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It’s Jay’s fault, of course.
Just because they’ve been through five motel rooms this week, along with a couple nights spent in their cars, just because his head is fuzzy with lack of sleep and anxious, itchy paranoia, doesn’t give him an excuse for finishing off the protein bars. At least not without double-checking that he was right that they had another box in the backseat.
He’d just grabbed the last two out of his backpack to eat in the car while he waited for Tim to get back from his smoking break; he hadn’t even thought about it. Thinking and protein bars were a bad combination - at least if the protein bars were these, which tasted like they got their fiber from wood pulp. By the time they checked into their room that evening he’d forgotten.
It’s not the worst thing he’s ever done to Tim, if only because the competition in that category is so steep, but he still feels like a jerk when he realizes it’s 10 o’clock at night and the only remotely edible thing they have between the two of them is the musty-smelling candy he swiped from the check-in desk.
And, okay, it’s not that late. It’s a small town, but even here they don’t completely shut down at sundown - if nothing else, they passed at least a few convenience stores on the way to the motel, and a McDonald’s with a 24-hour drive-through. Jay’s done worse than McNuggets and gas station food, even before all this started. But he looks at Tim sitting on the bed and he knows that neither of them is going to be the first one to suggest it.
They’ve gone awhile without any sign of Alex, or that guy in the hoodie, or that thing, and while it should make them feel safer, feel like they’ve gotten ahead for once, it’s mostly just left them twitchy and tense, bracing for an ambush that doesn’t happen. Tim is smoking two packs a day now, and Jay doesn’t trust any of the shadows he sees out of the corner of his eye.
He knows that staying in their room doesn’t keep them safe. They can lock the door and leave all the lights on and barricade themselves in a fort of suspiciously-stained mattresses, and if that thing wants to come after them here it won’t matter at all. Even Alex could probably find a way to smash through the window. But even knowing that, going back out into the dark is worse, somehow. The thought of the trees leaning in close around the edge of the motel parking lot, the thought of the things that could be watching them, just out of the anemic glare of their headlights - some things are worth the risk, but a microwave burrito probably isn’t one of them.
“You saw the vending machine at the other end of the building, right?” Tim drawls, sarcastic enough that it takes most of the edge off Jay’s guilt. “Come on, how many quarters do you have?”
Between his backpack and Tim’s pockets they have enough spare change and singles dumped on the bedspread to make a go at dinner for two, so the vending machine it is.
Jay grabs his camera off the desk on his way out the door and turns it on, more reflex than anything.
“I’m sure everyone is going to want to know how our late night snack run goes,” Tim says, and Jay sees that the chestcam is still where Tim dropped it on the chair when they got in.
“Better safe than sorry,” Jay says, shrugging. He isn’t sure if Tim is convinced, or just not in the mood for arguing, but aside from rolling his eyes he lets it go. He’s willing to count that as a win.
Tim goes first and Jay follows him, panning the camera around the dark, half-empty parking lot their room opens into. The single streetlight is out, and he zooms in on it, looking for any signs that someone messed with it, but as far he can tell the motel was just too cheap to replace it when it burned out. He turns back, and gets a close-up focus of Tim’s broad shoulders, set impatiently while he waits for him to remember they’re out here for a reason.
The vending machines are around the corner from their room, tucked into an alcove just behind the main lobby. The lights here, at least, are working.
The first machine is just ice, and the second one is sodas. The last one is mostly candy bars, but the two rows in the middle have a few things that could conceivably count as real food.
“Take your pick,” Tim says. “Up to...four dollars and fifty cents, anyway.”
A quick glance is enough to confirm there’s not much to choose from. Pretzels, pork rinds, what looks horrifyingly like cheeseburgers in a can. “That looks sort of edible, I guess,” he says, pointing at a pack of peanut butter crackers. “Get me a couple of those and some chips?”
He hears some leaves rustle in the bushes and swings the camera around, waits for the focus to settle until he can see there’s nothing there. Behind him, there’s a soft mechanical whir as Tim feeds bills into the machine, then a pause, and then -
“Shit.”
Jay’s breath catches in his throat, but there’s still nothing there, and Tim sounds more pissed off than freaked out. When he looks over, Tim’s empty-handed and glaring at the vending machine.
“Stupid piece of junk,” Tim mutters. The digital display blinks back at them in a row of green zeros, clearly glitched out.
“Can you try again?” Jay asks him.
“Yeah, because that wasn’t all of our change,” Tim replies. He thumps the buttons a few more times for good measure, and the machine beeps at him despondently.
“Maybe we should just -” Suck it up and go grocery shopping, Alex or not? Give up and go to bed? Jay isn’t even sure which option he’s suggesting, but Tim shakes his head.
