entrancelogs | knocked the wind out of my soul [open]

And what's his plan, huh? Steal a key off a doctor? Yeah, 'cause that should go over real well. The most he can do is comply and hope that Jay doesn't do something stupid - like ambush the nurse who's brought him food and, presumably, medication that is the exact opposite of what he should be taking given his current prescription. If he'd had to guess - some horrendous cocktail of antipsychotics, antidepressants, psychoactive drugs. The same sort of combination that did little for him in his old room, besides make his fingertips go jittery and his teeth chatter and his vision go spotty.

Withdrawal from his own prescription combined with an introduction of something as foreign as that into his system is bound to go over well for just about everyone. He could try spitting them out, but that might not work - not if they've wised up to him being a little troublemaker, huh?

He's not Timothy, not just some scared little boy huddled in the corner of the room anymore.

Running right up to the door would be the sort of thing that might be frowned upon. Maybe get him a look of disapproval, and - five minutes, while the nurse makes rounds to other rooms, while she leaves him alone so he can have a think about what he's done.

It has to be enough. He just needs her gone.

Tim bolts forward, knuckles slamming into the metal of the latch. Is it common for their patients (victims) to act this way, when it's time for dinner?

He has no idea. But it's a risk he's willing to take if it gets Jay out.

There's an echoing slam, enough to startle Jay into peering out from behind the cabinet.

The nurse must have recoiled from the noise, because as Jay catches sight of her, she trips backwards into the cart, sending it skittering back against the wall. The food (or whatever passes for food here) looks mostly intact, but Jay watches as a couple of small bottles shatter against the tile floor, leaving puddles of liquid and broken glass.

"Timothy!" she scolds, catching her balance.

After a moment, she moves to face the far end of the hall, and Jay flattens himself once more behind the cabinet.

There's a squeal, a rattle, and more footsteps. She's got the cart, and she's heading in Jay's direction.

It worked.

She's heading off. No food for people who misbehave and take the hardworking personnel off guard, huh? Good. Good. Tim rocks back, breathing hard, flexing his hand with a bracing pull of fingertips inward and out again. It aches, but it's nothing he can't handle. He's had worse.

He's always had worse.

He just has to hope that Jay had the presence of mind to fucking leave instead of sticking around and risking being caught, but since when has Jay had the presence of mind to do anything remotely strategic?

She's coming this way. Jay has a few options here: He can stay where he is and hope she doesn't spot him. He can step a couple feet backwards and out of the event.

Or he can get the keys.

As she steps in front of the cabinet, Jay lunges forward, wrapping one hand around her mouth and another around her wrist and tugging her back toward the wall. She tries to scream, tries to yank herself away, but for once, Jay's actually stronger.

This might be undermined by the fact that Jay just realized he's been repeating, "Sorry, sorry, sorry..." under his breath since he grabbed her.

"Look, just..." This is only barely working, and Jay knows it. "Just give me the keys, and you'll be fine."

Whatever the fuck is happening out there, Tim has no clue. There's the scrape and clang of the cart banging against the wall, murmured voices, but trying to grab at the latch yields nothing but further bruised knuckles and scratched fingertips. it's clear that something just happened. Hell if he knows what.

"Jay?" The word is hissed, whispered between clenched teeth. "Jay!"

The nurse must have heard, because the muffled noise she makes into his hand sounds an awful lot like "Jay?"

"Shh-shh, yes, it's me," Jay hisses, unsure how much longer he'll be able to keep this up. "I'm just here for Tim. I don't want--I don't want anyone to get hurt, I just--give me the keys."

She shifts, and he can hear them, rattling inside the left pocket of her skirt.

After a long silence, she nods, reaches into her pocket with her free hand, and elbows Jay hard in the stomach.

He doubles over instinctively, but goddamnit he's not giving up yet. He reaches for her pocket as she pulls away, and he just barely manages to feel cold metal against his fingers before the edge of the pocket pulls his wrist at an unnatural angle.

"Let me go!" she shouts loud enough for every guard, doctor, and probably patient in the building to hear. Jay feels something collide with his face (fist? elbow?) and she's off like a shot.

But--Jay realizes, half-sprawled on the tile floor--he's got the keys.

Someone's coming, someone's obviously coming, so he has to work fast. He scrambles over to Tim's door, shoving the first key he grabs into the lock before realizing they're all (thank god) numbered by room.

That's definitely the sound of a struggle out there. Tim presses his ear to the door, ignoring the way it chills at the skin of his cheek. There's the shuffle of feet, and then something that sounds suspiciously like a struggle. Slippershod feet shifting across the bleached tile, the clatter of the cart wheels rolling haphazardly as people bump into them, and then -

"Let me go!"

