cacophonish | APOCALYPSE HOW: IC INBOX

Jeff's not sitting up. He's perfectly content to keep sprawling on the bed, looking up at the underside of the top bunk as if there's a movie playing out above him. He blinks, slow and sedate as Tim gives him a little kick, then turns his head to look up at him.

First: blank confusion.

"Huh?"

Then: the wheels start to turn. Tim can probably see the moment that the lights seem to switch 'on' in Jeff's head, and he gets to thinking....

(What he doesn't betray is the way his pulse picked up, a little spike of adrenaline, as soon as Tim even mentioned some chick. Yeah, he knows who she is. Yeah, he's been on edge ever since she tracked him here. Yeah, maybe he made a mistake in thinking the ADI's presence would act as a deterrent. He should've stayed on the road. He should've chased her. He should've plucked at her mind and twisted and pulled until it was like taffy--)

"Oh! The chick with the hotline?" He hums softly. Sweet, ditzy, spacey, stupid Jeff. "She's looking for you, too, I think. And Aelwyn..."

Edited 2023-05-14 19:25 (UTC)

It's true, y'know. He's never had those abilities like Clark or like Kon. Tim wouldn't know what to do with them, being able to pick up on signals that aren't meant to be known. He turns his body, hikes his not-there left leg over his right and considers running a hand through Jeff's hair.

He's only worried his fingers will snag. Or worried that they'll get sidetracked by the smallest touch because they just kinda do that sometimes and Tim can't keep straight whether or not it's part of the plan to keep getting so lost in the world that only belongs in their intimacy or like.

"Maybe," he admits.

He touches a hand to Jeff's hair because it's ungodly just how much of a mess it is. Even Tim thinks he fares better in that department, and that's saying a lot. It's a good thing to focus on and Tim braves the next prod, even if he does sound... petty. "But I was wondering how you met her."

Does it matter if it's part of the plan? Take a detour, Tim. Get lost with Jeff.

Life's so much better when you stray off the path and step sideways into another world. Wonderland, Oz, and the Lands Beyond. Worlds of metaphor and nonsense.

Jeff leans into the touch, a smile idling at the corner of his mouth. His shirt, too big, unbuttoned, and falling off at one shoulder, exposes his neck, his collarbone, all delicate and elegant, marred by a fresh scar slicing its way towards his throat.

A souvenir from life on the road.

"I dunno." He reaches a hand up to dance his fingers against Tim's. Idle intimacy as he spins his own version of reality. "How do I meet anyone? I just..." He shoots Tim a playful grin. "Dance into their lives, right?"

A beat.

"Don't think I ever met her, though. Maybe she's a groupie."

"If you've got a stalker you should report them," he chides. It's going to take more delusion than Jeff harbors to make the suggestion sound earnest. Tim's eyes had narrowed with a self-directed stormy edge in the blues.

He wants to comment that Jeff looks like a monkey with his hand over his own head, and Tim isn't sure how to deal with the urge to laugh at it. He bites at his bottom lip, Jeff's words so predictably frivolous and here he is, so predictably taken aback by what he already knows.

"You called the hotline, or... how do you know who she is, if you never met her?"

What's that phrase he's seen on dating profiles? Here for a good time, not a long time. Tim had thought it was trashy. And here he is, huddled in a bunk bed, shirtless and silently comparing scars to scars, desperately hoping nobody turns a key to this tiny room and announces themselves as a new roomie.

--he's jealous too, but like, that's not trashy. That's just normal.

Report them. Jeff lets out a laugh, sudden and giddy, at the sheer ridiculousness of the suggestion. "To who? The cops?" The laughter dies down, and he puts on his best wide-eyed pollyanna face as he tilts his head, hand flopping back down to the mattress. "Or should I tell the ADI?"

Cops or the ADI. It's hard to tell which of the two Jeff trusts less.

Tim bites his lip, and Jeff's eyes linger there for a moment, as he thinks about how much he'd like to do the same.

"I called the number." He sits up, eyes bright with mischief. "I figured, you know, who better to give info on Jeff Calhoun than..." He shrugs. "I dunno, man, what do you want me to say? I called, and, like, a stranger picked up. I dunno her."

A beat, before Jeff leans in, lips brushing so close to lips.

"Why? Are you jealous?" he teases.

Edited 2023-05-14 21:57 (UTC)

He can only keep a lid on it for so long, and Jeff's laughter is the beginning of the end. Tim's narrowed eyes pin him down, and the moment he's free to and Jeff is playing dumb, he interrupts. "You wouldn't have to even think about ADI if--"

The heat, instead of dissipating, grows in the pit of his stomach.

There's so many emotions at play, all of them negative. He doesn't know how to jockey the tidal wave threatening to swallow him. Tim resists the bait, the man, the words.

Somewhat.

"I just don't want to share for once."

He can't jockey the emotions, wrangle the twisted things under control, but he can throw his weight and straddle Jeff's hips, bed sheets between them, and barely think of his stump of a leg doing little to nothing to pin Jeff's side.

Somewhat.

"And-- I've been thinking."

There's heat in those words, and Jeff wants to stoke the flames, and draw a fire out of the other boy that'll burn them both up, which is weird, right, because that's, like, Aelwyn's deal, not his.

Or maybe he just wants to keep things tangled and confusing and indefinable, where every touch and declaration can mean ten different things at once, and he knows... He knows that heat is the inevitable byproduct.

"Oh. Well. You don't have to share." Simple. It's that easy, right?

Tim's got him pinned, sort of, under his weight, and Jeff could probably push him off, but he doesn't want to. It's weird, looking down where a leg should be, and seeing its absence, so stark and sudden that it still feels unreal. He likes it. Sometimes, for fun, Jeff likes to make others see wrongness in him, too. Too many fingers on his hands-- blink-- too few fingers-- blink-- an eye where an eye shouldn't be-- blink-- and now he's totally normal again. Little things like that. Pranks and perks of his current state of whatever-the-fuck he is.

Did Tim ever have two legs? Was Dave ever not a weasel? (Wait, who's Dave again?)

"Mm... What've you been thinking?"

Tim thinks, he deserves a goddamn medal. There's no one else he knows that would restrain themselves from throttling this guy if they could see him the way he does.

It's so... sad, Tim thinks. It's so incredibly fucked up.

Ever since the-- their first time, he thought to himself this isn't how it's supposed to go. Yeah, sure, candlelight and rose petals might've been too much, but there's no big... there's no... like at the wedding, where the love was a palpable, living entity weaving between and through the couple.

Him and Jeff just kinda screw around.

Make each other laugh sometimes. Tim aches. He needs-- wants it more than just 'sometimes'. But they're not built like that. Case in point:

"I don't want to share you," he hisses. Tim brings a hand up, long fingers tracing a scar that's familiar to see in the mirror but that's still unwelcome on Jeff's skin. A cut throat. "Who the hell were you messing with? What were you doing to get popular enough for groupies?"

Jeff's face is a picture of innocence. Innocence, paired with pretty, delicate features, like he's something sweet and angelic. Does he even know how deceiving his looks are, how much leeway that's given him, his entire life? It can be hard to look at that face and realize there's something broken inside.

"What I've always done."

He never was a good person, was he. Sweet, sure, but also careless, selfish, vacuous, and doesn't that just leave so much hurt in his wake? Can't even blame that on his, ah, condition.

What he's always done, even when he hadn't meant to. Toyed with feelings, messed with heads, used people, broke hearts, all while singing, singing, singing.

Even before he was an avatar, he was always a monster.

"I guess people are just drawn to me." He can practically feel the frustration threatening to boil over beneath Tim's fingertips. Jeff smiles in the face of all that tension, nothing smug or taunting about it. It... seems genuine. Looks about as genuine as Jeff's capable of being these days. An attempt to reassure, and there's even something of a wince in it. "You're not sharing me. Nobody's--"

He stops himself.

How to put it?

"There's a piece of me... that I... I don't give to anyone else."

His humanity-- or whatever's left of it. No pressure, right?

"Is it even a part of yourself that you like?"

Or is he getting fed scraps from the dinner table.

Now there's a question.

"It's--"

He furrows his brows and thinks, and god, it's probably pathetically obvious that he's thrown, if only because he doesn't know the answer to that question. Can't even lie, because he doesn't know the truth.

Jeff laughs, and it's a totally miserable sound. "I dunno. There's not a lot that I like about me."

Besides his magic, and his music, two things so dearly intertwined with his very being. Two things he'll do anything to safeguard, even sell his soul. He hurt Meredith for this. He caused a citywide blackout for this. He killed for this. He died for this. And always, always, there's that drive to share his magic, and his music, however terrible it's become, with as wide an audience as possible.

"Does it matter? It's important, that's..." He hums thoughtfully. "I... think it's important."

Brace yourself, this is the most vulnerability he's shared with anyone since his grand return. Jeff reaches to stroke his fingers in Tim's hair.

"I like you more than anyone else. Doesn't that count?"

Edited 2023-05-21 21:09 (UTC)

APOCALYPSE HOW: IC INBOX

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