“Go back over there,” he says gesturing vaguely to the other end of the stairwell. At Jay’s skeptical look he adds, “Just watch out for anyone coming, okay?”
From his vantage point by the stairs Jay can just about see the motel lobby - he’s at the wrong angle to see into the window to the desk, but he’ll know if anyone is coming. He gives the parking lot a quick check to reassure himself it’s still empty, and listens to Tim working over the vending machine behind him.
Tim is a guy of many and varied talents, some of them more useful in their current situation than others. Jay’s never had the chance to hear him play keyboard or guitar, except for a few minutes of test footage on one of Alex’s tapes. He appreciates his right uppercut, as long as Tim’s using it on people who aren’t him. Breaking into vending machines is a new one, but it might have to get added to Jay’s list of reasons to keep him around, right under his willingness to coldcock Alex and reminding Jay that if he is going crazy, at least he’s not doing it alone.
Of course, it has to work, first. There’s a low clunk of metal on plastic that’s probably him messing with the padlock on the side, but he keeps going and Jay doesn’t hear it again so that clearly didn’t do it. There’s some rustling and scraping he has no idea about, and Tim swearing under his breath.
Jay tries hard to stick to his job as the look-out. But then something slams behind him, loud enough to echo, and he has to see what the hell Tim is doing back there.
Tim is standing, one foot braced against the plastic front of the machine, just as surprised as Jay at how much noise it made when he kicked it. The after-echo dies into shocky silence, both of them holding their breath and waiting for the desk clerk to come investigate the racket.
After a moment, Tim exhales a little shakily, shoulders slumping, and then he gathers himself back together and grabs the edge of the machine, muscles straining at the effort of trying to tip it over.
“Seriously?” Jay demands, trying to whisper and not quite succeeding. “This is really starting to look like a bad idea.”
“I’ve almost got it,” Tim says. “I know what I’m doing, Jay.”
Tim doesn’t know what he’s doing. That’s obvious a second later, when he yanks too hard and stumbles backwards. The vending machine, unbalanced, tips to the side, until gravity takes over and it collides with the soda machine next to it, sending it reeling into the ice machine with an unholy crash.
By the time the vending machine dominoes are over, Jay’s ears are ringing, pieces of the ice machine are halfway across the parking lot, and the ground in front of them is covered in junk food.
“What the fuck!” A door slams from the direction of the lobby. They both freeze, startled, and then Tim scrambles back to his feet and they bolt.
Somehow, they make it back to their room without being caught, or shot by a security guard - all that running for their lives is good for something. Jay slams the door and collapses against it, heart pounding in his chest, camera still clutched in his hand, now filming the carpet. When Tim sits on the floor next to him, something crinkles in his jacket pocket.
“Right, I grabbed these,” he says, sitting up. “These” are two cans of diet Mountain Dew, a squashed jelly roll, and one of the cheeseburger cans.
Tim tosses the cheeseburger over to him and he opens it, mostly out of morbid curiosity. It is genuinely one of the most disgusting things he has ever seen - worse than the protein bars, worse than congealed gas station burritos, worse than the time Alex’s dog threw up a gopher - and they almost got arrested for it. He’s survived Alex trying to shoot him, months of missing time, a freak in a mask stalking him, and this whole thing could have ended in a motel parking lot with some half-assed Mission Impossible raid that got them a wad of inedible, slime-soaked cafeteria meat.
It’s been so long since he had something to laugh over, he almost doesn’t remember what it feels like. And then he can’t stop himself, tears streaming down his face, breathless at the sheer ridiculous stupidity of what they just did. It’s like a moment out of someone else’s life, the kind of idiots who get drunk in a motel room and think that was a good idea. Even Tim gets dangerously close to smiling as he leans back against the bed and lights a cigarette.
Tim’s usually an anxious smoker, shoulders hunched, face down, fingers pressed to his lips like he can block everything else out if he just holds on and concentrates on breathing. It breaks Jay’s heart and gets his dick hard in equal measure, the guilt of knowing what Tim’s been through not enough to keep him from reacting to the intensity of his focus and the way the smoke curls around his fingertips when he exhales.
But for once, he’s almost relaxed. He closes his eyes when he breathes out, his eyelashes fluttering against his still-flushed cheeks, and it’s - more than Jay can take. He knows he’s staring at Tim’s mouth, that any second Tim is going to ask him what he’s doing, and he still can’t stop himself.
Three years ago, Jay wouldn’t have done this. Or maybe he would have - his past is full of holes, false memories, conversations that never happened the way he thought they did. Sometimes he feels like a stranger in his own life, the way Tim must feel when he wakes up in the woods in someone else’s face.
