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

[mviw]

Who: Everyone who wants to participate!
Where: The Mindscape (and elsewhere in reality, if specified)
When: September 6th through September 8th
Rating: PG-13 to R for potentially disturbing, violent, or dark subjects.
Summary: Thanks to an explosion on the third floor, every time a person falls asleep, they enter the Mindscape...

The Story:
Plot information is here!

Comments

[postictal]

"Brian?"

Tim's entrance into the kitchen might be comedic, if he were someone capable of recognizing humor in such things: hair still stuck up on end, wet towel trailing behind him, bare feet still thawing from their contact with the rain-chilled pavement, his expression settled into a dull, blank sort of confusion in which his mind simply refuses to put the pieces together properly.

Brian has now started to hum as he rips open the plastic packaging within and starts to tip the pizza rolls out onto the tray. One of them cracks sharply when it slides across the tray and lands on the floor, and Brian is swift to scoop it up and replace it with its fellows, having decided the five second rule still applies.

"Mhm?" he says, now studying the stove with an attentiveness it doesn't wholly deserve.

"What, uh...what the hell're you doing?"

Brian apparently decides that trying to figure out how to work the oven at 1AM is too much, and starts rummaging through the cupboards in search of a plate.

"Making pizza rolls."

"Uh-huh," says Tim, mechanically. "Uh. Why?"

Brian shrugs as he transfers pizza rolls from tray to plate and proceeds to slide the entire lot of them into the microwave.

"'Cause I'm wired, and you're wired, and I'm hungry. Are you hungry?"

Tim glances from the microwave, humming as it begins its arduous, ill-advised task in heating a mess of frozen pizza rolls, to Brian, who's now replacing the tray as though he didn't just dump a bunch of ancient pizza rolls across its burnt-brown surface, and then down to the floor. His feet are still freezing, and his hair is still wet. The rainwater still soaks his shirt into clinging to the curve of his shoulders.

"...yeah," says Tim. "Okay."

He guesses he's pretty hungry after all.

[burntvideocassette]

Jay doesn't think he's hungry, though he's not sure if it's the lack of a body or just the fact that he's never been great at judging that stuff.

Still, watching the plate spin in the microwave is oddly engrossing. The times he's had pizza rolls instead of a proper meal (more than he'd like to admit), he's not sure if he's ever had them in the stove. Too long, too much effort, not worth it. It's food either way.

He glances back at Tim. Tim looks freezing. Jay wonders how long it'll take him to get another towel. Or change. Or something.

[postictal]

Brian grins at that, as though he's scored a personal victory, forming one hand into a fingergun that he jabs in the direction of what is possibly the most well-loved and well-used item in Tim's possession, with the arguable exception of some of his older instruments: his coffeemaker.

"Whaddaya say? No sleep tonight?"

Tim teeters on the edge of something for a moment longer before he finally huffs out through his nose - the closest he gets to a laugh - and drags the towel to drape it up over his neck. As if that's any kind of deviation from the norm, honestly.

"Y'know responsible students would be pulling all-nighters to...study," he says wryly.

"We can study. I mean, you can. You've got your music room and everything." He waves dismissively in the vague direction of said room. Tim snorts as he stumps out from the room. Time to change into something a little more appropriate for a bullshit all-nighter.

[burntvideocassette]

Is Jay ready for an all-nighter? He's already dreaming, he thinks, so...maybe?

While Tim gets changed, Jay hangs around Brian. Coffeemaker might not be as engrossing as the microwave, but it's something, and Jay's curious to see if Brian stays just as constantly on without Tim around or a camera rolling.

Is this hanging out? Not really. Is it getting to spend time with a long-dead friend classmate whom Jay genuinely sort of misses? He thinks so.

[postictal]

In Tim's mind? He certainly does. It's not that he thinks Brian is still just...Brian all the time, when no one's watching - it's the absence of anything else to fill the void. It's lacking a "real" Brian to paste over the guy who tips a generous amount of coffee grounds into the maker and fills it up, hitting the button to start it up with a low grumble of heating water.

"You're a bad influence." Tim's eyes itch with exhaustion that he knows won't go away, but now that they've agreed to partake in this sleepless endeavor, there's no point in backing out now. Not like he'd sleep very well even if he bothered to try.

"Thank you." Brian beams, brandishing the plate of pizza rolls with a flourish, like he's presenting them for critique on a cooking show. "Soup's on."

