What's Stopping Us From Breathing Easy [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Dreamers of Manhattan, you've lucked out. Rather than finding yourselves in some kind of dystopian nightmare, you'll end up in a series of formal gardens on a lovely day, the air filled with birdsong and a cloud-scattered sky arching overhead. Some of the gardens look a bit wilder than others, in an artful sort of way, but it's clear that all of the gardens are well kept and frequently tended. Aside from each other, dreamers aren't likely to run into any creature larger than a rabbit. True, there are no actual exits - every doorway or arbor leads to another garden - but that's hardly a problem. It's beautiful, it's safe... what could go wrong?

Well, that depends on the dreamer's honesty. No uncomfortable truths will drop unbidden from anyone's mouths like last time, but the dreamers will find that any time they attempt to lie or prevaricate, they'll be beset by a sneezing fit. A tiny lie by omission might only prompt that uncomfortable feeling of an impending sneeze; a larger, more significant (or more stubborn) fib will lead to a sneeze attack so crippling that the dreamer might just need to sit down for a minute.

You could try to pass it off as allergies, if you could get the words out without making everything worse. But while telling the truth is not compulsory, lying is punishable - and pretty well obscured - by sneezes.

[OOC: Usual dream party rules apply. All are welcome to participate regardless of whether they've been apped in the game or not. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion.]

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[postictal]

Trees are usually kind of a no-go. This is weird, though, all these carefully trimmed squat bushes all lined up, nice and neat and colorful. The air is thick with sweet-smelling pollen, almost cloyingly so. Tim has to try not to gag.

After a few minutes of terse inspection of the environment, cautiously prodding the dense, springy brush and leaping back warily at the first hint of anything that could be a danger sign, Tim has to reluctantly, bemusedly concede that this is exactly what it impossibly appears to be: a nice dream.

Maybe that's not weird, though. His first dream was pretty okay, after all. Aside from how he'd managed to convince himself that the Jay he was talking to was purely hallucinatory. Yeah, that kind of put a damper on the whole thing.

Tim's hands chase up and down his arms as he half-hugs himself, darting nervous looks at the artfully arranged flowers and trimmed foliage. He feels like it might be some kind of fancy rich person garden, maybe, but he's never known what those really looked like. He's never been to one.

Regardless, he's not really sure he likes the look of it, or even the feel of it. Too many thick-packed leaves surrounding him. No sign of an exit.

Guess it's gonna be his job to find one.

He sets off for the nearest gap in the bushes, ducking beneath the overarching limbs. Maybe if there's a weak spot or a dying bit of greenery somewhere - if he could just get through -

[deadeyedchild]

A hand reaches in and grabs Tim's, pulling him through the thick hedges. Jay'd been minding his own business, sitting on the lip of a fountain, when he'd been startled by all the rustling just to his right. His instinct had been to run, but then he'd caught a glimpse of familiar hair, heard a low grunt he recognized. He helps Tim up, offering him a weak smile.

"Hey," he says. "Welcome to the garden party."

[postictal]

He jerks back with an aborted sound of alarm when something grabs his hand and tugs him through, but it doesn't take him long to track the hand to its owner and relax, scrambling through the self-made hole in the brush.

"Hey," says Tim, eyeing the fountain dubiously. "Not sure I'm too wild about the whole theme, to be honest."

But at least Jay's dreaming again. Just like normal. As normal as normal ever gets for them, anyway.

[deadeyedchild]

"Yeah..." Jay looks around, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "It's kinda weird. But as long as there's nothing trying to kill us I'll take it."

He heads back over to the fountain and sits back down. He's not really in the mood to explore - doesn't exactly what to tempt fate, with the whole assumption nothing's going to try to kill them.

"You okay?" he asks idly.

[postictal]

"I'm f - "

The muttered lie is lost in the force of an explosive sneeze that nearly doubles him over, hands cupped around his face to muffle the foghorn-like sound as best as he can manage.

"Fuck." Tim sniffles, the back of one hand scrubbing at his nose grouchily. "What is this, allergy season?"

[deadeyedchild]

Jay startles sharply, straightening up like a meerkat at the sudden bellow. He almost laughs, but something catches him, something at the back of his mind. He frowns for a moment, staring into the middle distance, trying to sort out his memories. Something from this dream - earlier? Who fucking knows. These dreams are so often like that, he'll find himself waking up with memories of impossibly simultaneous encounters or something.

It's just something about the sneeze was so oddly familiar.

"Oh, shit," he blurts as it very abruptly comes to him. He looks up at Tim, going a bit paler than usual. "Uh. So. I think I just... remembered something, or... I was talking to someone, I can't remember who, but I remember... sneezing a lot? With them?" He looks down at his feet, pushing his hands together, fidgeting and dragging his fingers uncomfortably over his skin. "Um. I think it's... I think that happens when we try to... to lie. That's what it was with me. I think that might be the, uh. The actual... theme."