But he doesn’t think they would have bothered to take this from him. He doesn’t think he would forget being the kind of person who does this. Three years ago, he would have blushed and looked away awkwardly and not understood why. And maybe it’s because of this thing, because he has so many better things to be afraid of now than the bare handful of inches between him and Tim. Maybe he should be grateful to Alex, for this if nothing else.
Because Tim breathes out, and Jay breathes in, and he closes the gap between them and he kisses him.
Tim makes a soft, surprised sound that Jay swallows along with the taste of smoke. He doesn’t think he’s wrong that they’ve been edging around this for awhile, living out of each other’s pockets on the road and trying not to listen to each other at night, but he still half-expects Tim to freak out and shove him away, for his own panic to set in. But the panic stays distant and Tim -
Tim hisses in pain and pulls away, and Jay looks down and sees the cigarette, almost burned out and singeing his fingers. Tim stubs it out in the ashtray on the desk, and then he drops back down onto the floor.
“Have you, uh, been wanting to do that for awhile?” he asks Jay.
Now that the moment’s broken, Jay finds he can’t quite bring himself to meet his eyes. “Yeah, you know, awhile,” he says. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have pulled that on you.”
“Yeah, you really should’ve asked first,” Tim replies. “I mean, I would have said yes.”
And then Tim’s kissing him again. He grabs Jay’s arms and drags him deeper into it, and Jay’s too shocked to do anything but let himself be dragged. Tim’s hot everywhere they touch, the inside of his mouth, his fingers on Jay’s skin, and Jay can’t get enough of it, wants to be touching every inch of him. Tim spreads his legs and pulls Jay into the V between them, and when he rolls his hips up Jay can feel that they’re both hard in their jeans. He moans and grinds into him and kisses him back; he wants a hundred things and doesn’t know what any of them are, except that they all involve Tim.
It’s not like he’s never done this before. But he’s never done it with a guy - never done it with Tim - and while he has a fuzzy idea of the mechanics involved he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do next. When he decided to kiss Tim he didn’t plan this far ahead.
Tim huffs an incredulous little laugh into the curve of his neck, making him shiver. “I really shouldn’t be surprised,” he says. “Have you ever even -”
Jay kind of wants to bite him, and he’s not sure if it’s because he’s a jerk or because that spot on his neck is so tempting. He settles for elbowing him in the ribs. “Of course I have,” he says. “Not like this, but - and when did you get so experienced?”
He remembers Tim when they first met, always hanging around the edges of whatever Brian was doing like he couldn’t quite believe he was there but didn’t want to leave alone. Even when he warmed up to them he never quite lost that layer of defensiveness. He can’t picture Tim doing this with someone else at all, not because he doesn’t want to but because it doesn’t work.
But Tim sure seems to know what he’s doing, nails digging into Jay’s back, one knee between his legs to give him something to grind against. “I never had like a boyfriend or anything,” he says. “I fooled around some. One time Brian and I were drinking and…”
He trails off. They don’t talk about Brian much, or Seth, or Sarah, too many recent wounds to scratch at the ones that have started to scar over. Jay’s happy enough to let the awkward silence go without pushing him on it, especially when there are more pressing matters at hand.
He’s so close already. Tim’s not even going to need to get into his pants first, the way they’re going now - he’s aching and desperate just from this, just from the smell of him, from his hand firm and insistent on his hip, from the way he can feel him talking where he’s pressed against his chest. He’s going to shoot in his boxers like a fifteen-year-old and he doesn’t even care.
Then Tim shifts his weight and winces, one hand dropping to rub at his leg. “So, we should probably move this to the bed,” he says. “Unless you have some creepy fetish for me crying and not being able to walk tomorrow.”
And, okay, Jay feels like an asshole at that, because he really should have thought of it before. Tim only really limps when he’s got the mask on, but even as himself he favors that leg sometimes when he’s tired, and Jay’s seen the scar they left him with a few times when they’ve been getting dressed in the morning.
He climbs to his feet and offers Tim a hand to help him up, and that’s when Tim notices the camera on the floor.
“Have you been filming this entire time?” he asks, like he’s not surprised but kind of wishes he were.
Jay grabs it and checks the display - still running, and at least an hour of battery left. “I wasn’t doing it on purpose,” he replies. “I dropped it when we came in, I guess I just forgot to turn it off.”
“Well, now you’ve remembered, so put it away. I don’t really want this showing up on your Youtube channel tomorrow.”
“It would probably get us more followers,” Jay tries to joke, but he knows Tim can see that he hasn’t actually turned the camera off yet.