Running footsteps bolt past his door. Tim jerks back with such force that he ends up flat on his ass. But the jangle of keys rattling in the lock is unmistakable.

Son of a bitch.

He really did it.

No one else would be unlocking his door now if that weren't the case.

Regardless, Tim can't keep the disbelief from his voice as he says it again, louder: "Jay?

Jay takes a split second to peer through the window--Yep, still me somehow.--before matching the key number to Tim's door.

He talks as he fumbles with the padlock, an anxious mutter barely audible above the scraping metal of the lock against the door latch. "We don't have much time, but we don't have to--have to get far."

The padlock clicks open, and Jay finally tries to remember how to breathe like a normal person. Lock out of the way, latch slid open, door heavier than he expected, but he has to get it open, now, before the voices echoing off the walls get any closer.

The opens with a creak, and Jay's already
thinking about a little boy in a white room, begging the strange man to be quiet and leave him alone
reaching for Tim's arm. "We gotta go now, c'mon--"

He should be livid that Jay even bothered. That Jay did this, risked everything for Tim's sorry sake. As if Tim couldn't handle it. As if Tim hasn't handled worse, a million things a hundred times worse than this. Did he think he couldn't take it? Did he feel like he owed him?

"You dumbass," Tim hisses.

But he's moving. He's not about to waste this. Glancing both ways down the either side of the hall. There's the distant clamor of shouts and desperate insistences that mean the nurse has reached someone who's about to do something about - this.

Tim grimaces.

"Which way?"

Tim's calling him a dumbass, sure, fine, but at least he's moving.

"This way," Jay whispers, starting toward the end of the hallway with the storage cabinet. "Ten, fifteen feet. Shorter than it looks, but--"

A man in a white coat rounds the corner past the invisible edge of the event, flanked by a pair of orderlies.

The hallway's long. Jay and Tim can get there first. They have to get there first. Jay grabs Tim by the arm and breaks into a run.

Jay seizes his arm and books it. Tim has little choice but to follow. He's complicit now; no matter how desperately he tries to throw himself under the bus on Jay's behalf, it'll never make the repercussions, if they fail, easier to bear. For however longer this event lasts, they'll goddamn suffer for this.

Unless they can get out.

One of the orderlies tries to cut them off. A hand snaps around Tim's other wrist, and he lashes out with one leg and catches the poor bastard with a knee to the groin. He doubles over with a groan, but he doesn't let go.

"No no no no no."

The second orderly comes around from the opposite side, and Jay jerks back, crashing into Tim. Five feet, five feet and they're out. They can't be caught now; they're too close.

Still with a bony vice-grip on Tim's arm, Jay crosses in front of him, away from the still-standing orderly. He closes the gap between himself and the edge--maybe one foot left--pulling Tim after him at a new angle. Maybe it'll be harder for the grounded orderly to hold on this way. Or maybe Jay's just delaying the inevitable.

When you're caught up between a rock and a hard place, there's nowhere to go. Nowhere to go but out. The doctor has started to reach forward, joining in on the frantic game of tug-of-war with Tim caught in the middle. As if they know that they're so very close to escaping their grasp.

With so many hands on him, Tim does the only thing he can think to do.

He drops to the ground and becomes dead weight.

The sheer shock of it drags the other orderly down with a shout, abruptly redoubling their efforts to try and haul him upright. They get a heel to the nose for their efforts; the blow blunted by the fact that Tim's wearing nothing more than cheap hospital slippers, but the strength behind the blow is enough to send them reeling.

The doctor catches Jay by the upper arm, holding firm when Jay tries to yank it away.

And then Tim collapses, bringing the other orderly and Jay and the doctor down with him. For a second, Jay thinks it may be a seizure--How often does Tim need to take those pills?--but he's not shaking. Instead, he kicks out, nailing the orderly across the face.

The doctor watches the injured orderly recoil, bringing a hand up to cover his injured nose, and there's a moment when the doctor's grip on Jay goes slack.

Jay takes the opportunity, wrenching his arm away and shoving one-handed against the doctor's shoulder. It's enough to knock him off-balance, out of a crouch and into a sprawled, disoriented mess on the floor.

Jay shuffles backwards, toward the edge, facing Tim. It's hard to keep a grip on Tim at this angle, but he knows this'll be harder if he lets go. Instead, he reaches out with his other hand, grabbing for Tim's other arm but ending up with a handful of white fabric instead.

He stands up into a crouch, trying to leverage his weight, and pulls. It should be enough to get Jay himself across, but he's not leaving Tim.

"Just run!" he manages raggedly between clenched teeth, but Jay isn't running. He didn't have a problem with it before, did he? Run, and that was it - he'd run. So why is he refusing now?

