"

The white of one eye appears between the trembling cage of his fingers, staring at Jay in blind terror. For a long moment, he's either shocked into silence to too far buried in his own panic, in the pound of blood into his brain and the wavelengths of his own dismay, to answer.

But answer he does.

"...he says not to tell anyone," he whispers. The words are barely audible. "He'll make it hurt if I do."

What is he doing? What the hell is he doing?

"Look, I don't...I don't want you to get hurt." And that makes any of this better? Jay digs his nails into the skin of his arm as he continues. "How about if I just...ask a question, and then you nod 'yes' or 'no'. Then you're not telling me anything."

It's kid-logic, and Jay's not sure if it's an actual way around the restriction or just a way to convince a scared child to play along.

He isn't leaving. He isn't fading away, or turning around, or anything. He can't do anything but lie there, prone and too dizzy and faint to get up and try and move, too terrified of the doctors with their clipboards and their murmurs of words that they think he can't hear, that don't make sense because he's not delusional, he's not, he's not.

Maybe if he listens to him, he'll leave. Just like how he listens to the tall man.

If he listens to them and do as they say, they leave. They'll all leave him alone and he can tell the nurse to call his mom and tell her that he's doing better, at long last.

That feeble hope is enough lift his chin, even slightly.

It starts with a nod, or a shake of his head.

Just do what the strange man asks.

"...okay."

Okay.

This is happening.

There's still time to call it off. There's still time to leave, but he can't. Not when he's this close.

His arm stings, but he doesn't let go.

"Okay." Jay forces himself to look at Tim. "The 'right one'. Is he...tall? Taller than me?"

He knows.

Breath frozen in his throat, he hardly dares budge. He doesn't blink, and he doesn't look away. He can't. He can't because he knows and the impossibility of him knowing -

He isn't real. You have to remember. Of course he knows, because he's a part of your head, Timothy, just like every other paranoid delusion you've tried to shake loose from your brain. Everyone nesting in the bare crook of your skull, and of course they'd all start sharing.

Slowly, hesitantly - Tim nods.

Tim freezes, eyes locked open in terror. They have to be thinking of the same thing. Jay doesn't need to ask any more questions, because he wouldn't get a reaction like that from anything else.

Would he?

"And...and the face, is it...?" Jay unhooks his fingers from his other arm, holding his hand up to his face to block his features. "Gone?"

Another nod, this one tighter and more certain. Just answer his questions, and get him out of here. Maybe for good. He looks like, sounds like, he already knows what it is he's asking about. He already knows what it is, that thing that hovers in the corners of the room, in the corners of his sight where no one else can see.

(If he already knows, why's he asking?)

A twinge of an ache in his temples elicits a wince, some of the color draining even further from his already ashen face.

"Please."

Please go.

It's confirmed. Tim's been seeing that thing ever since he was a kid.

A terrified kid, begging Jay to please just leave him alone.

Jay steps back towards the door, puts his hand on the knob. Then, he hesitates. "Thanks, really. Thank you for...for talking to me."

That's not enough. Jay keeps talking, even though he's not sure what he's saying, only that he's sure he doesn't want the last thing this kid thinks about to be that thing.

"Look, you're...you're gonna be alright. It's gonna be bad--" Jay winces. "I mean, I assume, but, like. You're gonna end up almost as big as me. And you're gonna get out of here, I swear."

What choice did he have?

He wouldn't leave. It's not like he's a ghost with unfinished business, or a specter of an imaginary friend that tells him to do things he doesn't want to do. He's inexplicable, and he doesn't make sense, and he fizzles at the edges of Tim's vision without any reason for it.

It's going to be bad, he says, as if it isn't already. How much worse could it possibly get?

It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that he'd think that he'd ever get out of this place, or that he should plan for some imaginary future where he would.

Or that he'll even live long enough to see that happen.

He risks one more question.

"Please...please go?"

Jay's head dips sheepishly.

"Yeah, I should...I should go." Understatement of the century. "Sorry, I--"

This isn't time for an explanation. This is time to leave, before he screws Tim up any further.

"Bye."

He twists the knob and lets himself out, forcing himself not to look back.

+ Let's go for a dreamwalk! + [OPEN PLOT CATCH-ALL]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject