Right, like that's gonna help. He's been told that all his damn life, 'there's no man, it's just your imagination, there's nothing outside your window, Timothy,' but even if his jaw tightens Tim's trying not to hold this against him.

Since when has Jay ever been sensitive. The fucking moron blundered into everything he did about as delicately as a surgeon trying open heart surgery with a chainsaw, from trying to figure out what happened to Alex to sabotaging the hell out of Tim's life by accident and then sequentially fucking everything up enough to get bitten for it. Badly. Tim's not the only one who broke everything; he just arrived conveniently pre-broken enough that Jay simply couldn't do anything worse other than dragging back the sickening memories he didn't want to look at.

"Yeah, well, 'scuse me if I don't really take your word for it," Tim fires back flatly, finding a perverse comfort in falling into that recognizable rhythm of trading halfhearted barbs. "Don't think I need to remind you why."

He's still clinging to Tim's hand like it's some anchor; fuck, maybe it is. Tim won't fault him for that either. He's not the one who fucking died and bled out because he cared too fucking much and ran at his fucking murderous lunatic of a friend armed with nothing but a camera and self-righteous sentiment and expected it to magically turn out well.