One of them gets a hand underneath one armpit - the one he kneed, who's still wincing painfully, teeth now bared with a vengeance.

With his legs still kicking to push himself upright, his arms occupied trying to scramble for purchase, Tim does the only thing he can do.

He lurches forward and clamps his teeth around the patch of bared skin. With a yelp, the orderly releases him.

He lunges, shoulder slamming into Jay with enough force to take them over the invisible line Jay is so desperately straining to pull them both over.

With any luck, it might be enough.

It is.

Jay stumbles backwards, still holding onto Tim, still trying to put as much distance between them and the doctors as possible. The light changes, the color of the walls change, but they have to keep moving, they have to--

His back hits the ground hard, and when he tries to catch his breath, it doesn't come. He gags, tries again, until finally he manages a painful wheeze. Again. Again.

They made it. They're out. He can barely breathe, but they're out, and that was the point.

Jay tries to pull himself upright, but it just sends him into a fit of thin, wheezing coughs.

They spill out across the ground in an uncoordinated sprawl. Jay begins to cough, and the scratch of clothes Tim can finally recognize as his own, not the too-soft, light, cotton garments of a hospital. The sensation of fingertips around his wrist and shoulder fade; gone is the sting of antiseptic from his nostrils.

They made it.

He gets himself up on one elbow, winded.

"Jay. Jay." His heart is still thudding sickeningly in his throat, but he manages to get the other man's name out. "Hey. You okay, buddy?"

Jay nods mutely, gulping in a breath. He's fine. Just got the wind knocked out of him is all.

Jay never imagined he'd be so relieved to see Tim in another one of those well-worn button-downs. No wonder the guy never wears white.

"Yeah," he finally rasps out, fighting back another cough. "You?"

He'd laugh at the picture this paints. The pair of them, frantically asking if the other is okay. He'd laugh, if only he knew how. The sound that escapes his throat almost counts for such, hitching raggedly like a tape caught on rewind. It aches in his gut as he pushes himself into a vague sitting position.

"I'll live."

He actually tried.

And he actually succeeded.

The cloying wave of relief that chokes his throat has him shutting his eyes tight, just to breathe.

"...thanks."

"'S fine," Jay mumbles reflexively.

He'll live, which Jay guesses is enough. He'd 'live' if Jay left him back there, too. A lobotomy won't kill you.

Breathing comes a little easier now, so Jay tries again to pull himself upright. There's an awful twinge at the back of his head, and he winces, rubbing at the bruise.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jay spots his camera lying only a few feet away, so he snatches it up and winds back through the footage. No sign of the hospital; looks like it just spent the past twenty or so minutes taping the carpet. Figures.

Tim's still got his eyes closed. He's still breathing.

That's about when the full magnitude of what happened sinks in. They're out. Tim was locked up in a mental hospital, and Jay got him out. Tim told him to run, and he didn't this time, and now they're home (to an extent) and safe (to an extent) and for the life of him Jay can't remember a single time when this has happened before. He thought he saved Jessica, but that lasted all of a couple hours. He ran, he left Tim behind, and Tim got his head scoured out until there was almost nothing left. He knew Alex was acting strange, but he didn't say anything until it was too late; he just took his videos and waited until Alex was beyond help.

But he helped this time. No catch (yet). Tim's out. He's safe.

Jay takes a second, buries his head in his hands. Holds his breath.

Finally he speaks, his voice still a quiet rasp. "You wanna watch a movie?"

Like Jay, he needs...a minute. He just needs a minute to process it. To not be on his toes, thinking about the best way to go about a conversation with that many-headed hydra of a miniature event with doctors out to make his life hell. To not be constantly evaluating, calculating, trying to put together the best sentence possible that will net him what he wants.

(When did he stop being that, for Jay? When did he stop doing the same?)

(Hell if he can remember.)

When Jay finally speaks, Tim needs another minute to fully comprehend what it is he's saying.

For the second time in...god, what has it been? Days?

For the second time in just as many days, Tim laughs.

It's an exhausted, almost hysterical sound - cracked around the edges, flaking and fragmenting, saturated in his disbelief and profound, unyielding weariness.

"...yeah," he says, once he catches his breath. "Yeah. Okay."

Let's watch us a goddamn movie.

knocked the wind out of my soul [open]

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locks hospital keys in car

HE WOULD dONT EVEN LIE

"guess you can't get your...guess i can't get your...oh."

JAY'S SINGLE MOMENT OF COMPETENCE: RUINED FOREVER

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knocked the wind out of my soul [open]

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*locks hospital keys in car*

HE WOULD dONT EVEN LIE

"guess you can't get your...guess i can't get your...oh."

JAY'S SINGLE MOMENT OF COMPETENCE: RUINED FOREVER

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locks hospital keys in car