"I'm not eating those until I'm positive that it won't feel like I'm trying to eat a live coal." Tim eyes the still-steaming pizza rolls warily. "Are you sure those even heated up all the way through?"

Brian's lips pinch together in mock indignation.

"You doubt my ability to microwave a decent meal?"

"I doubt that my microwave is up to scratch," says Tim, jerking his chin in the direction of the offending appliance. "Microwaves only have two settings: Aactic, and volcanic."

[burntvideocassette]

Jay snorts under his breath. There's an art to microwaving pizza rolls. You have to practice. You have to get to know your microwave.

Or you have to get used to just sucking it up and eating half-frozen, half-blisteringly hot pizza rolls. Your choice. Jay's done both.

aactic

[postictal]

"Your loss," says Brian, who bites into the first pizza roll he snags between his fingertips - and immediately starts hooting in apparent agony when the interior scorches the roof of his mouth.

One of Tim's hands jerks up over his mouth, but there's no mistaking it - underneath it all, he's actually biting back a smile.

"You dumbass," he manages, the word both strangled and companionable. "The hell'd you expect?"

"Aaagh," says Brian, bolting to the sink to spit up the offending incendiary contents.

Tim takes advantage of his friend's lapse in focus to double over in his seat, shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth.

antaactica

[burntvideocassette]

Jay winces when Brian bites into the dangerously hot pizza roll, but he's immediately distracted by Tim pulling a hand up to cover his mouth. Is Tim...smiling?

Then he calls Brian a dumbass, and Jay's sure of it. This might be the best time he's ever seen Tim have. Ever. In all the years? months they've known each other.

These two seriously were good friends, just like Tim said. They could hang out, tease each other about overheated pizza rolls, even crack a smi--now Tim's laughing. Tim Wright is actually laughing.

Jay screws his eyes shut, hit with a wave of homesick nostalgia so strong he's not even sure it belongs to him.

shut the hell your mouth

[postictal]

"Screw you, man," says Brian, still breathing in that slightly misshapen, halting way that people do when they eat something that's far too hot and don't want to spit it out. "I'm dying over here."

"I told you." Tim Wright is laughing, and what's more, he actually sounds like he means it. "That stuff is molten."

Brian makes a sound that sound suspiciously like retching as he yanks Tim's trash bin out from the cupboard under the sink - and then proceeds to stick his head directly beneath the kitchen sink and turn it on.

"Ech."

"God. Look, here."

Tim nudges the freezer open, shoveling a handful of ice cubes into an empty glass and thrusting it in Brian's direction. Brian opts to skip over the process of filling the glass with water, and instead tosses his head back and sucks two ice cubes into his mouth, moaning with pained relief.

"Thanmkf."

Tim manages to smooth his expression back into something resembling his typical deadpan look - though a hint of a smile still flickers at the corners of his lips.

"Don't mention it."

[burntvideocassette]

This is genuinely entertaining, in a way most of the old footage wasn't. Jay wishes they'd been able to bring half this chemistry into the movie with them.

At least they weren't necessarily the worst actors on set. If Alex had actually given him any lines, Jay suspects he would've been granted that honor.

Maybe Brian will come to Wonderland, still stained from whichever wound finally killed him--maybe Alex got him with the stick of rebar, like he did with Tim--but stitched back together the way Jay was.

Maybe he'll be better at making pizza rolls.

[postictal]

Brian's laughter chimes distantly, but it's like hearing it through a thick pane of glass, and the image of him crunching on a couple of ice cubes starts to hum as it fades and fogs around the edges.

There's a skip, like a tape hitching at a stop-start.



...



"So, whaddaya say?" There's a young man sitting across from Tim, sprawled on the carpet of what Tim modestly calls his "music room" - an otherwise quite bare room in his apartment, with only the black squares of instrument cases and the upright stand of a keyboard to deviate from the nondescript blankness of the walls.

The memory begins to play again.

"I can't believe you talked me into this," says Tim. He's plucking disconsolately at the stringed instrument in his hands - a banjo, for anyone who can recognize it - without much enthusiasm. "I said I'd try it. I didn't think I'd actually get the part."

"Yeah, well." Brian glances from side to side before lowering his voice as though in confidence - despite the fact that they're very obviously the only two people here. "I don't think anyone else actually tried out."

[burntvideocassette]

Oh.

Tape's ended.

Jay's not sure why he expected anything else.

Slowly, Jay backs out of the music room, out of the apartment, and shuts the door behind him.