Ugh. He chews his lip, unable to look up.

"I can just... I can leave you alone," he mumbles. "That might be better."

[postictal]

He snuffs one last time, watching Jay blanch, stark against the verdant backdrop. Oh, great. Like the Rift hasn't had enough fun with them in that regard. He drags a hand through his hair with a low growl of frustration, waving a hand.

"Like it matters anymore," he grunts. You already know everything, he almost says, but snaps the sentence into something more pliable with a shrug. He doesn't wanna push it. "It's whatever. You don't, uh." He opens a hand, his tone vague. "You can - stay. If you want."

[deadeyedchild]

Jay's already sitting, so the invitation to stay is weird, but it's kind of nice, too. He doesn't say anything for a moment, just nods once and continues looking at the ground.

"You, uh..." He lifts a shoulder awkwardly. "Wanna sit?"

Yes. Sit in silence. Discuss the weather. Avoid sneezing. A good dream.

[postictal]

Is it bad that he has to carefully consider the answer before he complies?

"Yeah," he says carefully. "Okay."

He waits for a moment, but no telltale prickle in his nose screws up his perception of his own opinion, so he sinks down to perch on the fountain's edge beside Jay, a good foot of distance between them.

He kicks at the perfectly manicured grass, turning over a tuft of the stuff with the rich black dirt beneath.

"Can't lie," says Tim to the ground. "What's that make me?"

What is the liar without his lies. His whole life has been tangled in nothing but lies, intentional and otherwise, the parts of his memory stained with false outcomes. He's not sure what he is without them.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay glances over at him at that, his hands finally relaxing some.

"You're still you," he says quietly. "You're just..." He isn't sure how to express what he's trying to express. Expression was never his strong suit. And now he has to be extra careful, with the fear of a fucking sneeze giving him away. He sighs heavily and looks down at the earth. "You did what you had to. I know why you lied about things. You were just trying to do the right thing."

There. He made it through all that.

He manages another faint smile, glances up again. "There, see? Truth."

[postictal]

"I guess," he mutters. And he guesses doubt isn't really easily categorized down to truth or lie, because the tickle in his nose or throat is conspicuously absent. "Didn't really do much in the end."

His shoulders seize in a loud sneeze that he barely catches in both hands.

"Goddamnit," Tim hisses, furious, glaring at the film on his palms. "Come on." He shoots a vehement look upward. "Really?"

He wipes his hands on his jeans in disgust.

"I was just trying to help." There. That's something he knows is true and always has been. "I guess we both were. For however much that counts."

[deadeyedchild]

Jay smiles a little more, and lowers his head down, clasping his hands behind his neck. "Yeah."

He just sits with that for a moment, jiggling his leg.

"At least we made it, kinda," he says softly, and he's so relieved when no sneeze comes.

[postictal]

"Yeah." Kinda. Jay got hauled back from the brink of wherever it was he ended up, and Tim - well, he's more than a little grateful for that. He's not sure if saying it aloud counts for a lie any more than thinking it in his head, but either way he's grateful there's no tingling of a sneeze in the back of his throat.

He looks at Jay, short and sidelong, and folds his arms, curling them around him as he realizes he's not sure what to say next. What do people talk about. Well, actually, he knows that bit - he knows how people talk and can deal with curt exchanges well enough, which is in part why curt exchanges dominated his and Jay's entire vocabulary for the better part of their acquaintanceship.

And, what are they, friends now? He doesn't know how that works. Brian was the talker and Tim the listener, and they were content to exist in their roles. But Jay's never going to be the one to go on and on while Tim half-heartedly tries to tune a ukelele. He doesn't talk like Brian did. Tim's not even really sure if Jay actually had friends in college, what his personal life was like. Something cold clenches in his gut, and he cringes. That just paints every time Tim was a raging asshole in such great light, doesn't it, some of that bitter hypocrisy and more of the same.

"Okay," Tim blurts, his look hard. "Look. We're friends, right?" No sneeze. Right. Bolstered, he keeps forging ahead. "So I don't - know anything about you. Like, aren't I supposed to at minimum know useless shit like, uh, I dunno, your birthday? What's your favorite color? What'd you major in?" He's not sure why this is riling him up - this is the kind of conversation meant to put people at ease, but all his frustration has boiled over and now he's just talking, probably more words than he's strung together in a long, long damn time. "I don't know you. Not really."

[deadeyedchild]

Jay startles, looking at him with wide eyes, feeling himself sit up a little straighter as Tim goes on. It seems like he's angry, but he's - he's not. He's just... very aggressively asking innocuous questions.

"I..." He blinks for a minute, not sure how to answer. He feels tensed-up, put on the spot, but he also feels sort of... honored. A little swell of warmth in his chest, a weird good feeling he has no idea what to do with.

They are friends. Tim actually does mean it.

He has a friend.

"Um." He turns away, feeling himself flush hot. "Uh. Well." These are simple questions. It's not like he's going to lie on any of those. He can do it. "My, uh, my birthday's June 25th." He swallows. 'Favorite color' is weirdly difficult. He doesn't really think about that too often. "I guess my favorite color... well, it was red when I was a kid." He shrugs awkwardly. "Kinda not anymore." He looks at his hands. "I, um, well, I majored in film production. You probably knew that once, at least, before we... forgot everything." Maybe. Did they ever exchange more than a few words after running through the rain, or running lines at Brian's house? Who fucking knows.

"I was gonna try making my own project after we were done with Marble Hornets," he says, sort of lapsing easily into the explanation now that he's not going off direct questions. "But... Alex left, and... I dunno. I guess I just... I figured I'd do something later, and... I never did." He feels a slight itch and he draws the same sort of breath that usually preempts a sneeze, but manages not to. He grimaces and says, "Well, I never made a movie."

[postictal]

"It'd probably be better than anything Alex could come up with," says Tim idly, and - just for a second - the subject's not as undeniably painful as it's always been. They can't just shuffle Alex under the table, not when he was what he was to their lives, the all-important not-catalyst. And however much they might want to forget, they can't.

And at the end of everything, Alex was just a victim like the rest of them. Maybe the man Tim stabbed through the throat was long gone, and maybe the pretentious college kid who wrote shitty dialogue and was trying to make an artistic statement wasn't really there anymore, but he was once. A casualty like all the others, and they tiptoe around the subject like it's poison, never caring to remember anything he was other than the hapless meat-puppet.

He deserves better than that. They owe him that.

"Loop of unhappiness, right?" He smirks. "What was that, Alex, c'mon."

[deadeyedchild]

Jay hesitates at the jab, not sure if they should be insulting the dead or whatever, but... well. He can't help smiling a little at the shared reference. He lets out a soft chuckle. "It was so bad," he admits. "You know there was one scene where he got me to play his stoner friend? I had to wear one of Brian's sweaters for that. It was so embarrassing." He finally laughs, awkward and halting but genuine. Part of him is definitely glad that fucking movie never saw the light of day.

A very small part.

This is some sad shit to be ruminating on, but it's probably something they needed to do.

"I don't think I could write anything better than that, though," he says. "I mean, I was the script supervisor, it's not like I fixed any of it." He chuckles softly. "I always thought maybe I'd make documentaries, but... well. I guess I did, kinda."

[postictal]

He snorts, trying and failing to picture Jay in some oversized sweater that probably resembled a goddamn carnival tent on the stick of a guy in comparison to Brian's broad-shouldered frame. God. A Kralie film stoner sequence. He would pay to see the footage for that. Why didn't Jay put any of that up.

"Documentaries on hotels." Tim leans back, his smirk broadening. "I mean, to your credit, it was technically true. And your camera work's not half-bad." He almost snickers, looking at Jay archly. "When you're not pointing it at your feet, that is."

[deadeyedchild]

"Don't remind me," groans Jay, covering his face. He peeks through his fingers at his feet, remembering how much of his footage, from the early days especially, was practically unusable.

"Part of me wants to try and pick something up now," he murmurs. "But I'm..." He swallows, knowing there's no point trying to get around his feelings on this. "I'm kinda scared to."

[postictal]

Tim doesn't look at him, but his mouth tightens. He can't say he blames Jay for that. He'd tossed the battered camera the first chance he got, abandoned the YouTube channel and its anxious viewers, guiltily burned out any trace the man had once existed. He doubts he'll ever look at cameras the same way again. Too much pain rooted there. Too much paranoia.

"Well," says Tim, shrugging, "you've certainly got no shortage of cameras. And we know, now." He pauses, waiting for the itch in his nostrils, but it never comes. "We know that - thing, it, it never followed us here."

Not yet, anyway. But he's not thinking about that.

[deadeyedchild]

"Yeah." He keeps his eyes on his feet for a few moments, and then he looks back up at Tim. "Thanks."

He's not even sure what for precisely. There's just a wealth of gratitude for this, the little vote of confidence, the conversation, all of it; for being allowed to feel a little normal. He wishes it were easy to verbalize that. If he tries he's pretty sure he'll end up stammering into oblivion.

He looks back over the garden and breathes out slowly, smiling to himself.

[postictal]

"Hey." He tips his head back and breathes. It feels good to breathe, even if it's fake dream air. It feels good to not be on edge. Eventually they'll wake up and the dream will be over, but until it does he'll enjoy it while it lasts. "We're in this together."

Took them a long damn time to come to terms with it.

But now that they have, it feels pretty good.