+ 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

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.