It’s hard to try to explain to him. Tim’s gone along with it for now, but Jay can tell he’s still skeptical about why Jay bothers with this, that he doesn’t really see the point of keeping the camera running even if he hasn’t blown up about it since the parking lot. And Jay gets why this is weirder than filming them in the park, or the car, or whatever, it’s just -
Jay has boxes full of tapes of terrible things happening to them, terrible things they did. Sometimes the tapes are the only way he knows they happened. And this isn’t terrible, not yet, it’s good in a way he hadn’t thought his life could be good anymore and he wants to keep it. Even if no one ever sees it, even if the tape stays buried at the bottom of the heap forever, he wants to know that he has it, that this happened, that it was real.
But it’s not the easiest thing to say out loud, and it’s a lot to lay on Tim, when all they’ve done is make out for a few minutes. It’s probably a sign of how completely fucked his life is now that he isn’t more freaked out about how much this matters to him.
“I don’t want to lose this, if anything happens to us,” he admits finally. “If he does something to my memory again, I don’t want us to go back to being two guys who barely know each other. At least this way I’d know.”
Tim looks at him for a long time, and then he reaches out and takes the camera out of his hand. Jay doesn’t try to take it back. Tim sets it down carefully on the nightstand, the lens facing the wall, but he leaves it on, the microphone still running.
“ToTheArk’s probably filming us through the curtains anyway,” he says wryly.
He backs Jay up against the bed and kisses him again. Jay knows he lost control of this almost as soon as it started, but that’s okay. He can follow Tim’s lead.
Tim shoves him flat on his back and reaches down to grope at his zipper without even breaking the kiss. Talking about the camera was enough distraction that he’s only half-hard now, but then Tim finds his way inside his boxers and the first brush of his fingers is a jolt of electricity straight to his dick.
Tim gives him a few strokes, firm and fast. Then he takes his hand away, but before Jay can do more than groan in protest he’s moving down the bed to replace it with his mouth.
It’s been a long time since he’s done this with anyone, even before this whole thing started, and Tim - Tim is just as good with his mouth as Jay thought he would be, those nights he tried to keep as quiet as he could in the next bed so he could pretend Tim couldn’t hear what he was doing. His technique isn’t fancy but it doesn’t need to be, all sloppy heat and his tongue working the sensitive spot under the head until Jay’s clutching at his shoulders and bucking his hips up, desperate for more.
Tim’s face is flushed from the effort, Jay’s slick smeared on his mouth and chin, and it’s hard to tell from this angle but Jay’s pretty sure he’s got his free hand down between his legs, jerking himself off, and that just makes it hotter, knowing that Tim’s getting off on this almost as much as he is.
He finishes embarrassingly quickly. He tries to warn Tim, or shove him off, when he realizes he’s about to come but Tim just takes him deeper, swallows it all, and if Jay could come a second time that would be enough to do it.
He wants to collapse on the bed and never move again, but Tim’s still hard, and even if he’s never done this with a guy before he knows he should probably help out.
He’s not sure he’s even doing it right, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Tim’s already close before he gets a hand wrapped around him, and it takes barely half a dozen strokes before he’s burying his face in Jay’s neck and coming all over his stomach. He’s quiet when he comes, just a hitch in his breath, but Jay can feel him shaking.
Afterwards, Jay cleans himself up the best he can without having to actually get up, wiping the mess off his stomach with his t-shirt and tossing it on the floor to deal with in the morning. He turns the camera off, and plugs the battery pack into the charger. Tim’s still sprawled boneless on the bed. When Jay nudges him, he makes a sleepy, grumpy noise into the pillow and doesn’t move at all.
The other bed was supposed to be Tim’s tonight. Jay steals the bedspread off it, and throws it over them both, settles in to sleep pressed up against Tim’s side.
It’s rare for either of them to sleep through the night. Tim has nightmares, and Jay, more often than not, lies awake for hours before his brain gives up enough to let him sleep. He doesn’t expect sharing a bed to make much of a difference, but the next time he wakes up, it’s close to dawn. He and Tim are wrapped around each other, Tim’s head on his shoulder, sideburns tickling his throat. Jay can feel himself trying to match the steady, slow rhythm of his breathing.
He knows, deep down, that this doesn’t change anything, doesn’t fix anything, doesn’t get them any closer to understanding what’s happening to them, or how to make it end. The woods are still waiting for them. But that’s tomorrow. Right here, right now, he’s lying next to Tim, and it’s as safe as he’s felt in a long time. He holds onto that thought, until it’s the last thing in his head before he falls asleep again.