Chapter Text
Stephen loves New York City. He loves the bustle of it. The constant crowded noise. The food, the commute, the people. The way it all kind of makes him feel like an ant sometimes. It’s his goddamned city and he chose it and he built a life in it and he loves every bit of it. He even loves the smell. Or at least he used to. When he steps off the train from the airport the smell is the first thing that hits him, even before the noise, and all the synapses that used to take that smell and assign it to the appropriate “home” column in the spreadsheet of his brain misfire, so instead the smell is just pungent and wrong. Nauseating to the point where he almost throws up right there on the train station concrete, wasting the shitty airplane meal he had fought so hard to force into his shrunken stomach.
They had all smelled godawful in Brazil. The scent coming off of Stephen alone was probably just as bad as the New York smell, albeit a different genre of bad odour. JT had smelled terrible as well, Stephen is sure of it. There’s no way he hadn’t. You can’t southern charm your way out of smelling bad after 39 days. Though honestly if anyone could it would be JT. Everyone was so fucking in love with him, it wouldn’t surprise Stephen if nature itself was also smitten.
Stephen’s feet take him to his apartment. There’s a subway ride, then a transfer to another subway, then a couple blocks, then four flights of stairs, and suddenly Stephen is standing in the doorway deliberately not interrogating the fact that he just autopiloted his way through his homecoming because he was too busy thinking about how a cattle rancher from Alabama smells.
Stephen steps into his apartment like a stranger, timid with the fear that he’s somehow going to get everything dirty. The apartment is clean, sparse the way it always has been because Stephen is not generally a sentimental sort of guy, but it feels emptier than he remembers it. Even with the noise from the street outside and the steady appliance hum it’s too quiet. He’s used to Brazil, used to camp, used to people all around him laughing too loud or whispering too quiet. There is no one making any noise in this apartment, and Stephen has the absurd impulse to talk out loud, to start narrating things like he’s giving a confessional. He doesn’t, but it’s a close call. Instead he just takes his shoes off and tells himself that walking back into his old life will be easy once he gets the hang of it.
****
That first night Stephen lies awake for hours staring at the ceiling, trying to turn the sound of cars passing by into the sound of the river that runs past camp.
His parents are coming to visit tomorrow. Couldn’t make the drive today for reasons that he was presumably told at some point but can’t quite recall now. That probably makes him a bad son. It definitely makes him a bad son that he’s kind of dreading seeing them tomorrow. He has missed them immensely and he knows it will be good to see them, to hug them, to be reassured that there are people out here in the real world who love him unconditionally.
But there’s still this aching dread in the pit of his stomach that he can’t quite find the source of. Some parasite he carried back from Brazil that’s slowly gnawing away at him, eating everything inside until he’s left with a strange sort of hunger despite the dinner he forced himself to eat a few hours ago.
It would be better if JT was here. Stephen knows this for an absolute fact, the same way he knows most things about JT. He knows it because every time he gets tired enough to let himself think about him the dread starts to settle even as the hunger gets worse. But JT isn’t here. Isn’t directly within arms reach the way Stephen is used to him being. He’s back in Alabama with his family and his life and his cows. And Stephen is here with his apartment and his city and a life that is, technically, still his as well.
If JT was here they could talk it all through. Stephen could ramble in circles about every facet of whatever crisis he’s currently having and JT would listen in that way he does and then he’d say something soft and contemplative that would make Stephen finally settle down. It’s so familiar that he can almost play it out in his head. In the city dark, which is less dark than the real dark he’s gotten used to, Stephen can nearly make out the shape of JT’s words, the cadence of them, can even picture the way his mouth would pull sideways on some of the vowels. But he can’t quite conjure the exact things he would say, and in the end it is only an exercise in disappointment.
****
His mother takes one look at him and starts crying, which is both very sweet and a terrible indication of the current state of his body. She hugs him and he knows she can probably feel all of his ribs individually. At the governor's retreat, laying in that bed after a feast and a shower and a couple too many beers, Stephen had said something about being more full than he’s ever been and JT had run his hands over Stephen’s ribs as if to count them, and then he’d left his hand there until it had turned into an arm around Stephen’s midsection sometime in the night. He’d slept so well in that bed. But apparently his body has decided that his New York bed is too comfortable or some bullshit, so he knows he’s got dark bags under his eyes and exhaustion visibly weighing down his skinny limbs.
They get bagels from a place near his apartment that Stephen had started missing sometime around day 5 and then forgot about sometime around day 20. They ask him questions about the show and he takes diplomatic bites of his bagel to buy himself some time.
He can’t say much, contractually speaking, which is honestly pretty nice all things considered. He can tell them he made it far, because he clearly had, but he doesn’t need to tell them he made the final two. He doesn’t need to talk about losing a million dollars. He doesn’t need to explain that he can’t seem to find room inside himself to really feel the loss of it. He’s too busy feeling the other losses. The other loss. The big one. The one he’s trying really hard not to look at directly.
He tells them about the people, in surface ways. He tells them about Coach with his tall tales and his fantastical nicknames and his general insanity. He laughs while he does it and he can actually see his parents relaxing, like they thought he may have lost the ability to laugh out there or something. He tells them about Taj and how smart and sweet and downright wonderful she is. He says she was good, too good for us. He doesn’t even notice the use of the plural pronoun until his parents ask about “us.” He panics, even though he could probably just tell them about his alliance with JT, at least in the abstract. But it feels wrong to say it out loud, dangerous the way it has always been dangerous to fully let on just how close the two of them were. The fear is somehow even sharper here, in the real world. So he says something vague about meaning “us” in general, as in the Survivor contestants, just all of them. A non-specific us.
He does mention JT, because it is physically impossible not to. Every vague story he tells contains the outline of JT somewhere in it, even if Stephen can usually hide it by being more careful about using “I” instead of “we.” But he tells his parents about the good ol’ boy from the south. Says he wasn’t sure about him at first, but he turned out to be the best guy Stephen’s ever met. He thinks his parents took it as a standard, if hyperbolic, thing to say about someone you’d spent a lot of time with, instead of the way Stephen meant it which was completely literal and devastatingly sincere.
At a certain point Stephen manages to turn the conversation around. His parents start telling him about everything he missed for 39 days with no outside contact. Personal things, political things, basic society shit, how the family’s doing and who’s been asking after him and his mothers book club and his father’s latest project. He sits there and processes it all and realizes with a sort of mounting horror that he’s analyzing all of it for ulterior motives and lies and he doesn’t know how to stop himself from doing it.
He eventually must look tired enough that his parents decide to leave him alone to rest. Before they go back to their hotel they ask him where he wants to go for dinner. They’ll take him wherever he wants, their treat, after all he hasn’t had a proper meal in over a month. He thinks about breakfast on day 39 and tells them he doesn’t think he can stomach anything too fancy right now. Asks if they can just get pizza or something. They’ll meet up again in a few hours.
Stephen returns to his apartment, which is beginning to feel increasingly hostile every time he crosses the threshold. He scrolls through his missed calls, of which there are many. Friends, coworkers, family members, everyone wants to talk to him and Stephen cannot think of anything he wants to do less. The calls keep coming through as Stephen passes the time by staring at his wall. He doesn’t answer any of them, but he doesn’t turn the ringer off, and he checks the caller ID every time. Just to see who it is. He’s not waiting for anything in particular. He’s not picking up for anyone. He’s just checking.
A call comes through at 5:27 and Stephen looks at the caller ID, which for the first time is not the first name-last name format of his other contacts, just two letters. The phone is already by his ear before he’s even made a choice about it.
“Jet” he says, the name falling out of his mouth, sounding more desperate than he intended.
“Hey, Stephen.” His southern drawl is fuzzy and soft through the cellphone speaker but Stephen feels it like a punch to the chest. There’s relief in every syllable. Stephen doesn’t think anyone in the world says his name the way JT does. But that’s probably just the accent.
They don’t say anything for a while. Just sit on either side of the line and breathe together like they’re trying to inhale each other's presence from across the country.
“How ya doin’ buddy?” JT asks after a while, and it’s a genuine question even though he probably already knows the answer.
“Bad.” Stephen answers instantly, honest without having to think about it.
“Yeah,” JT sighs, “me too.” Stephen should feel bad about that, or maybe angry or something. JT’s the one who won a million dollars a couple days ago, even if the votes technically haven’t been read yet. He’s not skinny and torn up the way Stephen is, not brittle. Stephen should resent this, or he should feel bad that his friend is feeling bad. Instead he feels like some sort of balance has been restored. They’re both still in the same boat, somehow.
“I miss you.” Stephen says without really meaning to. Uncomfortably honest the way he had been by the end of final tribal - our friendship means more to me than winning does, fuck, no wonder they hadn’t given him the million - and he’s barely even surprised when it comes out a little choked. He’s not crying, but he’s closer than a few pleasantries exchanged over the phone should bring him. JT exhales a breath that Stephen can hear.
“I miss you too.” JT says, his voice heavy, “a whole lot, actually.”
“Yeah,”
“Didn’t think it’d be this hard.”
“Me neither. I mean, I expected some of it but not -” Stephen cuts himself off, not quite sure how to explain it out loud. This gaping hole inside of him that won’t be filled with food or comfort or family. The hole JT has too that apparently can’t even be filled with a million dollars. JT stays quiet, lets him gather his thoughts, lets him take his time. Any of Stephen’s other friends would have started offering endings to that sentence, throwing out fancy five dollar words and amateur psychology to fill the space. JT doesn’t say anything, probably because he already understands exactly what Stephen’s trying to say and he doesn’t feel the need to articulate these things the way Stephen does.
“I just really miss you.” Stephen settles on eventually, because that is what’s at the core of it, or at least it’s somewhere close.
****
Stephen has to go and meet his family for dinner at 6:30. He talks to JT until the time he has to leave and then it takes them long enough to say goodbye that he’s fifteen minutes late. His parents greet him with hugs that he returns with more genuine enthusiasm than he was able to manage this morning. His father tells him he looks like he got some rest while they were gone, and his mother says it’s good to see him with a little more energy. He says he took a nap, which is something he’s actually never done in his entire life, and it makes his mother look a little concerned again. But it’s easier to pretend that he slept than it is to explain how a phone call did more for his mental and emotional state than sleep ever could.
They talk more over dinner and Stephen feels a little more at ease with it, but not in the way he used to. He’s still treading carefully, still reading into their every word, still jury managing them in a way that makes him hate himself. But he’s settled into it at least. He knows this. He knows how to come off a conversation with JT and then talk to other people like he can be open with them too.
A few of the things his parents say he files away for JT. He promised to call again tomorrow and Stephen wants to be able to tell him things. He’s never been in danger of not having something to talk to JT about and the idea that he could run out now, without the constant need for strategy, does something painful and twisting to his sternum.
His parents ask when he’s thinking of going back to work. He says he’s scheduled to start again next week. They ask him if he feels ready for it and he says not yet as though he will be ready eventually, which he kind of thinks might be a lie. He thinks of his desk in his office, and his coworkers asking him where he’s been and how he’s doing, and having to do the whole small talk thing around a water cooler bathed in white artificial light. It makes his whole body feel unsettled and disjointed. But he’ll get there. He has to get there. It’s literally his job.
He throws up almost as soon as he gets back to his apartment. He’s not sure if it’s because the pizza was too much for his fragile stomach or because his apartment is actually somehow becoming more distressing to enter every time he does it. Either way the result is Stephen kneeling on the floor of his tiny bathroom feeling gross and sorry for himself.
He sits there, trembling and wet faced from the involuntary tears that always seem to accompany vomiting. It’s humiliating, and he should be glad that no one is here to see it. But he figures that if he’s shaking and crying on the bathroom floor he can at least be honest with himself for a second, and the honest thing is that he really wishes JT were here. He wants JT the way a sick child wants a favourite stuffed toy to cling to. He wants JT’s warm hand rubbing his back and his soft voice muttering in his ear but more than anything he just wants his steady, reliable presence. It gets so bad that he very nearly calls him. He knows JT will pick up, no matter what time it is, if he sees that Stephen’s the one calling.
Ultimately Stephen talks himself out of it. The process of actually calling JT is too complex for him to justify it as a single moment of weakness, and Stephen’s apparently trying to prove something to himself. Besides, it wouldn’t be the same as if he were actually here.
****
His parents leave the next afternoon, after lunch but before the time JT said he’d call. They tell him that they are so proud of him, that it doesn’t matter to them how he did in the show, they’re just so excited to watch it. To see what he’s done. He smiles at them and says he’s excited for them to see it. This is a lie. Stephen has been quietly dreading the show airing since he walked out of that disaster of a final tribal. The only thing holding him together then had been JT. The second the cameras cut off there had been arms wrapped around him, apologies mumbled in his ear. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Not any of it. I couldn’t’a done it without you. I wouldn’t’a wanted to. I ain’t mad about the final three. I know you wouldn’t’a brought me. I always knew that. It don’t matter to me. None of that shit matters to me. Everything after that is a blur of sensation. Shoulders brushing on their way out of the tribal council area, a hand on his knee in the car, the faint brush of lips against his chin as JT hugged him goodbye before they went into their separate tents at ponderosa. Reminders that even if he had lost the million dollars he hadn’t lost JT. It’s harder to grasp that now, when they’re both in separate states instead of just separate tents, which had been hard enough already.
He sits in his empty apartment after his parents are gone and tries to remember what he used to do with free time. He can’t just stare at his wall until JT calls again, that would be pathetic even for him. He tries to muster the energy to contact some of the people who are trying to get in touch with him. He texts his brother, a couple friends from Yale, Martin from work. He sees a message from Nina, who he went on a first date with not long before he left for Survivor. He doesn’t text her back. He’ll get to it. He just can’t think of anything to say to her right now. And JT should be calling him any minute now anyway.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, Stephen’s phone rings and JT’s caller ID appears on screen. Stephen deliberately lets it ring a few times so it doesn’t seem like he’s been holding his phone in his hand waiting for this call all afternoon, even though that is kind of what he’s been doing. He picks up after a respectable three and a half rings.
“Hey,” is what he says this time, trying to sound appropriately casual about it.
“Hey yourself,” is JT’s reply, and it’s dripping with enough fondness that he kind of suspects JT knows what Stephen is trying to do here. Which would be especially remarkable considering Stephen himself isn’t entirely sure what that is.
“How’s Alabama?”
“Same as it’s been. Lotta work I gotta catch up on, bein’ away for so long.”
“I bet.”
“How’s New York?”
“It’s weird, I guess. I go back to work on Monday.”
“Your consulting job?”
“That’s right.”
“Gonna be real funny doin’ that after everything. Bet you no one else in that office knows how to start a fire like you do.” There’s a degree of pride in JT’s tone that Stephen can’t help but feel is unwarranted. Starting a fire is fucking useless in the real world. All those skills he spent 39 days developing, all that survival shit JT taught him, none of it matters here.
“Yeah, well, hopefully they find that impressive. I’m just worried I’m still going to look like a starvation victim by the time I get there.”
“You been eatin’ alright?”
“Trying to. I threw up the pizza I ate last night.”
“Aw man.”
There's no necessary end point to the phone call this time, so it just keeps going. Every once in a while Stephen will glance at the microwave clock and notice that somehow another half hour has passed and he’ll think it’s probably time to wrap it up soon, but the thought never makes it to action. It’s not even like he and JT are talking constantly. There are long periods of silence, both of them doing their own thing but neither of them willing to hang up. Stephen turns on speakerphone and makes himself a grilled cheese, which he narrates to JT who apparently already ate with his family before they called.
“Everybody's tryin’a get information outta me. My mama’s like a dog with a scent, I swear. But I ain’t told nobody nothin’. I want it to be a surprise, y’know?”
“Yeah, my parents were the same. They know we’re like, contractually banned from telling them the results right?”
“I know! But I guess they just wanna know what went down out there. I get that.”
“Sure.” Stephen pauses, not sure if he wants to say anything else on this particular train. JT doesn’t fill the silence, like he knows Stephen’s working himself up to something. It’s fucking crazy that he can read him this well over the phone. It’s honestly kind of rude.
“Did you tell them anything about me?” Steven asks, because in his head that was the least incriminating option, though it comes out sounding needy in a way he doesn’t like.
“‘Course I told ‘em about you.” JT scoffs like it was never even a question. “Couldn’t tell them all of it, obviously, but I couldn’t not talk about you.”
“What did you say?” Stephen doesn’t know why this feels like such an important question. Why the way he was described to JT’s mom is apparently cause for such visceral concern.
“Told ‘em I met people I never woulda done, if I’d stayed home. Told ‘em one of those people was the best guy I’ve ever met. Told ‘em I thought I’d made a friend for life.”
A laugh forces its way out of Stephen’s throat almost violently. JT makes an inquiring noise.
“Sorry. It’s just, that’s exactly what I said to my parents about you. I said you’re the best guy I’ve ever met.” Now it’s JT’s turn to laugh, which he does, and it comes through the speakerphone bright and carefree and for a moment the apartment doesn’t feel empty anymore.
****
Stephen develops something that could generously be called a routine in the week leading up to his return to work. It involves eating three meals a day, throwing up about half of those, texting a maximum of two people, and running some errand or another. There’s a lot of free time he still hasn’t quite figured out how to fill. He tries reading, but he can’t settle into it the way he used to. He’s too alert, too aware of his physical surroundings. Whenever he dedicates too much attention to a book he starts panicking, feeling like that there’s something else he should be doing. Tending the fire, getting fish, strategizing, checking the tarp or checking the rice or checking in with JT. None of these are things he needs to do anymore but his body hasn’t gotten the memo about that yet. Stephen is struggling to imagine that it ever will.
He has people trying to schedule things with him, but he has yet to form any concrete plans. He doesn’t want any of his friends to see him like this. He doesn’t want to watch them register just how skinny he’s gotten, doesn’t want them to ask questions he can’t answer and wouldn’t want to even if he could. He limits himself to texting, doesn’t even call anyone because he keeps thinking about what it was like talking to his parents. He’s terrified that he’ll keep talking to people like they’re all contestants vying for a million dollars instead of like a normal person.
The thing all his days revolve around, ultimately, is his nightly phone call with JT. They are increasingly unsatisfying, as Stephen slowly runs out of new things to say and JT audibly grows more concerned about him, but they’re still far and away the best part of his day. He wouldn’t even mind the silences, if they were in the same space. Words are only about half the story with JT anyways, he’s always been a more physically expressive person. Stephen misses it with a constant pressing ache, every time he turns around half-expecting to see JT’s lopsided grin and is met with nothing but empty space.
The night before Stephen has to return to the office he lies in bed with his phone on the pillow beside him.
“You feelin’ ready for tomorrow?” JT asks after a silence that had lasted long enough Stephen thought he might have fallen asleep.
“Not really,” he admits.
“Can you take a bit more time off?”
“No. I was already pushing it with the week-long buffer. If I try to take any more time off they’ll probably just decide to cut their losses and fire me.”
“Man, that sucks. I’m sorry buddy.”
“It is what it is.”
“Maybe it won’t be so bad.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Stephen doubts it. He hasn’t spoken to anyone except JT since his parents left, which had felt like self-preservation then but just feels kind of stupid now. He’s going to be so out of practice. He’s not going to have any clue how to act.
He falls asleep an hour or so later, phone still on the pillow next to him, letting JT’s steady breathing lull him into something resembling a decent night's sleep.
****
His alarm goes off at 5:45, shrieking and intrusive, and Stephen jolts awake disoriented and afraid. His hand is out beside him instinctively, searching. His brain is really trying to catch up with things here but his hand lands on empty space where there should be another warm body and the panic pushes aside all rational thought.
“Jet?” he yells, his voice a strained rasp from the fear and the sleep still clinging to him like seaweed. It echoes around in his tiny apartment which is nothing like the vast open space of camp, and he doesn’t understand anything except for the fact that JT isn’t here and Stephen has to find him.
His rational brain catches up to him as he’s standing in the middle of his room. He doesn’t remember the process of getting here. He stares back at the rumpled comforter pushed aside on the bed, spots the phone where it had fallen off his pillow in the rush. He ghosts over to pick it up, still waiting for sensation to re-enter his limbs, and stares bleary eyed at the call that JT apparently ended not too long ago. At least he didn’t hear any of that.
A text comes through as he stands there staring at his phone, almost like he willed it. Good luck at work today. Short, simple, something anyone could have said to him. He stares at the initials of the sender and feels slightly more like a person.
He makes himself a couple pieces of toast, only manages to get one of them down. Dresses in his work clothes that he is now realizing he probably should have replaced because they make him look like a little kid wearing his older brother’s clothes. He’s out of the apartment and at the subway station. This commute is familiar. This is what routine used to look like for him.
His office building is impossibly tall. He forces himself not to stop and stare up at it like some sort of dazzled tourist who only comes to New York for the office buildings. The lobby is stark and clean. He passes someone he vaguely recognizes and forgets to acknowledge her, which turns out to be fine because he doesn’t think she recognizes him as she walks by.
It occurs to him, out of nowhere, that he hasn’t actually been in an elevator since the last time he was in this building. It’s not a milestone he tends to measure his life with, but it feels weirdly significant at the moment. He hits the button for the 24th floor and the doors close. Stephen’s never been a claustrophobic person but by the time the floor counter hits 10 he can feel himself getting a little skittish. Not scared, necessarily, just antsy. He doesn’t like how long this is taking. He doesn’t like how close the walls are. He doesn’t like the occasional creaking that sounds almost like an animal whining in pain. And he really doesn’t like the way every wall is mirrored, so everywhere he looks he is confronted with his own diminished reflection. He shaved because he thought it would make him look less feral, but it just makes the hollowness of his cheeks more prominent. His eyes are a little bit sunken and there’s a tired, desperate glint to them. He looks like he’s being hunted.
Finally, the elevator jolts to a stop. The doors slide open. Stephen steps out as normally as he can manage. Which is very normal. He’s so normal. He’s just a normal guy. Going to his normal job. He can be normal. He knows how to be normal. Who the fuck decided these lights were a good idea?
Martin pops up from his cubicle and greets Stephen with a loud voice and a smile that Stephen decides is probably genuine and not hiding any conspiracies against him for the moment. Stephen does his best to engage with pleasantries while still trying to adjust to the whole lights situation, and he does a middling job at both. Martin’s smile turns strained and confused at the edges as he seems to register Stephen's general physical state and/or his arguably even worse mental state. Stephen excuses himself, manages to make it to his desk without passing out or screaming or something equally insane.
Stephen sits in his chair, which he remembers once thinking of as uncomfortable but which he is currently finding almost too plush. He turns on his computer. Types in his password. It takes two tries for the muscle memory to kick in. He tries to remember what this job actually is.
There are emails. He needs to answer emails. He opens his email. There is a seemingly endless amount of emails. Rows on rows of tiny text and behind each one a person expecting him to reply with something coherent and helpful. This whole job is communication. He is good at communication. He got a fucking english degree from Yale, he knows how to write an email. He just needs to figure out how to read them first. The words on the screen are being very uncooperative. Did he forget how to read in Brazil? Did he trade literacy for firemaking? He didn’t even tell Martin that he can start a fire now. It wouldn’t have been relevant. But JT had been so excited by the prospect. But then again, JT doesn’t have to write emails.
The mental image of JT at an email desk job knocks something loose inside Stephen’s brain. He lets out a noise that he mercifully manages to stop before it can become a hysterical giggle. JT with his sun-bleached hair and filthy flannel shirt and chipped tooth hunched over a computer in a tiny cubicle. Stephen can’t imagine him in this stark white artificial light. JT was built to be bathed in golden sunlight or soft yellow lamplight. Something warm. Not whatever arctic fluorescents they’re torturing people with in this place.
He manages to make it to lunchtime. He clicks on emails, sits there for five minutes each trying to read them, fails, clicks out of emails, repeats the process. Occasionally someone walks past and does a double take and greets him. He responds at more or less the right times in more or less appropriate ways. No one sticks around to talk to him for long and Stephen can’t remember if that’s normal or if that’s something they’re doing because talking to him is making them uncomfortable.
Eventually he gets thirsty. He’s better at ignoring that these days, used to it thanks to exile island, but he doesn’t currently have reason to deny himself. The walk to the water cooler is so different from the walk to the river. All flat linoleum floors and right angles. There’s no dirt on his shoes.
He pauses right before the entry to the break area. There are two people there already. Stephen can see them talking to each other softly, conspiratorial. Any part of Stephen that was even slightly relaxed instantly tenses. It’s dangerous for people to be talking like that.
One of them glances over, catches sight of where he’s hovering in the doorway like a specter. She startles. The conversation stops. Stephen’s heart beats fast enough to hurt. Fuck. They were talking about him. What were they saying? What are they planning? He needs to figure it out. He needs to plan against it. Get them before they can get him.
He turns on his heel without acknowledging them and walks blindly away. He needs to be somewhere else. Somewhere he can’t feel the eyes of his coworkers and his boss and Martin and the cameras. Everyone is watching him. They can smell it on him, all the things he can’t wash off without the river. The suspicion. The guilt. The shame. The fear. The hunger. They know there’s something wrong with him. He’s doing an increasingly bad job of hiding it.
He ends up in the bathroom, which is just about the most cliche thing in the fucking world. He locks himself in a stall and tries really hard to breathe. The air tastes wrong, and his lungs don’t seem to want to accept it. He needs to calm down. He’s had panic attacks before, back in university. He is vaguely aware that this is probably what’s happening to him now. He knows he learned how to deal with them at some point. There are breathing exercises he half-remembers. Something to do with counting.
His fists are clenching at his sides, clawing at the material of his shirt. It’s plasticky and starched and thin. It’s not what his hands want to hold. The fabric feels wrong under his fingers. It’s too clean. Everything here is too clean. His bleach-white shirt and the white-white walls and the blue-white lights and the off-white floors and the porcelain white toilet he’s sitting on. He was shitting in the woods two weeks ago. What the fuck is he doing here? How did he ever do this?
He loses track of time. There are long lapses where the only things he’s aware of are the humming of the lights and the bile stinging his throat and the bugs that are crawling all over him. He ate termites on like day 4. Maybe they’re here to eat him back. Occasionally someone walks into the washroom and Stephen will go utterly still like a prey animal hoping it won’t be spotted.
Eventually, the tide begins to recede. Air actually makes it to his lungs, even if the taste of it is still sterile and bitter. He can see the stall door in front of him. Sitting on the toilet like this is incredibly uncomfortable. His legs are both fully numb. He finally gains enough confidence to move his arm. He looks at the time on his phone. His fingers are clumsy. It’s a little after 4 o’clock. He’s been here for hours.
It takes him another ten minutes to work up the energy to stand. He has to steady himself with his arms on both of the stall walls. This is familiar. There was a challenge like this, at final five. Feet on near nonexistent perches and arms braced on either side. Stephen dropping early. Coach yelling and curling up on the floor. JT winning immunity.
Stephen unlocks the stall door. Steps out. Keeps his eyes trained down so he doesn’t have to look in the mirror. He leaves the bathroom. Walks back to his cubicle. Picks up his bag. Walks to the elevator. It is possible that someone says something to him at some point, something he should respond to. He does not have anything left in him to dedicate to social niceties. It takes his entire focus just putting one foot in front of the other.
He can’t go back to his apartment. Just thinking about it threatens to pull Stephen right back into his panic. He needs somewhere open, somewhere he won’t have to hear the hum of fluorescent lights.
It is only thanks to his unerring sense of direction and muscle memory in navigating the city that he manages to make it to central park. It’s not perfect, but it’s close enough to his office and close enough to what he wants that it’ll have to do. The air is marginally cleaner here at least.
He collapses onto the most secluded bench he can find, which is not actually all that secluded but he really doesn’t have the energy to go any further. He lowers his head so it’s practically between his knees and tries to figure out what to do. Because clearly whatever he’s doing now just isn’t going to work. He needs to go back to work tomorrow. He technically should still be at work right now. But it seems unlikely that tomorrow will be any better than today and even if it was, is that really the life he wants to return to? Is that the life he fits into now?
Stephen likes to consider himself a pretty self-aware guy. He’s a writer, and a talker, and anxious even before the game, which means he spends a lot of time thinking about himself and who he is and how that relates to the world around him. He tries to conceive of himself now. Catalogues every fact he knows about himself, measures them against the definitions and categories that he has assigned himself in the past. He keeps running up against a wall. It’s like there’s something missing. Some fundamental part of himself that he put down before he left and now that he’s back he can’t seem to remember where he put it. Maybe if he keeps trying he’ll find it eventually. Maybe it’s just gone forever. Or maybe it’s not something he even had to begin with. Maybe he’s just changed shape so much over 39 days that there’s a hole in the middle of him now where something should be and it’s not anything he’ll be able to find in New York.
His phone is in his hand. His fingers find JT’s contact the way his eyes used to find him during tribal council, automatic and easy and without conscious thought. It rings twice before JT picks up.
“Stephen?” JT sounds surprised and a little worried, which makes sense. It’s early, compared to their usual call time. Stephen should technically still be at work. Also Stephen is never the one to call JT.
“I don’t think I can do this.” Are the first words out of Stephen's mouth, and they sound gritty and strained and way too honest. He hears a rustle, like JT’s shifted in some way, probably leaning forwards and creasing his eyebrows, eyes clear and focused on something in the middle distance because they can’t be focused on Stephen.
“What this? The job?” His voice is soft. No judgement in it at all.
“Yes,” Stephen says, but that’s not quite right. “No. Or, well, yes but also just. All of it. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That’s alright.”
“No it’s not,” Stephen snaps, and immediately feels bad, but doesn’t apologize because he knows JT will take it in stride. He takes a breath. “It’s just.. I don’t know how to be…” He trails off. He doesn’t know what to put there. Maybe that’s just the end of the sentence. I don’t know how to be.
“You don’t gotta be anything.” JT says, when Stephen fails to elaborate any further.
“Of course I have to be something,” Stephen scoffs. He’s breathing almost normally now. The rhythm of talking with JT gives his heartbeat a pace to settle at, something slow and soothing the way things always are with JT.
“Maybe,” JT concedes, though he still sounds sceptical, “but I don’t reckon you’ve gotta know what that is all at once. Maybe you need some time to figure it out.”
“I don’t know if I can take that time.” Stephen admits, watching a family stroll past. The little boy catches sight of his face and looks vaguely afraid of him. “I freaked out at work today. Like, really freaked out. I saw some people talking in the kitchen and it was just like, I don’t know, like I was back there.” He’s relieved he doesn’t have to specify where ‘there’ is. JT knows. “And I know I’m not, but that just made it worse because there was nothing I could do about it, you know? And the lights were just, I don’t know, awful. And I couldn’t figure out how to respond to emails, which is basically my entire job. And I don’t think I even know how to talk to people anymore.”
“You talk to me just fine.”
“Well yeah, but that’s different.” Stephen swallows, already regretting saying that out loud. Like putting voice to it will draw attention to it and that’ll make the whole thing rotten. But JT just chuckles a little, and his attention doesn’t hurt it, whatever it is.
“Fair enough. It’s different for me too.” Stephen feels his eyes slip shut, and he imagines what he must look like to an outsider. A too-thin man in business casual, slumped forward on a park bench, clutching a phone to his ear like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.
“Maybe I just need time,” Stephen mumbles. “But I don’t really know where to find that.”
JT is silent for a very long time. Stephen would think he’d hung up if it weren’t for the fact that he can still hear his breaths. They’re a little louder than normal, like JT’s trying to reassure him that he hasn’t gone anywhere.
“Come here.” He says abruptly, the words so rushed and sudden that Stephen doesn’t fully process them.
“What?”
“Come here,” JT repeats, slower this time, more confident, “to Samson. You can stay with me. Got nothing but time out here. You can take as much of it as you need.”
“I-” Stephen can’t figure out what to say. There are so many reasons why this is an insane idea. If he just leaves the city he’ll definitely lose his job. What about his apartment? His friends? What will he even do with himself in Samson, Alabama?
“You wouldn’t mind?” Stephen finds himself asking, like the only reason not to abandon his life and move to a cattle farm would be if JT didn’t want him there.
JT laughs, and there’s a weird edge to it that Stephen can’t place, something almost defeated. “No Stephen, I really wouldn’t mind. You’d be doin’ me a favour if anything. Goin’ insane out here without my buddy to keep me company.”
It might just be a way to make him feel better about intruding. From anyone else Stephen would definitely read it that way. But Stephen prides himself on being able to tell when JT is telling the truth, and nothing in his tone rings false.
“Okay.” Stephen says, and he feels his whole body unfurl with the decision. His shoulders relax and his jaw unclenches and the constant, biting hunger that’s been hounding him since the plane lets up for just a moment. “Okay. I’ll come to Alabama.”